The Possibility of Choosing and the Commitment to Tradition: Determining Devices of Narrative Modality in the Iliad

Abstract

This work aims to assess the two main ways displayed through the Iliad for possibly altering the traditional tale: the so called reversal passages and certain persuasive direct discourses. Although at differ-ent narrative levels, both composing devices display an implicit consideration about the range of choices avail-able for the primary narrator, as a singer, as well as for the characters, mortals or gods, as narrative agents. For comparing both devices, we make use of four concepts belonging to narratological theory: focalization, narrative level, type and function.