READING HOMER’S ODYSSEY Q READING HOMER’S ODYSSEY Q Kostas Myrsiades lewisburg, pennsylvania Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Myrsiades, Kostas, author. Title: Reading Homer’s Odyssey / by Kostas Myrsiades. Description: Lewisburg, PA : Bucknell University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018058895 | ISBN 9781684481361 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781684481316 (hc- plc : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Homer. Odyssey. Classification: LCC PA4167 .M97 2019 | DDC 883/.01— dc23 LC rec ord available at http:// lccn . loc . gov / 2018058895 A British Cataloging- in- Publication rec ord for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2019 by Kostas Myrsiades All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, elec- tronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Bucknell University Press, Hildreth- Mirza Hall, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837-2005. The only excep- tion to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Mate- rials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www. b ucknell. e du/ U niversityPress Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press Manufactured in the United States of Amer i ca To Linda, who has shared my own odyssey for over a half century, and to my c hildren and grandchildren, who would like to know what I do now that I have retired C O N T E N T S Preface ix PART I From Ithaca to Wonderland 1 Telemachus’ Journey (Od. 1–4) 3 2 Odysseus from Calypso to the Phaeacians (Od. 5–8) 61 3 Odysseus’ Wanderings (Od. 9–12) 102 PART II From Wonderland to Ithaca 4 Odysseus and Telemachus at Eumaeus’ Hut (Od. 13–16) 155 5 Odysseus and Telemachus Strategize at the Palace (Od. 17–20) 193 6 Revenge, Reunion, and Reconciliation (Od. 21–24) 240 Afterword 277 Acknowledgments 287 Notes 289 General Bibliography 303 Index 341 vii P R E F A C E Reading Homer’s “Odyssey” is a book- by- book commentary on the epic based on forty- two years of reading and teaching the Odyssey to both gradu ate and undergraduate students in a variety of courses and seminars. Among the many essays and books written on the Odyssey that inform this reading, a se lection for further reading for each of the twenty- four books of the epic is included at the end of each book’s commentary. The reading is intended primarily for comparative and general lit er a ture courses on Homer’s epics taught in translation, but not merely as a writ- ten aid to be referred to in simplifying a complex work. Rather, it attempts to pres ent the Odyssey as a unified and coherent work of lit er a ture (with lapses due to its beginnings in an oral tradition). However, the reading is neither a critical study nor a study on the epic’s authorship or the nature of its orality. Analysts, a movement given birth by A. F. Wolf in 1795, still argue that both the Iliad and Odyssey were composed by many hands, while Unitarians, dominant in the twentieth century, argue for a single authorship. In the 1930s, Milman Parry added to the debate by suggesting the epic’s oral nature, which gave rise to a group called the Oralists. In the mid- twentieth c entury, Ioannis Kakrides pro- posed yet another group, the Neoanalysts, a kind of Unitarian movement arguing that a single author had used earlier poems to create his own. Since then, vari ous approaches to reading the Odyssey have appeared using ix