E-Books →Cheiron's Way Youthful Education in Homer and Tragedy

The book begins by exploring topics relevant to heroic and tragic education: age classes, rites of passage, verbal modes of instruction, social conditioning, mentoring, peer role models, and the controversial balance between nature and nurture. It introduces the first teacher in the Greek tradition, Cheiron the centaur, who founded a school for young heroes in his Thessalian cave and instructed Achilles, Jason, and others with mixed success. Next it turns to the Iliadic Achilles, who achieves maturity by way of successive crises-a crisis of disillusionment with the assumptions that shaped his heroic education, followed by a crisis of empathy for his adversary-and who becomes an influential prototype for tragedy. Examination of the
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