The Dark Side of Statius' Achilleid: Epic Distorted

The Dark Side of Statius' Achilleid explores systematically and for the first time the darker aspects of Statius' Achilleid, bringing to light the poem's tragic and epic dimensions. By seeking to position at centre-stage these darker elements, the book offers several new readings of the Achilleid in relation to its literary inheritance, its gender dynamics, and its generic tensions. This volume delves beneath the surface of a story that ostensibly deals with a "light" subject matter-the cross-dressing of a young Achilles on Scyros-to carry out an in-depth examination of the poem's relationship to its epic and tragic precursors, and to explore its more serious themes. In this book, the poem is shown to challenge traditional epic narratives, and to display Achilles' complex familial relationships, as well as his transgressive and unique heroism. The Achilleid also emerges as paying distinct attention to the tragic characterization of Thetis, who attempts to halt the horrors that the cataclysmic Trojan war promises to beget. By looking into Statius' wide-ranging dialogue with his literary predecessors, such as Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Seneca, as well as Statius' previous epic magnum opus, the Thebaid, the multidimensional characterizations of Achilles and other key characters of the poem, such as Ulysses, Calchas, and Thetis are investigated. Far from simply representing a shameful but essentially humorous cross-dressing episode in Achilles' life that is destined to be forgotten, the Achilleid can be seen to question the very fabric of epic by probing the validity and authority of its literary tradition, and displaying its highly innovative and experimental nature.

Table of Contents:
Editions Abbreviations Introduction: Charting a New Interpretation of Statius' Achilleid 1: Leonine Achilles 2: Transgression and Excess 3: Tradunt Dolos Patres 4: Vatic Authority and Poetics Postlude – 'an epic of problematics' Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Julene Abad Del Vecchio is Lecturer in Classical Literature and Culture at the University of Manchester. She has published articles and chapters on Flavian poetry, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and on the reception of classical literature in the works of the dramatists of the Spanish Golden Age. She has also worked as a Research Associate in the AHRC Ancient Letter Collections project.

Review :
This book systematically explores, for the first time, the darker aspects of Statius' Achilleid, bringing to light the poem's tragic and epic dimensions. Abad Del Vecchio has produced one of the few monographs in English on Statius' Achilleid, developed from a Manchester dissertation. By emphasizing the grim aspects of a deceptively lighthearted story, she provides a welcome complement to Peter Heslin's Transvestite Achilles from twenty years ago. The book provides detailed, sophisticated readings of numerous passages of this brief poem. A. traces some of the (potentially endless) associations of characters, images, and narratives, without losing sight of relevance or falling into rabbit holes. In any case, without doubt, A.D.V. offers an elegantly written and engaging discussion of Statius' epic. Anyone interested in the Achilleid will gain a lot of insights and stimulating ideas from it. Prolific times indeed for the Achilleid.