Erzähler und Figur in Interaktion

Time and again in Homer's Iliad there are implicit interactions between the narrator and his characters. This monograph examines these interactions as 'metalepses' (transgressions between narrative levels), which lend the epic an immanent dialogicality. Numerous individual analyses show how metalepses decisively shape the Homeric narrative style and how they expand the scope of interpretation of entire passages. It becomes clear that metaleptic interactivity creates an apparent immediacy and closeness between the narrator and his characters (especially Achilles). The narrator and characters refer to each other in their speeches in very different ways, for example when the narrator contradicts a character or a character takes up and modifies an image used by the narrator. The Homeric characters thus appear less as textual products (as 'products' of the narrator) than as real people with whom the narrator appears to enter into direct dialogue, indeed whom he has actually created as interlocutors.