Narrative and Rhetoric in Odysseus' Tales to the Phaeacians

Abstract

As Odysseus cautiously prepares to enter the straits plagued by Charybdis and Scylla, he encourages his crew by referring to his earlier success against the Cyclops (Od. 12.208-12). This article argues that the Odyssey constructs the Scylla adventure as a tale of heroic failure in contrast with the Cyclops episode. Special attention is paid to narrative paradigms that underlie the Scylla episode and emphasize Odysseus' inability to defeat the monster. I further show that the Cyclops/Scylla contrast serves both as an argument presented to Odysseus' internal Phaeacian audience and an interpretive key for the external audience.

Speculative Fiction, Ecocriticism, and the Wanderings of Odysseus

“…1.See Clay (1997), 213–39, and Cook (1995), both with citations of previous scholarship. From a slightly different angle, Hopman (2012a), 1, describes the older ‘exegetic tradition’ as analyzing ‘the apologoi as a moral or psychological journey, a return to humanity metaphorically shaped as an experience of death and rebirth.’ She positions her own article within a shift towards emphasizing ‘the fact that the apologoi are a speech act uttered by the secondary narrator Odysseus to an audience of Phaeacians on whom he depends to escort him home.’ My concerns intersect only obliquely with those of this narratological approach; they relate, rather, to somewhat different recent trends (focusing on anthropology, ethnography, ecology, and colonization) that maintain some connection to the older moral/theological questions.…”

“…Weiner (2015) discusses the excursus in connection with Vonnegut's reception of the Odyssey in Cat's Cradle , which shows technical ingenuity resulting in worldwide ecocatastrophe. Hopman (2012a), 6 n.21, cites Horkheimer and Adorno alongside other readings of the Cyclops episode (by classicists) ‘as a dramatization of the conceptual polarity between nature and culture, and a representation of man's triumph over uncivilized forces.’ Typically they are a more shadowy presence in discussions of the Odyssey; Cook (1995) provides an excellent example of this, titling a chapter ‘Dialectics of Enlightenment’ but omitting Horkheimer and Adorno from his bibliography.…”

“…81.As Hopman (2012a), 4, observes, Scylla is likewise described in a way that emphasizes her transcendence of human capabilities: ‘no mortal could ascend Scylla's cave, “not even if he had twenty hands and feet” ( Od . 12.77–8).’ In that case, the ‘description by negation’ conjures a biological rather than a technological marvel, which perhaps anticipates the failure of Odysseus’ instrumental rationality to cope with her, on which more below.…”

“…See Clay (1997), 213-39, and Cook (1995), both with citations of previous scholarship. From a slightly different angle, Hopman (2012a), 1, describes the older 'exegetic tradition' as analyzing 'the apologoi as a moral or psychological journey, a return to humanity metaphorically shaped as an experience of death and rebirth.' She positions her own article within a shift towards emphasizing 'the fact that the apologoi are a speech act uttered by the secondary narrator Odysseus to an audience of Phaeacians on whom he depends to escort him home.'…”

“…For Cook, this opposition is ultimately resolved, both in Athenian ritual and in the Odyssey, through symbolic affirmation of 'a symbiotic relationship in which culture both subordinates nature and depends on it' (162). Whereas Cook's readings of particular episodes tend to stress the triumph of technological mē tis, Bakker's stress the claims of nature, as does Hopman's (2012aHopman's ( , 2012b reading of the Scylla episode. Peradotto (1990), 32-93, correlates the tension between nature and culture with an opposition between the 'centripetal' voice of myth, which validates the tragic power of nature, and the 'centrifugal' voice of Märchen, which tends towards the fulfillment of human desire, and he suggests a 'Bakhtinian reading' of the epic 'as a dialogic text, in which neither of the contending voices is allowed to dominate' (63).…”