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- Title
Helen and the Power of Erotic Love: From Homeric Contemplation to Hollywood Fantasy.
- Authors
Roisman, Hanna M.
- Abstract
The Benioff-Petersen 2004 movie "Troy" is the latest in a series of films that feature the world famous lovers Helen and Paris. The film acknowledges its debt to Homer's "Iliad" but, like ancient works before, freely adapts source material to its own vision and aims. This paper compares Benioff-Petersen's treatment of Helen with that of the "Iliad" emphasizing the difference in the two works' characterization of Helen, which is anchored in their fundamentally different conceptions of love and, with this, of the type of woman who inspires and is inspired by it. In both, the story of Helen's elopement with Paris and of the war it engendered is a story of passion. In both, erotic love is an all-powerful emotion, and Helen is drawn as simultaneously arousing it and being carried away by it. But here the similarities end. The "Iliad" offers a contemplation of the nature of this love, Troy a fantasy of it. The two Helens are drawn accordingly.
- Subjects
HELEN, of Troy, Queen of Sparta (Legendary character); TROY (Film); ILIAD of Homer; HOMER, fl. ca. 900 B.C.-ca. 801 B.C.; LOVE in motion pictures; LOVE in literature; BENIOFF, David; PETERSEN, Wolfgang, 1941-2022; FILM adaptations
- Publication
College Literature, 2008, Vol 35, Issue 4, p127
- ISSN
0093-3139
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.1353/lit.0.0028