Another Teaching Day -- Homer's Iliad, Gorgias' Encomium

The Homeric universe opens up to my students today, the patriarchal rage that unmans, the interminable traffic in women by men (and the threat to patriarchy's traffic in women of the homosexualization of the homosociality of patriarchy), rhetoric of and as discord, the finally humanizing force of narrative, Achilles as the exceptional one and as everyone... then, the same day, mind you, Gorgias' Encomium to Helen, the praise of rhetoric through the praise of Helen, the self-promotion of Gorgias through the re-enactment of Helen's violation. Ah, summer intensives! Day Two and everything is already quite overwhelming.