Dean's Lecture Series: Stephanie Jamison on Reabduction Narratives in Indo-European Epics

“Draupadī on the Walls of Troy: Reabduction Narratives in Two Indo-European Epics, the Iliad and the Mahābhārata” By Stephanie Jamison A curious episode in Iliad, the Teikhoskopia (viewing from the wall), in which Helen is asked by her father-in-law Priam to identify the Greek warriors massed below the wall, is compared with another reabduction narrative in Indo-European epic, involving Draupadī, the wife of the five heroes of the Mahābhārata. The two episodes contain a remarkably similar network of incidents, which, furthermore, make sense within the larger Indic cultural paradigm. These close similarities shed light on the corresponding scene in the Iliad, which has long posed a problem in Homeric studies. Stephanie Jamison is a Distinguished Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures and of Indo-European Studies at UCLA. She received her PhD in Linguistics from Yale and her areas of study include Old and Middle Indic-Aryan languages, esp. Vedic Sanskrit, Old Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian and Indo-European linguistics, literature, religion, mythology, poetics, law, gender studies (etc.) https://www.sjc.edu/ Santa Fe | 1160 Camino de Cruz Blanca | Santa Fe, NM 87505 | 505-984-6000 Annapolis | 60 College Avenue | Annapolis, MD 21401 | 410-263-2371