Reviews for The Anger of Achilles: "Menis" in Greek Epic

The average rating for The Anger of Achilles: "Menis" in Greek Epic based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-10-19 00:00:00 Joseph Smetanka This is a really niche work designed for literary nerds who have decided that they're willing to pick up a book that spends a couple hundred pages talking about the meaning of one single Greek word in the Iliad. (Granted it's a really complicated word that's also the central theme of that work... but I digress.) I picked up this book in hopes that it would inform my understanding and teaching of the Iliad. I was successful in that regard. Granted, there's much more information in here than I can convey to a class of 9th grade students about the meaning of menis, but it gave me a fuller understanding of the work and how it was used so that I can best weave it into my curriculum and explanations to them. For myself, this work tended to be a bit too long and go down more rabbit trails than I would have cared for. I would probably have been fine with a book that's half as long. But my interests are more in high school education than in academics so in that regard, I'm not the ideal audience. While I don't know that I agreed with Muellner's literary interpretation of the Iliad (I think Achilles' attack on the Greek warrior ethic in his confrontation with Odysseus/Phoenix/Ajax is more relevant than Muellner indicates), his unpacking of the meaning of menin was rather valuable, and I was glad to have read this work. Rating: 4 Stars (Very Good).

Review # 2 was written on 2019-11-04 00:00:00 Alejandro Londono Although there were nuggets of interesting information hidden within the pages of this book-- it was a task to find them. It is NOT written for the average reader/ layperson. To be honest, I'm pretty sure it was aimed at informing colleagues who have already read the works referenced.