Article: The Madness of Epic: Reading Insanity from Homer to Statius.(Review)

The Madness of Epic: Reading Insanity from Homer to Statius. By Debra Hershkowitz.(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 346. $80.00.)

In this enormously learned first book, the author presents a series of essays on madness--in Vergil's Aeneid, in Homer, in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lucan's Bellum Civile, and Statius's Thebaid--with a 67-page introduction. The study is a revision of the author's 1995 dissertation, and she appears to have read everything on the subject in the original languages. If this becomes the standard for dissertations, the next generation is in trouble.

Since "epic madness is not bound to follow any one set of rules," the ...

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