SOURCE: Alles, Gregory D. “Poetic Works and Their Worlds.” In The Iliad, The Rāmāyana, and the Work of Religion: Failed Persuasion and Religious Mystification, pp. 49-75. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Alles compares the social and mythological contexts of the Ramayana and The Iliad, arguing that both poems reflect the problem social communities face when persuasion breaks down.

I

The Iliad and the Rāmāyana rehearse what happens when persuasion fails. Achilles takes to his hut, and the order of society is not fully restored until the Olympians intervene. Rāma retreats to the forest and does not return until he has slain the mightiest demon of all.

It has been quite some time since American scholars, at least, have argued seriously about whether these events actually occurred. Most of them simply assume that the stories we have are fictitious...