Odyssey | Introduction
Odyssey c. Eighth Century B.C.
Greek poem.
INTRODUCTION
For information on the Iliad, see CMLC, Volume 1.
The Odyssey is considered one of the greatest literary achievements of Western civilization. Composed of twenty-four books totaling over 12,000 lines, it details the wanderings of Odysseus, King of Ithaca, and focuses on his honor, bravery, resourcefulness, and nobility. Although the Odyssey has been deemed inferior to Homer's other epic, the Iliad, by many critics, it has been praised for its structural sophistication, thematic consistency, and complex characterization.
Plot and Major Characters
The story of the Odyssey begins ten years after the fall of Troy, during which interval Odysseus has been trying to return to Ithaca, where his wife, Penelope, is faithfully waiting for his return. The reader is first introduced to the hero, Odysseus, in Book V, near the end of his seven-year captivity by the goddess Calypso. Under Zeus's orders, Calypso releases Odysseus, who, after building an improvised boat, resumes his journey home. Along the way Odysseus stops at the island of Phaeacia, where he meets the young princess Nausicaa and recounts to the Phaeacians his adventures during the first three years after the Trojan War— with the Lotus-Eaters, the Cyclops, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, and the Sirens. Odysseus sets out to sea again and upon his arrival in his kingdom discovers that Penelope is being courted by suitors who are also plotting to kill his son, Telemachos. Disguised as a beggar, Odysseus mingles with the suitors in his palace, talks with Penelope, and is recognized by his old nurse, Eurycleia. He is also reunited with Telemachos, and together they plan their revenge against the suitors. Penelope, longing for Odysseus's return but realizing that she can no longer delay replying to the suitors' marriage requests, decides to hold a bow-and-arrow contest and offers herself as the prize. The suitors try in vain to string Odysseus's bow, and finally Odysseus (still dressed as a beggar) steps forward to try. He succeeds, revealing his identity, and together he and Telemachos kill the suitors; Odysseus then approaches Penelope, who is still not convinced that he is truly her husband. As a final test to determine if her husband has really returned home, Penelope asks Odysseus
Major Themes
The central theme of the Odyssey is that of disguise and recognition. The clearest example of this is Odysseus's concealment of his identity from his friends and family in Ithaca and the subsequent private scenes of recognition that structure the second half of the poem. Odysseus reveals his identity to a number of characters in the poem: his son, Telemachos, who then makes plans to help him kill the suitors; his dog, Argus, who recognizes his scent and dies from the excitement of his master's return home; his nurse, who sees the scar on his thigh by which she recognizes Odysseus as she bathes him; his wife, Penelope, who is cautious to believe he has returned; his father, Laertes, who regains physical and emotional strength upon his son's return home; and the suitors, who are punished for their selfish and underhanded actions during Odysseus's absence. Sheila Murnaghan has noted that, furthermore, "the reunions of these characters with Odysseus involve these characters' own shedding of disguise and recognition as well as his." Laertes, for example, sheds his rags and the weakness of old age upon Odysseus's return, becoming the strong patriarch that Odysseus left behind twenty years earlier. Telemachos also undergoes a change, but, unlike that of Laertes, it is not a recovery of a previous state but growth into a new state of maturity. The complex nature of the two main characters, Odysseus and Penelope, also plays an important part in the Odyssey. W. B. Stanford has praised Odysseus as "one of the fullest and most versatile characters in literature: a symbol of the Ionic-Greek Everyman in his eloquence, cleverness, unscrupulousness, intellectual curiosity, courage, endurance, shrewdness," and Nancy Felson-Rubin has observed that, "the Penelope who emerges by the end of the poem is a forceful figure who operates imaginatively within the constraints of her situation and succeeds in keeping her options open until she reaches safety in her husband's embrace."
Textual History
Authorship of the Odyssey has traditionally been attributed to the blind Greek bard Homer, but his relation to the Iliad and the Odyssey has incited much scholarly inquiry and has brought together the efforts of experts in such fields as archeology, linguistics, art, and comparative literature. As a result of their research, three main theories regarding the composition of the poems have emerged: the analytic, the separatist, and the unitarian. Until the publication of Friedrich Adolph Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum in 1795, the notion that Homer was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey was largely undisputed. However, citing certain inconsistencies and errors in the texts, Wolf asserted that the two works were not the compositions of one poet, but the products of many different authors at work on various traditional poems and stories over time. Wolf's argument convinced many critics—who were subsequently termed the analysts—but also inspired the notorious authorship controversy known as the "Homeric question." Another theory that escalated at this time was that of the separatists, who believed that the Odyssey and the Iliad were written by two different authors who may not have even known about each other's works. While these two views prevailed throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they were ultimately challenged by an opposing group of critics, the unitarians, whose primary spokesman was Andrew Lang. The unitarians insisted that a single individual of genius composed the Homeric epics, supporting their claim by citing a unified sensibility, original style, and consistent use of themes and imagery in the poems. Another theory, proposed by Samuel Butler in 1897, asserted that the Odyssey was written by Nausicaa, a young woman from Trapani and a member of King Alcinous's household, but this theory has been widely discredited among scholars.
The textual history of the Odyssey is assumed to have begun with an oral version of the poem which was transmitted by local bards and probably recorded on papyri shortly after Homer's death. Although Homeric Greece did not yet have a system of writing appropriate for literary texts, records indicate that a Phoenician alphabet may have been adapted and used for this purpose in the eighth century B.C. Once set down in writing, the poems most likely became the exclusive proprety of the Homeridae, or sons of Homer, a bardic guild whose members performed and preserved the poems. Scholars believe that in the second half of the sixth century B.C. the Athenian dictator Peisistratus, who ruled from 560-27 B.C., established a Commission of Editors of Homer to edit the text of the poems and remove any errors and interpolations that had accumulated in the process of transmission—thereby establishing a Canon of Homer. Fragments of papyrus have been found in Egypt, the earliest dating from the third century B.C., but the oldest complete manuscript is the Laurentianus of the tenth or eleventh century A.D. The first printed edition of Homer's poetry appeared in Europe in 1488 and remained in use until the seventeenth century. Many translations of the Odyssey have subsequently been published; critics agree that the most influential translations have been those by George Chapman, Alexander Pope, Samuel Butler, and Richmond Lattimore.
Critical Reception
The Odyssey has often been unfavorably compared to the Iliad by critics who have condemned it for its excessive repetitiveness, drawn-out narrative, and lack of unity. Yet in spite of its weaknesses, the Odyssey is still considered one of the greatest literary works of all time. G. S. Kirk has stated that, "no one in his senses can deny that the poem is a marvelous accomplishment," and Stephen V. Tracy has asserted that, "the Odyssey has something for everyone; it is a highly entertaining adventure story." One aspect of the poem on which scholars have focused is that of the origin and artistic merit of the first four books of the Odyssey, collectively known as the Telemachia. Cited by some critics as evidence in support of the analytic theory because of its distinctive treatment, the Telemachia, according to other critics, is indeed a part of the original story and figures prominently as a necessary link to establishing Odysseus's importance and stature within Ithaca. Pointing out the centrality of the Telemachia in the Odyssey, J. W. Mackail has commented that, "nothing in the Iliad is such a feat of design as the way in which the first four books of the Odyssey do not bring Odysseus onto the scene at all and yet imply him through every line as the central figure." Differences in style between the Odyssey and the Iliad have also prompted significant debate, particularly the Odyssey's greater emphasis on myth, prominence of women in the poem, and downplaying the lore of warfare. Samuel Eliot Bassett has noted that, "the Iliad is a tale of war, unmarked by trickery: the Odyssey of domestic intrigue," and Andrew Lang has observed that, "the Odyssey is calmer, more reflective, more religious than the Iliad, being a poem of peace." Examining the role of the gods in the Odyssey, Samuel Butler has noted an evolution, contending that "in the Odyssey the gods no longer live in houses and sleep in four-post bedsteads, but the conception of their abode, like that of their existence altogether, is far more spiritual." As early as the eighteenth century, Alexander Pope cautioned, "whoever reads the Odyssey with an eye to the Iliad, expecting to find it of the same character, or of the same sort of spirit, will be grievously deceived." Although critics still debate the relative merits of the Odyssey compared to those of the Iliad, most agree with Stanford's assertion that "few long poems equal it in the variety and charm of its word-music, and few stories surpass it in sustained excitement and human interest."
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