The Odyssey: Structure, Narration, and Meaning - Hardcover

Louden, Professor Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080186058X ISBN 13: 9780801860584

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Bruce Louden's bold re-reading of the Odyssey -- the first attempt in years to map in detail the poem's overall structure -- offers new insights into the artistry of Odysseus' mythic voyage and enriches our understanding of Homer's masterful craftsmanship. Louden's groundbreaking work uncovers an extended narrative pattern, repeated in full three times, which reveals the poem's underlying skeletal structure. This organizational analysis helps to explain the existence of several characters or episodes sometimes dismissed as extraneous, as late additions, or even as corruptions to Homer's original intent. In addition, Louden's discovery strengthens the suggestion that the Odyssey was the product of oral tradition. By repeating this sequence of successive motifs, a single, improvising bard could explore a variety of complex ideas within a poem as long as the Odyssey.

Though centrally concerned with the form of Homer's rich and complex plot, Louden's study is not exclusively, or even primarily, formalistic. His investigation involves the study of characters' names, challenges faced by Odysseus, the structure of the poem, and roles assigned to the poem's female characters. Louden's comprehensive achievement gives the reader a fresh perspective on the role of divine hostility and the artistry of an epic survivor on his timeless journey home.

About this title

Review:

"Often illuminating... The reader will find much to welcome." -- Matthew Clark, Phoenix

Synopsis:

This study uncovers an extended narrative that runs throughout the whole of the "Odyssey". Looking at such elements as characters' names, challenges faced by Odysseus, and roles assigned to the poem's women, Bruce Louden identifies a large sequence of successive motifs repeated in full three times throughout the "Odyssey", which provides the underlying skeletal structure for nearly all of the poem's plot. Louden's structural analysis helps explain the existence in the poem of several characters or episodes sometimes dismissed as extraneous or as late additions to or corruptions of the work. Further, the extended narrative pattern suggests that the epic has been transmitted to us as a whole rather than, as some critics believe, reconstructed from several smaller poems. Its existence also helps strengthen the possibility that the "Odyssey" was the product of an oral tradition. Though centrally concerned with the form through which the poem presents its rich and complex plot, Louden's study is not exclusively, or even primarily, formalistic.

Based upon this close reading of the epic's structure, he offers interpretations of the poem, exploring the role of divine hostility in the narrative and locating the "Odyssey" within a mythic subgenre in which a deity's anger at the impiety of humanity results in the survival of a single just man out of an entire community.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 080186058X
• ISBN 13: 9780801860584
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208