In particular, we see the playing out of a narrative pattern that begins with the Calypso episode: a male traveler’s penetration of a feminized milieu, leading to the release of Odysseus from potential oblivion. In each case, the poet draws on older mythic and/or folktale story patterns to explore the effects of Odysseus’s arrival in an exotic and threatening milieu. Likewise, the longer episodes in Books Nine through Twelve, the Cyclops, Circe, Hades, and-as a shorter coda-the Cattle of the Sun, repeat and enrich motifs and narrative patterns established in the first eight books of the poem. Thus, we see the monster Polyphemus against the background of Proteus, Circe in the shadow of Calypso. In the chronology of the story, the adventures he recounts have already happened, but we encounter them here for the first time in the poem. Now he will tell the Phaeacians about his struggle to survive after leaving Troy. The hero himself has been released by the gods from Calypso’s island and survived the harassment of Poseidon, washing up on the shore of Scheria, naked and exhausted. We have seen the chaos in the royal palace at Ithaka and Telemachus’ visits to Pylos and Sparta. At the request of king Alcinous, Odysseus declares his name and country.Īs Book Nine opens, we find Odysseus poised on the boundary between the fairytale kingdom of the Phaeacians and the grittier realities of Ithaka.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |