the idea that oikos should be taken here in a very wide sense ("clan", "house") is attractive,
the wedding of Menelaos' daughter and son in the beginning of the book is forgotten almost once.
grammatical and stylistic anomalies are much stronger evidence for an analytical scenario, or West's scenario.
Story substance anomalies are maybe mid-way (horseback riding in Homer 10 etc.)
the instantly forgotten marriages of Menelaus' children mean something, but what?
Qimmik wrote:grammatical and stylistic anomalies are much stronger evidence for an analytical scenario, or West's scenario.
We don't know enough about the early history of the texts to do much more than speculate about these things.
the instantly forgotten marriages of Menelaus' children mean something, but what?
I'm suggesting that the marriages serve as a way to work in one more son of a major war hero--Neoptolemos (actually, two, if you count Megapenthes, but Neoptolemos is the one who really matters)--just as the elaborate sacrifice in Book 3 enables the Odyssey to spotlight the sons of Nestor. This is a point that S. West, along with the analyst critics, misses, I think. We are given an overview of the post-war generation--we see the sons of Nestor, Menelaos, Akhilleus and Agamemnon, all matured and at least two having distinguished themselves in one way or other. Telemakhos, in contrast, is still finding his way to maturity.
In addition, the orderly marriage feast in Book 4 serves to complete the series of contrasting public feasts, the first being the disorderly riot in Ithake (the animals are simply slaughtered without proper sacrificial rites), and the second, the decorous sacrificial feast in Pulos.
So in my view, even if the marriage feast in Book 4 seems somewhat intrusive, it actually extends and completes the patterns that prevail in the first four books.
Paul Derouda wrote:Scribo, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Do you mean that the poet is trying to reconciliate two different, contradictory versions of the story, one of which is a local Laconian one? And what do you mean with performance variant?
I think scholars used to judge passages interpolations much too easily. I prefer M. L. West's idea of one oral poet reworking his own text. But in the case of the Odyssey, and especially the Telemachiad, I'm not sure if there really wasn't quite a lot of reworking by someone else. For me, one big difficulty is Pisistratus' name: how else could he have the same name as the Athenian tyrant, unless we assume an absurdly late date for the whole of the Odyssey? Also, I have a recollection that Pisistratus isn't mentioned in a Hesiodic catalogue of Nestor's sons.
For me, one big difficulty is Pisistratus' name: how else could he have the same name as the Athenian tyrant, unless we assume an absurdly late date for the whole of the Odyssey? Also, I have a recollection that Pisistratus isn't mentioned in a Hesiodic catalogue of Nestor's sons.
The poet of the Odyssey was a seriously flawed genius. . . . a slapdash artist, often copying verses from the Iliad or from himself without close attention to their suitability. . . . he creates a narrative marked by constant inconsistency of detail. . . . his deployment of the epic language is often inept and sometimes simply unintelligible.
Qimmik wrote:From the publisher:The poet of the Odyssey was a seriously flawed genius. . . . a slapdash artist, often copying verses from the Iliad or from himself without close attention to their suitability. . . . he creates a narrative marked by constant inconsistency of detail. . . . his deployment of the epic language is often inept and sometimes simply unintelligible.
This is going to be somewhat controversial, I think.
I think the problems of geography (such as the exact location of Ithaca, the Sparta/Mykenae problem, or the journey from Pylos to Sparta on a horse wagon over Mt Taygetos) are evidence that the author of the Odyssey was more concerned with telling a good story than exactitude about details.
Scribo wrote:Sure we can discuss those, I take a very....let's say wet fish not too involved approach. I don't think we can determine what are mistakes and what not in foreign (it is foreign!) narratives and my experience with other forms of oral poetry sort of make me think such things are really, really, common. More importantly, having read R. Scodel's book on audience/poet interaction I think it more important to consider the audience's role here. I mean how many of them would really notice? Only those with a lot of experience etc.
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