This project studies similes and related literary devices in the Homeric poems in order to describe and study the kinds of alienated labor that are compared to heroic labor in the poems. It thus offers a clear thesis about how alienation was managed by the Homeric poems within the broader mechanisms of the elite ideologies they promote. Consequently, this literary study is also a study of how human society has viewed labor in a historical dimension, and the project also entails a comparative assessment of alienation in other premoden societies (Indian, Near Eastern) as well as a theoretical consideration of how different kinds of alienation have had an impact on literary history. Beyond its contributions to the study of the key texts, the project thus explores a series of problems that show how societal injustices are reflected in and also in some ways generated by literary activity--strengthening our understanding of how the arts contribute to shaping the political world in which we live.
