Somehow “utterly” seems to mean “not utterly” here. A different word might have been more appropriate.
Also, this thread seems like a terrible place to have a discussion about illegal immigration and the Romans.
Who are you quoting here? I haven’t mentioned objective truth and don’t lay any claim to it. I am also not hoping to “recover the past” - these are your words, not mine.
My claim was this: that through consideration of the extreme care which is taken over the production of woven fabric in the Odyssey, the expectation by a character who has never met her (Odysseus) that she is going to be married soon, the apparent agency she has within text over the choice of husband, and her apparent young age, I found the character Nausikaa’s actions don’t lack “plausibility” and that they are not “obviously a contrivance on the part of the story”, as mwh argued and you agreed.
Implicit in my claim is that this way of thinking could lead others to the same conclusion, which they may find enriches their reading. I make no claim that I have discovered some truth about young girls in antiquity as a result, merely that my own experience of the text is enriched through the discovery of this perceived plausibility.
I haven’t read Martindale’s book - thank you for the introduction. To quote him at length from an essay discussing the book at 20 years distance:
You seem to be calling me a ‘vulgar historicist’, rather than a ‘vulgar presentist’. But you misunderstand me - I am not trying to discover historical truths in these texts. I am trying to recognise things that I already know to be true from my own experience. I know that people, including me, have dreams about things they are anxious about. I know that sometimes people are sufficiently motivated by these dreams to act on them, but often not. I have no reason to believe that this is not true for every human being who has ever lived (am I not allowed to imagine the sensation of hunger when a Greek says they haven’t eaten for a week?).
What I am trying to establish is whether I find the contents of Nausikaa’s dream sufficient to make her traipse all the way to the washing pools based on my own experience and the evidence I find in the text itself. I am reading the Odyssey for pleasure, and my pleasure is disrupted by lapses in plausibility.
You seem to want to deny me this pleasure by saying that I’m not allowed to identify this plausibility (or ‘truth’, as I have called it) based on my own experience of being young, of being anxious to please other people, of feeling that I should take care of things that are lovingly-made for me, and the context given in the text, because my own experience is so “utterly unlike” Nausikaa’s that such an interpretation is facile.
Yet at the same time you afford Mary Beard this luxury. On what basis is she able to say the Romans “would have been horrified” by the migrant crisis except that she makes analogy between her own experience of ‘being horrified’ by things which she thinks are egregious and pasting it onto her perception of the Roman character? Am I not permitted to say that “Nausikaa would have been persuaded to go to wash her clothes” by the same token?
To quote Martindale again (I promise I will read his book, but for now his essay):
I would be interested to know more about what Martindale thinks these immutable parts or ‘traces’ are, but his point here seems clear that dialogue with these texts (and the interpretations that lie between me and them) is possible, and I see no objection in his essay to me coming to my own interpretation as long as I remain aware of how such interpretation might be “problematical”. As I have said, I don’t wish to recover the past, but only, following Forster, to connect.
If you don’t believe this intuitively in your very bones then I can’t convince you of it.
This thread will become unwieldy if I respond to every point made.
Scare quotes around something indicate that the thing quoted doesn’t (to me) make sense. It’s not a quote but I thought it summed up what you were trying to say.
I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment and as I said before I am in favour of a plurality of views. But it doesn’t mean I agree with your views nor that I find them coherent. You can project as much as you like onto the text, as much as you find “plausible”. That’s what reception is.
I seem to have touched a nerve and I am sorry about that. I am only interested in an exchange of ideas. That you have said things which I think are misguided is not meant at all personally. If it comes across like that I apologise.
I will be interested to hear your views once you have read Martindale.
It seems a bit unfair to leave me in suspense until I’ve read the whole thing.
Can you at least give me a taster of how I should approach the question of plausibility in this passage if not the ways I’ve suggested?
I would be interested to know more about what Martindale thinks these immutable parts or ‘traces’ are, but his point here seems clear that dialogue with these texts
I think you have introduced the words “immutable parts” where Martindale says “Interpretations demonstrably change over the course of history, but they do not change completely, and they continue to bear the traces of earlier meanings.” I think what he has in mind is that when we read Virgil we do so inevitably and unavoidably through for example Dante and Milton (whether we have actually read these texts or not because others who we read have). He certainly does not mean that that there is “something” in an ancient text which remain unchanged by its reception. We cannot escape the way Virgil has been read in the past and it is as if those readings are already and always part of the text.
Its difficult to argue about plausibility. You have set out your methodology as internal reflection and close reading of the text but ultimately while the results may satisfy you they are hardly likely to convince others. Maybe that doesn’t matter. I find the whole idea of plausibility an attempt, however, to normalise the text to make it fit our literary expectations.
But rather than abandon “plausibility” perhaps you should interrogate what you actually mean by it and why you privilege it. I find almost nothing in the Odyssey which makes me think about the “plausibility” of what happens. When you read Ariosto or Tasso do you demand plausibility? The fantastical demands other responses form us.
Ah, the nub! The proof of the pudding is rather in the eating here - I think there are many people who would benefit from such a close reading and who find characters and their actions to be plausible or implausible. You disagree. Shrug.
I don’t feel I need to interrogate this any more for my own purposes based on what we’ve talked about, but I’m happy to do so for the purposes of the discussion.
As you know, Aristotle in the Poetics argues that character should be consistent (ὁμαλός). However we choose to translate the passage below in 2019, the effect it has had on writers of fiction in the ‘West’ over the past two millennia has been to consider this ‘consistency’ important for ‘good’ fiction, and ‘inconsistency’ as evidence of ‘bad’ fiction (Kate Mosse has read her Aristotle!). This consistency is what I mean by plausibility.
You ask “When you read Ariosto or Tasso do you demand plausibility?”. I answer “Yes, and I find it!”, and without it they would be long forgotten.
Why should a character who rides a chariot to the moon not also be ‘consistent’ and ‘plausible’? I find many of the characters in the Lord of the Rings to be plausible, but many of those in Martin Amis’s novels (ostensibly ‘real’) to be implausible. I find the first 7 seasons of Game of Thrones to be plausible, but season 8 to be implausible. I want to read the work of Bram Stoker, but I don’t want to read penny dreadfuls. Is this clear?
It is plausible to me that Raskolnikov kills Alyona Ivanovna in the context of the opening chapters of Crime and Punishment, but implausible that
Jon Snow kills Daenerys Targaryen the way he does in the context of the first 7 series (apologies if you haven’t seen the series, other examples of this kind abound), and for Aristotle it is implausible that Iphigenia the supplicant becomes Iphigenia the sacrificial lamb. Not because any of these things is physically impossible, but because they seem implausible for these characters.
I privilege these considerations because they are the beating heart of the way I experience fiction. Without the potential for plausibility, a text is dead, and I struggle to see how any other approach provides any satisfaction.
If you wish to continue this I suggest you open a new thread, in true Odyssean fashion we have wandered far. I think that there is a fundamental misunderstanding between us which I see no way of bridging in a short time in this thread.
I think you labour under the apprehension that I think there are there are right and wrong answers here. That said I think that if we are to share our views on public forum then we owe it to ourselves at least to interrogate those views.
I don’t find the appeal to Aristotle at all persuasive. It is interesting and enriching (and of course unavoidable) to read literature through Aristotle’s lens, but that is only one among many competing views. I don’t think characters in literature have to be consistent just as people in real life are not consistent. But if they are that’s fine too. I suppose it depends what game you are playing. When we read detective fiction there is an implicit contract between writer and reader about how the action will be played out. Richer examples of the genre play with and subvert that contract.
I think I understand why “plausibility” and"consistency" are important to you. In my view there are so many other important ways of understanding a text that I think you miss out on the richness of what you read.
I will try in future to confine my remarks to Homer.
That’s fine - I think that’s what “ὅμως ὁμαλῶς ἀνώμαλον δεῖ εἶναι” (fun to say) is intended to cover for what it’s worth - unless you’re suggesting people’s actions can be truly random. I agree that we’re shouting at each other across a gulf here, but I’ve enjoyed the debate and I think what we’ve been obliquely discussing is “what is the purpose of a reading group?” - something useful to discuss here, even if it’s turned into a grand tour of epistemology in the process.
“I think you miss out on the richness of what you read” seems a little pitying, I have to say, though I’m sure you intended it to sound more neutral than it comes across. I don’t think I’ve suggested that the appreciation of plausible characters precludes other ways of interacting, but then you’ve not been generous enough to suggest what these other ways are so perhaps they are ‘richer’ than my own, in which case I envy you your experience. I am always open to new avenues if you can suggest them.
I will ask one more question here, if you’re willing to answer it, and I promise no reply (there’s a new thread coming tomorrow after all).
You say that “if we are to share our views on public forum then we owe it to ourselves at least to interrogate those views”, which was the same thing you said at the beginning of this discussion. I’m still not clear whether you mean that views on this forum should be accompanied by some kind of disclaimer saying “though I am aware of X theory, I believe that …” or “of course I might be wrong, if we consider this in terms of Y”, or whether you are simply saying we should think more deeply before posting? Or a third thing?
I agree that it’s best to stick to Homer. When in doubt, stick to the Greek (or even when not in doubt)!
But doubt seems to be the theme of the interaction here. I too will make these brief comments on the subject of epistemology my last.
Gadamer – read him in graduate school, along with Heidegger (sometime in the last millennium), required reading. Lot’s of fun, historically significant and worth studying, but fatally flawed, as is all skeptical epistemology. What’s that fatal flaw? It can be summarized as “stuff happens” and “things exist.” The human universals I referred to earlier are really rooted in that concept – let’s abbreviate it SHTG. Or maybe not. 
Think about it. We may say that there is no objectivity, but people simply don’t live like this. We all agree that New York City exists and that it happens to be in New York state. People who deny that are usually viewed with suspicion. But do people in Japan interpret that the same way? Of course, and all cultural groups and ethnicities also know that Tokyo is in Japan. People who think it’s in Montana also may be sent to get some help. When I wrote Montana, what came to mind?
Or consider language. We all know what a tree is. To an ancient Greek, is a δένδρον the same thing? It may be that the semantic range of the word in either language is not identical, but if both the ancient guy and the modern dude look at this:
And he says δένδρον while I say “tree,” then maybe we are onto something.
Now, this is not to say that there can’t be huge cultural divides, and a distant culture historically is even more difficult. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t get things right. Businesses and governments do this all the time. We learn the languages, we figure what the negotiators on the other side of the table really want, we make an offer, they accept. Voila! Nobody worries about post-modern notions of meaning and reality – they just conduct their lives as though meaning and reality are real things.
The reductio ad absurdum of the skeptical approach is that none of this is possible. It always sounds attractive as theory, but all it is is a hypothetical thought construct.
@Barry
If this is what you thought I was saying I either ought to write nothing (cheers!) or explain myself more clearly (groans). I don’t think Gadamer argues that things don’t exist in the sense you are using it. Understanding depends on a series of cultural assumptions and all I want to do is to interrogate those assumptions. The meaning of texts like everything in the world is contingent. I hope that you use Martindale’s book in your teaching. It certainly opened up my eyes to what I thought I was doing in reading a text.
Reductio arguments always make people look silly. Thats why no-one except school children use them.
@seanjonesbw
I don’t mean to be " pitying" but it seems to me that it must be a difficult approach to reading to apply a particular yardstick (eg “plausibility”) to all the literature that you read and not to be able to enjoy that which falls short of your measure. By richer I mean amongst other things more ambiguity and of course readings which expand our way of looking at a text. I will try to give an example when we consider the next passage.
This is a free speech forum and you can say what you like within the rules we all sign up to about civility etc. You include in your opinion whatever you like and whatever you think is appropriate.
Tone and meaning are often hard to interpret. We have an opportunity here to ask each other about what we mean. You may see things in what I write that I say I didn’t intend. It doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Interrogating the past is scarcely any easier.
99% of communication is clarification (that’s hyperbole to make the point). Sometimes it takes more work than at other times. Again, I’d rather get back to Homer, but of course understanding rests on cultural assumptions. My point is that it’s possible to learn about other cultural assumptions and achieve real mutual understanding even when cultures have radically different frameworks. The route may be winding and the problems complex at times, but people still do it.
And I disagree – a reductio may well be useful in pointing out when there is a surd or two mucking up the argument.
And I figured out how to insert images in posts. For me that was worth the entire exchange… 
27 σοὶ δὲ γάμος σχεδόν ἐστιν, > ἵνα χρὴ καλὰ μὲν αὐτὴν > 28 > ἕννυσθαι> , τὰ δὲ τοῖσι παρασχεῖν, οἵ κέ σ ̓ ἄγωνται.
I’ve been rereading book 6 to consolidate, and this stuck out. I assume καλὰ is adverbial here - “when (at which) one must dress oneself well”? The LSJ cites Il. 6.326 but this is such a different context that I thought I’d check. I suppose the first time I read this I thought it was “dress yourself beautiful” or something like that, which is more Paul McKenna than Homer.
Edit: should have looked up the middle use of ἕννυμι. Duh.