Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

works by the likes of the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, James Joyce, and
Vladimir Nabokov.
While for twentieth-century theorists such as Georges Bataille and Michel
Foucault transgressions offer both an “immediacy of being” and “limitless possibilities”
by producing a “liberating” effect—an issue that will be discussed in more detail in
Chapter Two—an overview of literary history will demonstrate that texts of transgression
have played a primordial role in shaping the historical, political, and cultural traditions of
the Occident. As a matter of fact, the elements of shock and subversion linked to
accounts of sex and violence have figured in literary works that date back to Antiquity.
Widely regarded as the first literary text of the Western tradition, Homer’s epic poem The
Iliad is a dramatic, sometimes shocking, account of an incident that occurred during the
final year of the Achaean attack on Troy. But while critical discussion since its
dissemination has mainly focused on the historical and aesthetical properties of the work
as well as its celebration of the heroic values embodied by its main characters (Knox 23-
27), few have elaborated on the explicitly violent nature of some sections of the text. The
scenes that relate Achilles’ rampage in Book 20 of The Iliad are particularly grizzly, as
this excerpt exemplifies:
…Achilles lunged
at Demoleon, son of Antenor, a tough defensive fighter—
he stabbed his temple and cleft his helmet’s cheekpiece.
None of the bronze plate could hold it—boring through
the metal and skull the bronze spearpoint pounded,
Demoleon’s brains splattered all inside his casque … (516)
A few lines later, Achilles delivers a deadly blow to Tros, as he is begging to be spared:
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