多选题
Of Homer's two epic poems, the Odyssey has always been more popular
than the Iliad, perhaps because it includes more features of mythology that are
accessible to readers. {{U}}Its subject (to use Maynard Mack's categories) is
"life-as-spectacle", for readers, diverted by its various incidents, observe its
hero Odysseus primarily from without; the tragic Iliad, however, presents
"life-as-experience": readers are asked to identify_ with the mind of Achilles,
whose motivations render him a not particularly likable
hero.{{/U}} In addition, the Iliad, more than the Odyssey, suggests the
complexity of the gods' involvement in human actions, and to the extent that
modem readers find this complexity a needless complication, the Iliad is less
satisfying than the Odyssey, with its simpler scheme of divine justice. Finally,
since the Iliad presents a historically verifiable action, Troy's siege, the
poem raises historical questions that are absent from the Odyssey's blithely
imaginative world.
It can be inferred from the passage that a
reader of the Iliad is likely to have trouble identifying with the poem's hero
for which of the following reasons?
- A. The hero is eventually revealed to be unheroic.
- B. The hero can be observed by the reader only from without.
- C. The hero's psychology is not historically verifiable.
- D. The hero's emotions often do not seem appealing to the reader.
- E. The hem's emotions are not sufficiently various to engage the reader's
attention.