Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation

The face that launched a thousand ships has inspired just as many—if not more—stories and interpretations of what exactly happened between Helen and Paris, and how it drove Troy to war. Even today, third-wave feminists, postfeminist intellectuals, and contemporary pop culture engage with the enduring reputation of Helen. In this scholarly work, Blondell (The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues) casts the real Helen by the wayside, focusing instead on the ways in which the mythical beauty has been depicted in Greek literature, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, Sappho’s poetry, the tragedy Agamemnon, and Herodotus’s Histories. The University of Washington classicist’s primary concern, expounded upon in thematic chapters, is how these stories depicted, promoted, and transformed ideals of beauty and female agency. This is a fine work of scholarship, but it has limited attraction for a general readership—Blondell declines to connect with modern-day interpretations, though it’s clear she isn’t a hermit of the ivory tower: chapter epigraphs comprise snippets from pop culture, such as a few lines from the Eagles’ song “Lyin’ Eyes.” In tracing her development, it would’ve been interesting to see how the Helen of today holds up to the Helen of old. 19 b&w illus. (May)