Sanctified Violence in Homeric Society: Oath-Making Rituals in the Iliad

In Sanctified Violence in Homeric Society, Margo Kitts focuses on oath-making narratives found in the Iliad through which she articulates a theory of ritualized violence. She analyzes ritual paradigms, metaphors, fictions, and poetic registers as oath-making principles, which she then traces through Homeric references and texts from the ancient New East. Discussing ritual features that are common to acts of religious violence throughout the world, Kitts makes use of the theory of ritual performance as communication.

• Combines ritual studies and oral traditional studies • Uses metaphor theory to explore work of ritual in an oral poetic text • Explains religious violence as ritual communication in a high register, with implications that extend beyond the Iliad into other analyses of ritualized violence

Introduction: why another treatment of Greek sacrifice?; 1. Epics, rituals, and rituals in epic: methodological considerations; 2. Premises and principles of oath-making in the Iliad; 3. Ritual scenes and epic Themes of Oath-Sacrifice; 4. Homeric battlefield theophanies, in light of the ancient Near East; Conclusion.