My colleague Charles Turner recently sent me a draft paper on similes and sociology. It was thought-provoking, and made me think once more about the differences between similes and metaphors. The form of a metaphor – A is B – and the form of a simile – A is like B – look pretty similar,… Continue reading →

The Iliad opens with a dramatic, scene-setting chapter. Agamemnon shows his unpleasant and foolish character by refusing to return Chryse, a slave girl taken in battle, to Chryses her father, who is a priest of Apollo, despite him presenting a handsome ransom and receiving the assent of the assembled Achaean (Greek) army. Chryses asks Apollo… Continue reading →

Dr Rachel Rosen presented a fantastic paper to the School of Applied Social Science in our Social Science Forum seminar series. Rachel’s paper was about time and its role in participatory research, and it extended the argument in her previous work on temporality and the social character of time. I think time is something that… Continue reading →

I had a rather restless night and some strange dreams – the product of the cold remedies I am taking at the moment, perhaps? That is a very modern way of thinking about dreams – that they are caused by something we have ingested – but then so is the idea that dreams are the… Continue reading →

Talking to my friend Tom recently about the ‘Troy’ exhibition at the British Museum we came to discussing George Chapman’s Homer (Iliad (1611) and Odyssey (1615) – you can download a copy here), the first full English translations of these epic poems. The exhibition includes a first edition of this monumental work. George Chapman (1559… Continue reading →

Thetis to Achilles: “But you, sitting by your swift sea-faring ships, continue your wrath against the Achaeans and refrain entirely from battle; for Zeus went yesterday for a feast to the incomparable Ethiopians at the Ocean, and all the gods followed with him; but on the twelfth day he will come back again to Olympus,… Continue reading →

There are very few references to iron (σιδηρος) in Homer: this is the Bronze Age after all, or rather a tale of the Bronze Age. When reference is made to iron these note firstly the difficulties in working it and then the value of this new metal. The value is shown in, for example, Achilles… Continue reading →

After a summer break and a bracing return to work it is time to consider how to move this projects forward. I am looking for a method that allows social investigators to ‘escape’ from entrenched conceptual schemes, but retains some purchase on the objects under investigation. Homer’s Iliad helped me to do that in the… Continue reading →

Given the subject matter it is perhaps surprising that there are so many female characters in the Iliad, slightly less surprising in the Odyssey. Homer’s depiction and typification of women is consistent – of the female humans femininity, mothering and caring are emphasized; the goddesses are beautiful – but all the women and goddesses in… Continue reading →

In contrast to Plato, Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (1588 – 1679) considered the Iliad to be a ‘dangerous’ text not for reasons of its alleged impiety, but because it was a paradigm for disrespecting sovereign authority. Hobbes identifies two causes of the English Civil War in his 1668 book Behemoth: the History of the Causes… Continue reading →