The mirror of epic

In order to treat the 'Iliad' as historical evidence one must first consider the interpretative implications of its performance as an historical 'event'. Combining Bourdieu's theory of practice with Baudrillard's concept of symbolic exchange, Brown approaches the 'Iliad' as the trace of a historically motivated speech act whose ritual function was to distil new social possibilities from the context of its performance. In its narrative performance the 'Iliad' charts a passage from 'stasis' to funerary 'agon' giving shape to emergent discourses about value and subjectivity. In essence an aetiological narrative, whose performance realizes what it utters, the 'Iliad', Brown argues, stages the foundation of political society.