This study used data collected during intensive interviews with 44 returning women students and 33 of their husbands to investigate the effects of husbands' educational attainment on their attitudes toward their wives' enrollment and on their provision of instrumental support during the first year in a university. As hypothesized, well-educated husbands held more positive attitudes toward their wives' enrollment than did less-educated husbands; however, contrary to expectations, well-educated husbands provided their wives with lower levels of instrumental support than did less-educated (...) husbands. Less-educated husbands appear to have provided their wives with higher levels of instrumental support because they were more likely to believe that their wives' increasing educational attainment would raise the total family income. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Suitors' GamesRuth ScodelScholars disagree about the goals of Penelope's suitors in the Odyssey-do they seek kingship, Odysseus' property, Penelope herself, or some combination? This disagreement is unsurprising: different passages imply different goals. Twice the suitors speak of dividing Odysseus' property (2.335-36, 16.384-86). In other passages, however, the kingship seems to be at issue; so Telemachus says that Eurymachus "is most eager to marry my mother (...) and possess the honor [geras] of Odysseus" (15.521-22)-which would seem to imply that he would have all Odysseus' wealth as well. Other passages stress the suitors' sexual desire for Penelope (1.365-66, 18.212-13). Hence scholars have often emphasized one aspect of the suitors' aims. Some think that Penelope herself is a mere excuse and the suitors' real desire is kingship in Ithaca.1 Others argue that Penelope is the only object and that "kingship" does not even exist.2 Many believe that Penelope and the kingship are somehow connected, and that the suitors seek both, while some admit that they are perplexed.3 The poet's failure to clarify Penelope's motives complicates the issue even further and has led to even more debate. Is she as loyal to [End Page 307] Odysseus as the poet claims? If so, why has she led the suitors on? Why does she appear before them in book 18? Why does she choose to hold the bow contest when there are so many indications of Odysseus' imminent return?4Scholars, however, have made the problems worse by assuming a single underlying situation. The suitors' actions, and those of Penelope, are easier to understand if we follow the narrative with the expectation that the characters adapt to changing situations. There are three basic situations in the poem, and so three "games." The first we must reconstruct, because Telemachus' new assertiveness ends it as the poem starts. His declaration of hostility toward the suitors and his attempt to use the assembly against them mark the transition to a new game. This game, too, fails to achieve an outcome, when the suitors fail to kill Telemachus on his return and an omen warns them against trying again. The third game begins when Penelope's appearance before the suitors inflames their desire for her and leads to the bow contest.I borrow the term "game" from the game theory widely used in the social sciences.5 In game theory, a "game" is a rule-governed situation in which each person must make choices in the knowledge that other people are also choosing and that the outcome depends in a prescribed way on all the choices. Game theory assumes "instrumental rationality": without considering why people want what they want, it assumes that people have preferences and use rational means to achieve them.6 Ends do not need to be rational, but means do. A rigorous application of game theory to a literary text would be foolishly reductive. Furthermore, game theory would require assigning a quantitative value to each possible outcome for each player. Still, a perspective influenced by game theory can clarify what strategies are available to the characters and the rationality or lack of rationality of their choices. [End Page 308]This argument treats the characters as possible people for whom the audience infers rational motives, provided that the narrator does not provide other motivations and such inferences offer an adequate explanation for otherwise confusing actions. This is the easiest way to discuss the narrative sequence, and it is not an inappropriate procedure for the authorial audience of this poem.7 After all, the Odyssey celebrates the cleverest of heroes and implies that Odysseus' wife resembles him. Without imagining people who calculate quite as tidily as the analysis does, we may still see them as consciously evaluating their options. However, even interpreters who reject the view of the characters as rational choosers may find this analysis helpful. They may, for example, see the characters as behaving more intuitively than through calculation yet still find it useful to examine how far their actions conform to a rational model. Even if the characters' motives are bracketed, this discussion seeks to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PORTIA'S SUITORS by Richard Kuhns and Barbara Tovey I am always inclined to believe that Shakespeare has more allusions to particular facts and persons than his readers commonly suppose. —Samuel Johnson, "Merchant of Venice," Notes on Shakespeare's Plays. 66f\ver-name them," Portia says to Nerissa, "and as thou namest V^/them, I will describe them, and according to my description level at my affection." This passage in TL· Merchant of (...) Venice (Act I, Scene ii), where Portia describes her suitors, presents certain problems.1 To our knowledge interpreters have not addressed them. In the first place, the lengthy description ofthe discarded suitors serves no apparent function. The suitors play no role whatsoever in the subsequent development of the drama, and the protracted account of their failings retards rather than advances the action of the play. To be sure, Shakespeare wanted die audience to be aware that Portia had many suitors of high rank and from many different countries, but it was scarcely necessary for him to go to such lengths to make the point. In the second place, the denigration of the previous suitors in this scene does not accord with the account ofthem given by Bassanio when talking to Antonio in the first act: Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth, For the four winds blow in from every coast Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks 325 326Philosophy and Literature Hang on her temples like a golden fleece, Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strond, And many Jasons come in quest of her. (Li. 167-72) The suitors as described by Portia hardly deserve to be called "renowned," or to be referred to as "Jasons." The belittling of his competitors in this scene also has the undesirable effect of trivializing Bassanio 's achievement in Act III. Thirdly, there is something decidedly odd about the sort of failings attributed to the suitors by Portia. Had he so wished, Shakespeare could have utilized this passage to present a sort of catalogue of human frailties. One suitor might have been a representative of pride, another of avarice, another of envy, etc. But Shakespeare does nothing of the sort. With the exception of the German, who is a drunkard, the defects of the suitors can hardly be considered major vices. The Neapolitan Prince talks too much about his horse, the County Palatine frowns excessively, the French lord is an imitator of the others, the English baron is "oddly suited," and so on. Yet Shakespeare dwells at considerable length upon these more or less trivial failings. Now it may be suggested that Shakespeare, who is certainly deeply interested in national differences of character and behavior, may have inserted this discussion of the suitors into the play in order to provide himself with an opportunity for analysis of idiosyncratic national traits. The answer to this objection is simple. The characteristics ascribed to the suitors do not represent genuine or interesting national differences any more than they stand for major human vices. Is it true, as under this hypothesis Shakespeare would seem to be suggesting, that Neapolitans are fonder of horses than most other folk? Or that Frenchmen are particularly prone to imitating others? Or that Germans are uniquely predisposed to alcoholism? If not, we must admit that the discussion of the discarded suitors represents a puzzling and as yet unexplained digression. Commenting upon this scene, Samuel Johnson made a suggestion that we think merits serious consideration. Might it be the case that the suitors represent actual persons, whose descriptions give clues to their real identities? It is our suggestion that the six suitors make up a company of the most gifted, influential, and to Shakespeare—we suspect—the most interesting writers of the tradition in which he worked. These are the writers from whom he derived inspiration and plots. The question may Richard Kuhns and Barbara Tovey327 well be raised, as to why, if this is so, the suitors are depicted in such derogatory terms. We suggest that one very potent way in which to express the deepest gratitude and admiration is by means of a loving insult. This technique ofexpressing affection and indebtedness to one's literary mentors... (shrink)

The Egyptian shadow play commonly known as ʿAlam wa-Taʿādīr tells the story of a Coptic monk whose daughter falls in love with a Muslim merchant. Since its initial discovery in the 1900s, this remarkable play has slipped into oblivion. This article presents a survey of earlier research, an outline of the layers of the composite text based on all known textual and visual testimonies, an analysis of the building blocks—themed zajal song-cycles—and a summary of the sole working script that features (...) dialogue as well. These findings will hopefully form a solid foundation for future research into this work, which in many ways is representative of Egyptian shadow plays in the Ottoman and early modern times. (shrink)

Accusations of sexual creepiness are on the rise, but are such accusations morally problematic? Legal scholar Heidi Matthews thinks so, arguing that sexual creepiness as a category is in tension with liberal and progressive moral commitments. Principled liberals and progressives can reject creepiness as a category, but the costs of abandoning sexual creepiness may be high. Empirical findings about who gets accused of being creepy suggest that the creepiness norm is being repurposed to control male sexual advances in two ways: (...) first, by discouraging substandard male suitors from approaching young women unlikely to be interested in them (“prefiltration”), and second, by deflecting eligible older men away from young women and towards older women (“redirection”). If something like this hypothesis is correct, the ethical question liberals and progressives must wrestle with is whether these benefits justify maintenance of a norm that is (inter alia) lookist, ageist, sexist, sex-negative, and neuronormative. (shrink)

The title of this book echoes a phrase used by the Washington Post to describethe American attempt to kill Saddam Hussein at the start of the war againstIraq. Its theme is the notion of targeting (skopos) as the name of an intentionalstructure in which the subject tries to confirm its invulnerability by aiming todestroy a target. At the center of the first chapter is Odysseus’s killing of the suitors;the second concerns Carl Schmitt’s Roman Catholicism and Political Form; thethird and (...) fourth treat Freud’s “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” and“The Man Moses and Monotheistic Religion.” Weber then traces the emergenceof an alternative to targeting, first within military and strategic thinking itself(“Network Centered Warfare”), and then in Walter Benjamin’s readings of“Capitalism as Religion” and “Two Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin.”. (shrink)

This paper analyzes legal fact-argumentation in the framework of the argumentation-based litigation game by Xiong :16–19, 2012). Rather than as an ontological one, an ALG treats a legal fact as a fact-qua-claim whose acceptability depends on the reasons supporting it. In constructing their facts-qua-claims, parties to an ALG must interact to maintain a game-theoretic equilibrium. We compare the general interactional constraints that the civil and common law systems assign, and detail what the civil, administrative, and criminal codes of mainland China (...) require of the suitor, the respondent, and the trier to establish their respective S-, R- and T-facts. We also offer an improved version of the legal syllogism. (shrink)

In one version of the Narcissus myth, Narcissus spurns a young suitor, Aminias, who is heartbroken as a result. Narcissus offers Aminias a sword to deal with his misery, which Aminias duly uses to...

’Aυαγυώρισις γàρ διόλov, says Aristotle of the Odyssey,2 and throughout the poem's second half, with which we are here concerned, there is indeed a series of progressive recognitions as Odysseus reveals himself to Telemachos, Eurykleia, Eumaios, the suitors, Penelope and finally Laertes. So the importance of the opposite is not surprising; without concealment and deception there could be no eventual recognition. Concealment is of course necessary if Odysseus is to survive in the face of so many enemies, as Athena (...) tells him. But in addition, in any work of imaginative literature, so long as the reader or audience is aware of the truth, concealment and unperceived identity open the door to all sorts of half-truths and ironies – possibilities most obviously explored in tragedy and later comedy, but also made use of in the Odyssey. The irony which may be inherent in the arrival of the ‘nameless stranger’ has been most thoroughly explored by Fenik;3 here we examine a further implication. (shrink)

The study discusses the wooing of Agariste which was proclaimed at Olympia by Kleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon, inviting everybody who thought himself worthy to be his son-in-law. At the final banquet his favorite, Hippokleides, danced away his marriage by acting out a bizarre dance. However, his reaction was: „It does not matter to Hippocleides!“ (Hdt. 6,129,4). It will be proposed that Kleisthenes tried to dominate the competition and to establish an enduring hierarchy between himself and the suitors by (...) taking advantage of his position as Olympic champion, giver of the women, tyrant, and host. Thus, Hippokleides’ behavior could be understood as a self-confident rejection of Kleisthenes’ way of constituting individual status, a way which actually suspended the competition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Literature, Politics, and CharacterOliver Conolly and Bashshar HaydarWhat is the relationship between literature and politics? We might interpret this question in terms of causality. For example, we might ask whether literature has any effects in the world of politics and if so how. Auden famously proclaimed that poetry makes nothing happen, while it was central to Brecht's dramaturgy that theatre has certain political effects on its audience. Conversely, we (...) might see literature as an effect of political causes and claim that certain political environments give rise to certain types of literature, and that those political backgrounds thereby explain certain aspects of literary phenomena. Both kinds of causal relationship are at the heart of Marxist literary criticism, and of the many schools of academic criticism which share the Marxist assumption that individual consciousness, and its literary manifestations, are subordinate to political environment.These causal questions are important and interesting, particularly if approached with requisite critical tact. However, in this paper we would like to focus on the epistemological and normative questions of whether literature is suited to communicate political knowledge or insights, and whether we value, or rather ought to value, literature for such communication. These two questions are in our view intimately related. While there is no doubt that literary works can be made to communicate virtually all kinds of knowledge, from knowledge about the Big Bang to knowledge how to smuggle illegal immigrants into First World countries, these kinds of knowledge are not what we go to literature for. We go to literature and value it for giving us knowledge which it is peculiarly suited to communicate. It is natural to praise a novel for its insight into, say, character but odd to praise a novel for its [End Page 87] insight into, say, meteorology. This is because literature is suited at communicating insights into character, and is not suited at communicating insights into meteorology.The suitability of literature to explore the inner life derives from the expressive and imaginative possibilities inherent in the very medium of literature. For example, Henry James's Portrait of a Lady reveals the inner logic (or psychologic) that underlies the self-destructive behavior of its heroine, Isabel Archer, her disastrous choice of husband being dictated by a desire to prove a point to herself—that she is indifferent to his poverty relative to that of the other suitors—rather than an informed sense of her true interests.1 This is not to say that literature is the only medium in which insight into character can be communicated, but that this is one of the kinds of insight which literature is suited at communicating.The question of whether literature is suited to impart political insights is thus determinative of the question of whether its doing so counts towards its value as literature.2 This is the question to which we now turn.IThe question of whether literature is suited to impart political insights presupposes an understanding of the scope of the political, and the kinds of phenomena that can properly be called political. The scope of the political can be conceived more or less broadly. The narrow view is that politics is concerned with the nature and legitimacy of the state, government, legal and other coercive institutions. The broad view is that politics is concerned with power relations between social groups that are mediated not through institutions but through attitudes.The distinction can be illustrated with reference to two kinds of feminist argument. Feminist arguments for laws on sex discrimination and equal pay, and their proper implementation, are political in the narrow sense. However, feminists may also argue, irrespective of such institutional changes, that social attitudes towards women—the attitudes of a given society, including those of women—should be changed in certain ways. For example, a generally held view that emphasizes the importance of women's appearance, their role as adjuncts to their husbands—the kinds of views that were prevalent in the 1950's, say—is open to challenge by feminists outside a narrow institutional framework. The reason this [End Page 88] stance is political is that it concerns systemic attitudes which underpin power relations between one group... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sophocles’ Trachiniae: Some ObservationsD. J. ConacherIn several ways Trachiniae seems almost a textbook of Sophoclean tragedy, so many elements of plot, theme, and even formal structure does it have in common with one or another (sometimes with several other) of the playwright’s works. The deceptive quality of oracles and prophecies, 1 the equally illusory nature of human happiness, the alternation between the familiar, even the domestic (insofar as Greek (...) tragedy can ever be “domestic”) and “the wild country”—the lonely, unknown, and sometimes feral areas of experience “out there”—, 2 even the curious, “diptych” structure of the play, involving the disappearance of a major tragic figure from the action: 3 all these features, so prominent in Trachiniae, are to be found in various other Sophoclean tragedies. Yet in all cases Sophocles uses what appear to be common features in different combinations and contexts to produce strikingly different tragic effects. It [End Page 21] should not surprise us, then, that Trachiniae, despite all these typically “Sophoclean” elements, 4 should turn out to be, if not the most baffling, at least among the most mysterious of his extant works.The key to the full appreciation and understanding of this tragedy lies, I think, in recognizing precisely how the poet interweaves these different elements of plot and theme to achieve, ultimately, a single tragic effect. Ironically, it is the constant alternation of human fortunes, apparent good fortune arising from ill and vice versa, which supplies the cohesive, “sequential” element to the plot. 5 Two essential thematic elements lie behind this alternation. One is the repeated misunderstanding of oracles and other prophetic utterances; the other is the repeated interaction between the protected, domestic sphere and the mysterious, natural (and sometimes magical) world, which threatens its existence. In the deployment of both these elements, the characterization of Deianira, the central figure though not the ultimate focus of this tragedy, is essential. It is through the gentle Deianira that Heracles is twice brought in contact with the savage “outside world” which leads ultimately to his undoing. Thus (as is usual in Sophocles) are the play’s prophecies fulfilled in unexpected and tragic ways. Thus, too, do the gods fulfill the destinies which they have planned through the unwitting cooperation of their pawns.Deianira sounds, as it were, the keynote of the play with her opening words in the Prologue:There is an ancient saying that one may not know the fate of any man, whether it be good or bad, until that man has died. But I, for my part, know, before I come to Hades’ house, that my lot is both grievous and unfortunate.(1–5) 6 [End Page 22]Deianira’s fear of life has begun (as she tells us in her Prologue account) in her maidenhood, with the courtship of the river-god Achelous. Here the three forms in which her monstrous suitor appears—first as a bull, then as a snake with shimmering coils, finally as a man with brow of ox and beard dripping with river’s springs—provide our introduction to the horrors of the untamed world. Heracles, a properly heroic suitor, appears to rescue her. It is significant, however, that the gentle heroine cannot bring herself to watch the struggle between the hero and Achelous, as she sits wrapped in terror lest her beauty should prove to be her bane (24–25). Thus, though threatened, Deianira remains untouched by—and ignorant of—the dangerous world outside.Deianira’s joy (18) at her rescue by Heracles is short-lived. As Heracles’ wife, and mother of his children, she is in constant fear for her absent husband (“each night dispelling last night’s terror with terror of its own,” 30–31) and these very fears are themselves fresh encounters, at one remove, with the savage world of Heracles’ labours. Her wandering husband, too (“like a tiller of a distant field, who sees it only when he sows and when he reaps,” 32–33), must himself seem like a visitor from a distant clime.The opening choral ode confirms the contrast between the world of the wandering Heracles and that of the waiting Deianira. Only the sun can tell... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey by Egbert J. BakkerSusan A. CurryEgbert J. Bakker. The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xiv + 191 pp. Cloth, $90.Meat-eating in the Odyssey is a risky business. Inextricably intertwined with song itself in the context of the aristocratic feast, meat-eating in excess becomes a weapon of the Suitors (...) in Ithaca as part of a three-year effort “literally to eat Odysseus’ house to ruin” (xi). In the “Otherworld” through which Odysseus and his Companions venture, meat and meat-eating are further problematized: there is too much or not enough of it; what they come across is forbidden; one may become meat oneself, filling the belly of another.This book traces the theme of meat in the Odyssey through a series of case studies that reveal a web of associations between Odysseus’ account of his adventures in the Otherworld and the poet’s account of events in Ithaca. Using a variety of approaches (narratological, folkloric, anthropological, philological), Bakker investigates the numerous “paradigmatic relationships” existing between the “matrix narrative” of the Odyssey, the aoide\, and the epos, the “embedded utterance” or part of the poem narrated by Odysseus himself (3). The theme of meat also allows Bakker to bring the related topics of dining and hospitality, sacrifice and hunting to bear on his exploration of the interconnections, thematic and linguistic, of the aoide\ and the epos. Although this book is weakest where Bakker roams farthest from meat, it nevertheless contains some choice cuts. In particular, he provides fascinating analyses of the Cyclops and Circe episodes and of hunting in the Otherworld (chaps. 4 and 5).We must begin with the “Epilogue: On ‘Interformularity,’” because, for passionate advocates of a particular school of thought on the composition of Homeric poetry, understanding Bakker’s approach to repetitions and allusions within the Odyssey is a prerequisite for accepting the claims he makes throughout the preceding chapters. Bakker favors an approach to the Homeric poems that involves the integration of intertextuality and orality, which he terms “interformularity.” Rather than randomly repeated traditional formulas, Bakker suggests that the repetitions and allusions within the Homeric poems are the result of “a poet’s judgment as to the (degree of) similarity between two contexts” (159). In other words, Bakker argues for meaningful repetition. Situations and similarity of situations determine the appropriate utterance; when similar situations evoke the same utterance or the same utterance gives rise to a similar situation, the language of the utterance becomes formulaic. [End Page 485]Because each of Bakker’s chapters is, for the most part, a separate case study, each will find its own audience beyond Homeric scholars generally. The first chapter, “Epos and Aoide\,” and the second, “Nostos as Quest,” will appeal to fans of intertextuality and folklore motifs, respectively. In the first chapter, Bakker defines and describes, as noted above, the epos and aoide\ of the Odyssey and makes two crucial points regarding the relationship between these on which much of his overall argument depends: first, epic is itself a ravening genre insatiable in its swallowing up of so-called “minor” genres; and, thus, second, the epos does not occupy a secondary position vis-à-vis the aoide\, but “competes with its ‘container,’ shaping the narrative tension within the Odyssey” (3).The second chapter is concerned more with structure than with meat. Bakker, following Anna Bonifazi (“Inquiring into Nostos and its Cognates,” AJP 130.4 [2009]:481–510), extends the definition of nostos to include the idea of survival as well as homecoming. He also discusses the role of quest as “an essential and versatile narrative building-block” (20) and adjusts Vladimir Propp’s quest sequence to accommodate the narrative of Odysseus’ wanderings. Most importantly, this chapter lays the groundwork for the two most significant contributions of Bakker’s study: first, the “Wanderings provide essential exemplars for the crimes committed in Odysseus’ house in his absence”; and second, meat is “a catalyst of crime and transgression” throughout the Odyssey (35).Although more focused on meat, meat-eating, dining, and cattle culture in Homeric society, “Meat in... (shrink)

Philo's attitude to the mythologizing activities of the Greeks is well known. In many passages he contrasts the practices of Greek writers unfavourably with that of Moses. In one passage , for example, he condemns those who see the Tower of Babel story asa reflection of that of Otus and Ephialtes' assault on Olympus; the truth, he asserts, is quite the contrary — the Greeks have borrowed the story from Moses. On the other hand, Philo is himself prepared on occasion (...) to allegorize figures of Greek mythology, though never explicitly on a subject of central doctrinal importance. For instance, he appears to be acquainted with the allegorization of various parts of the Odyssey. In his treatise On Mating with the Preliminary Studies , he makes use of the allegorization of the Suitors' mating with the handmaidens because they cannot gain Penelope, first employed, it seems, by the Cynic Bion of Borysthenes, but no doubt of wide currency by Philo's time, as a figure of those who cannot attain to Philosophy consoling themselves with ta enkyklia . Again, the use here and there in his writings of compounds of the verb νήχω, ‘swim’, particularly νανήχομαι in connection with descriptions of our struggle through the storms and shipwreck of material existence, suggests his acquaintance with the allegorizing of Odysseus' shipwreck off Phaeacia in Odyssey V, where Homer employs this verb repeatedly. Other, more specificallegories include Scylla as ροσύνη a ‘deathless evil’ , at Det. 178; Odysseus' escape from Charybdis at Somn. 2. 70, to symbolize our escape from the cares of mortal existence; and Castor and Pollux at Somn. 1.150, as an image of the life of the askêtês or prokoptôn. (shrink)

Little is known about the lives of the never married. Demographic data show that rates of nonmarriage have increased significantly across racial and ethnic groups. Among women, African Americans have the highest rates of nonmarriage, followed by Asian Americans and European Americans. This research used in-depth interviews with native- and foreign-born Chinese American and Japanese American never married women to explore why these women are delaying or rejecting heterosexual marriage. Respondents were asked a series of open- and closed-ended questions about (...) their attitudes, experiences, and decisions concerning marriage and family life. Questions also focused on how their family backgrounds and occupational plans affected their decisions to marry. Preliminary findings reveal that Chinese American and Japanese American women express a number of reasons for being never married. The four most consistent factors were their parents' marriages, their status as the eldest or only daughter, their educational goals, and the perceived lack of suitors. (shrink)

The list of Helen's suitors in the Catalogue of Women, a late epic poem attributed to Hesiod, is directly related to the Catalogue of Ships in Iliad 2, in that it is in fact a list of future participants in the Trojan war. That the two catalogues treat the same traditional material is demonstrated above all by their agreement on minor personages: not only the protagonists of the Trojan saga, but also such obscure figures as Podarces of Phylace, Elephenor (...) of Euboea, Thoas of Aetolia, or Menestheus of Athens feature in both Homer and Hesiod, and are characterized by basically the same traditional expressions. But, though the Hesiodic catalogue is sometimes used as evidence that a given Homeric personage belongs to the authentic tradition,3 it seems that the exegetic potential of this poem has not yet been exploited in full. As I hope to show, the Catalogue of Women throws light on one of the most controversial issues in Homeric scholarship, that of the representation of Athens and Salamis in the Catalogue of Ships. (shrink)

This article investigates concepts of masculinity in the Homeric poems by focusing on two words: "énorén" and "ágenorín". We argue that whereas "énorén" is a positive quality best understood as 'manliness', "agenorín" denotes 'excessive manliness' in a pejorative sense. By comparing the use of these two terms we c1aim that it is possible to explore what constitutes proper, as opposed to excessive, masculinity in the Homeric poems. Our analysis of "énorén" and "ágenorín" suggests that some current views of Homeric masculinity (...) need to be reconsidered. Whereas much recent scholarship has emphasized the individualism of 'the Homeric hero', we suggest that individualistic behaviour on the part of men is presented as a serious problem in the Homeric poems. As well as the use of the terms "énorén" and "ágenorín", the frequent injunctions to 'be men' found in the poems confirm that solidarity with other men is an important aspect of Homeric masculinity. Our analysis also shows that the language of masculinity is employed very differently in the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the Iliad, excessive manliness is typically displayed by an individual who fails to show solidarity with other men on the battlefield. In the Odyssey, the suitors are standardly designated as 'excessively manly' for coveting another man's wife. In both poems, normative definitions of masculinity seek to regulate proper relationships among men. (shrink)

In the second Nekyia Hermes conducts to Hades the souls of the suitors slain by Odysseus: Even in antiquity the identification of the Λευκς πέτρη was a conundrum. It would seem that no ancient Greek scholar could plausibly locate this rock. According to the scholion in the codex Venetus Marcianus 613, one of the many reasons Aristarchos gave for athetising the whole of the second Nekyia was λλ' οδ οικεν ες Ἅιδου λευκν εναι πέτραν. Certainly Hades had πέτραι, but (...) traditionally they were ‘black-hearted’ or ‘blood-red’, not λευκαί. As an example of the lengths to which scholiasts were driven to justify the epithet Λευκάς, the scholion in the British Library codex Harley 5674 has the unhelpful explanation ο γρ νεκροί κλείψαντος το αματος λευκοειδες ρνται. Eustathios' attempt is not much better; he writes στέον δ τι Λευκάδα μέν πέτραν μθος πρς τ Ἅιδπλάττει ἢ κατ ντίρασιν, μλας γρ κε σκότος, ἢ κα δι τούς σχάτους τς κε γς τόπους, ος εκς τν ᾓλιον τι διαλευκαίνειν δυόμενον. At Od. 10.515, in commenting on the πέτρη where the Pyriphlegethôn and the Kôkytos flow into the Acherôn, he ventures the suggestion σως δ εη ν ατη ν τος μετ τατα λεχθησομένη Λευκς πέτρα, which is obviously a mere guess. It would be a waste of time to record the conjectural attempts of modern scholars to locate the Λευκς πέτρη in Hades, for if the ‘Rock Leukas’ was across the Ocean, near the ‘Gates of the Sun’ and the ‘Land of Dreams’, we cannot reasonably hope to identify it. (shrink)

The Eleatic Stranger plays a central role in all reconstructions of Plato’s “Platonism.” This paper is a study of the literary form of the Sophist and Statesman and its significance for interpreting the Eleatic’s account of the nature of philosophy. I argue that the Eleatic dialogues are best understood through a comparison with the source-texts in the Odyssey that Plato used in their composition. I show that the literary form of the Sophist is a straightforward reworking of the encounter of (...) Odysseus and his crewmen with Polyphemus the Cyclops; and that the form of the Statesman is a somewhat more complex reworking of the narrative in which Odysseus and those loyal to him oppose Antinoös, leader of the Ithacan suitors. The comparison reveals that the Eleatic Stranger is no way Plato’s spokesman. On the contrary: by casting the Stranger in the role of Polyphemus and the Cyclopean Antinoös, Plato intends the Sophist and Statesman to be read as an explicit critique of the metaphysical and political doctrines that have since come to be identified as Platonism. In Plato’s characterization, the Eleatic Stranger is neither a philosopher nor a sophist. He is an intellectual—the sort of person who professes to be a philosopher and is often mistaken for one. (shrink)

In her 1890 short story “Louisa,” Mary Wilkins Freeman explores nepotistic interference with female mate selection. Twenty-five-year-old Louisa Britton is pressured by her mother to marry against her inclinations, that is, to accept a suitor whom she does not “like.”1 The focal point of Freeman’s plot is the ensuing mother-daughter conflict, an evolutionarily significant issue that invites readers to consider the questions it raises in larger terms: What motivates parents to interfere with a daughter’s mating decisions? Is a parent’s assessment (...) of potential mates likely to be more accurate than that of the young woman herself? Is parental advice typically helpful—and, if so, helpful to whom? What are the potential... (shrink)

It has long been noted that there are links between the Homeric portrayals of Odysseus' companions and the suitors. These two largely anonymous groups of Ithacans are connected not only by their ἀτασθαλίαι but also by the fact that by the end of theOdysseyboth groups will be dead. Clearly, these fatalities are – in their different ways – crucial to the story. Nagler regards the death of the suitors as a ‘grim inversion’ of the death of Odysseus' crew. (...) Odysseus himself is depicted both by the primary narrator and in his own narrative inOd.9–12 as making every effort to save his crew, all in vain. By contrast, he is the prime and highly effective instigator of the death of the suitors. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Ethics of Revenge and the Meanings of the Odyssey by Alexander C. LoneyEmily P. AustinAlexander C. Loney. The Ethics of Revenge and the Meanings of the Odyssey. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xii +265. Hardcover, $78.00. ISBN 978-0-190-90967-3.The Ethics of Revenge and the Meanings of the Odyssey places Odysseus' climactic act of revenge where it belongs: at the center of our interpretation of the Odyssey. (...) With admirably clear prose, Loney traces out the recurring pattern of tisis narratives woven through the poem. The accumulation of these revenge stories demonstrates that, in Loney's words, "tisis breeds endless further plots, making an epic of revenge fatally open-ended" (225, emphasis mine). Although the focus is simple, Loney's comprehensive account of the workings of revenge narratives commands the reader's interest. I, for one, was unprepared to recognize how systematically the poet sets up its readers to be disturbed by the ending—although I have long found the final books of the Odyssey troubling. On Loney's reading, the Odyssey sets up the terms of revenge's justice such that, on those very terms, the execution of vengeance is always ambivalent. For anyone with interests in Homer or revenge narratives, Loney's book has much to offer.The Ethics of Revenge begins with archaic conceptions of vengeance (tisis) (chap. 1). Loney distinguishes between "positive" reciprocity, which aims at balance through the ostensibly free exchange of benefits; and "negative" reciprocity, which is blatantly transactional: tisis is a form of negative reciprocity, where harm is met with immediate and (supposedly) equivalent harm. But as Loney shows, the returning harm is equivalent to the initial harm only insofar as someone judges it to be so. This insight is essential to understanding the inconclusive quality of vengeance: one person's retributive act is, potentially, another person's harm received. The justice achieved by such retributions is limited to the perspective of the one judging.Loney turns to such overlapping stories of tisis in the Odyssey in chapter 2. These overlaps prime the audience to notice ethical complexities among different characters' claims about wrongdoings and merited punishments. For Loney, Zeus' story of Orestes in Book 1 is the paradigmatic tisis narrative of the Odyssey. From this story, Loney distills the elements of all tisis narratives in the poem: absence (Agamemnon away) → unheeded warning / recklessness (Aigisthos ignores Hermes' warning) → preparation for offense (Aigisthos woos Klytaimnestra) → offense (Aigisthos commits adultery with Klytaimnestra and murders Agamemnon) → preparation for retribution (Orestes returns to Mycenae) → retributive act (Orestes kills Aigisthos and Klytaimnestra) → just order restored (Aigisthos has repaid in full). [End Page 535] Loney emphasizes how the unheeded warnings contribute to the ideal of immediate equivalence in tisis: when an offender chooses to perpetrate harm despite a warning (often marked by the term ἀτασθαλίαι), he or she effectively chooses to suffer retribution. The narrator of the tisis story moreover stresses equivalence—in the Orestes paradigm, killing for killing.In the next four chapters, Loney masterfully applies this theoretical and philological work to his interpretation of the poem. Chapter 3 follows three narratives of divine vengeance: Zeus avenging the companions' offense against Helios; Poseidon avenging Odysseus' blinding of Polyphemos; and Poseidon taking vengeance on the Phaiakians, who helped Odysseus. With clear analysis of story patterns and intratextual resonance, Loney shows how these stories evoke latent meanings through their parallels, echoes, or mutual implications. So, for example, Odysseus complicates the narrative of Poseidon avenging Polyphemos with his own story of Polyphemos' wrongs against him and his companions; and the vengeance of Poseidon on the Phaiakians is left literally open-ended, with the poet never telling us if Zeus destroys the island or not. As a result, by the time we get to the central tisis narrative of the poem (chap. 4), Odysseus' vengeance against the suitors comes to us against a varied backdrop of inconclusive and intertwined stories of retribution.In chapter 4, Loney explicates the key aspects of tisis in Odysseus' "terrifying revenge" (cf. Plato's Ion 535c7). For example, the suitors receive five of the poem's nine attributions of ἀτασθαλίαι, marking their wrongdoings as "precipitating harm" that... (shrink)

Our Odyssey is shaped by oral poetics but also by storytelling techniques developed to attract and hold audiences’ attention. From Odysseus’s first appearance, episodes consistently bring to mind his revenge plot against the suitors and test the qualities and skills he will need to carry it out. These episodes offer reassuring evidence that Odysseus will defeat the suitors balanced by doubt-inducing signs that he will fail. Taken together, these episodes elicit hope and fear, the constituent elements of suspense, (...) regarding Odysseus’s chances of succeeding. The consistency with which these episodes appear and the balance they strike between reassurance and doubt suggest that the generation of suspense played a significant role in the composition of the Odyssey as we have it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:After the War DAVID GOMES CÁSSERES invocation: athena for PLP Grey-eyed Athena had no childhood. She stepped out of the old god’s terrible skull a grown young goddess and began her apprenticeship: running sex-driven cults among the hunters and gatherers, collecting snakes and owls, her aegis looming behind the altars, over her priestesses, prophetic crones and breathless temple prostitutes, sacrificed animals bleeding and burnt ears of grain She gained (...) a reputation: she liked clever men, not that way, no, but she did them favors, paid attention to their deeds and needs and risks and wounds and wants. Her admiration was something a clever man could count on; she would give protection, opportunities, good luck. There was a catch, of course: you had to be clever again, you had to keep impressing the grey-eyed one, and so men lasted a while but couldn’t keep it up, and fell, and well, she forgot them. She was busy. But Odysseus: He was another kind. One stratagem after another, he built up so much credit that she saved him even when he disgraced himself one time or another. (Olympus might have disapproved if they’d noticed, but she had walked far away from that rabble of archetypes, totems, fertilities, boogeymen and witch-mothers, nightwalkers, netherdwellers, sexpots and satyrs. She owned her firmament.) Odysseus was something new to her in his little flick of mortality. So when she stood alone in Penelope’s bedchamber watching the reunion, the circling dance of man and woman arion 27.2 fall 2019 step by step negotiating what they knew after so many years their carefulness like oil on water, leveling out the fresh reek of murder from the great hall below them the suitors’ teeth driven into the earthen floor Odysseus striped with their blood Penelope before her loom, many-stringed weapon of her own warfare weaving each other in that long rite of recognition: Her grey eyes saw words forming and fading unsaid As they circled in the salt red sunset Ionian air. And saw the end of her story with Odysseus; goddess and all, it took away her breath. In the end she had this much to show for her years with this clever man: He came home from the war alive, with all his teeth. 2 after the war First published as “Athena,” in Arion 21.3, Winter 2014 telemachus 1. It’s like this. I come to manhood at fourteen and my life’s just misery and shame. There’s no King in Ithaka and my mother, the Queen, is like a prisoner. All our warriors are scattered in the sea somewhere by Athena’s great storm. Our home, the palace of godlike Odysseus, is full of parasites and pirates, We live there paralyzed, taunted by those swarming men and the people who cling to them, even some of my mother’s maids, girls my age or a little older— nasty girls who know all the ways to mock and mortify a boy squirming into manhood without a father. Of course I run away, of course I go looking for wily Odysseus, the King, my father. I never find him, it’s for him to find me, later. But I did learn to tie seamen’s knots, and I have a traveler’s tale: One night I was at the house of Menelaus and Helen, drinking good wine late into the night. They sent the servants to bed, and the three of us sat in the red light of the dying fire. Menelaus, still handsome with some grey in his red hair, spoke of my father Odysseus: “Do you know what he said? He said to me, we are better than the gods; we are kings. And kings must die, as the gods cannot. He said it to me when we were striding with our swords in hand through the broken gates of Troy, and as calmly as he might say it to you.” As he spoke, Menelaus of the great war-cry was fondling the arm of his wife, Helen, for whose beauty all that blood was shed. I was sitting with the people the poets sing... (shrink)

In India it is a commonplace that the great epic, the Mahābhārata, is a dharma or legal text. It can also be demonstrated not only that there are explicit references to ritual in the epic narrative, but that the narrative sometimes covertly encodes ritual, allowing the audience to experience the narrative on several levels at once. I will suggest that it is possible to read the Odyssey both as a legal and a ritual text and that explicit reference to the (...) rich legal, ritual, and epic materials of ancient India clarifies much that is murky in the Odyssey, given the Indo-European heritage that they both share. The paper focuses on three issues: A legal point: the legal status of Penelope, particularly with regard to her remarriage. Should she remarry, and if so, who has the authority to arrange such a marriage? Both legal and epic materials in Sanskrit treat in detail the situation of a woman whose husband has gone abroad and disappeared. A legal institution: the marital self-choice and its relevance to Penelope and the suitors. The self-choice is a common type of marriage for kings' daughters in Sanskrit, in which the princess "chooses" a husband from a group of assembled suitors. Often the "choice" is governed by an act of strength and skill, just as Penelope's marriage contest was. A ritual: the consecration of the king and its relevance to Odysseus' return. Odysseus' return to Ithaka can be read as a covert encoding of a royal consecration ritual similar to the Sanskrit Rājasūya. In particular, the theme of the bow, the importance accorded to Eumaios' pigs, and the narrative of the boar hunt all find their counterparts in the Sanskrit ritual. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Comic RomanceBenjamin La FargeIOn the surface, it would seem that nothing could be more different from comedy than romance. Comedy deflates, romance inflates. Comedy is realistic, romance fantastical. Comedy reduces, romance elevates. Comedy is democratic, romance heroic. Yet there are underlying similarities. Both involve a conflict between destructive and restorative impulses. In both, appearances are typically mistaken for reality, and both end happily. Above all, both are governed by (...) a structure of illogical logic that generates laughter in one and fantasy in the other.The generic differences between comedy and romance are crucial to a proper understanding of their functions. Comedy celebrates the renewal of life, the relation of man to woman and of man to man, in a spirit of tolerant acceptance, while romance celebrates a narcissistic dream of the self. If the former is best enjoyed in a crowded theater, the latter is usually enjoyed in solitude. Romance is a fiction of wish fulfillment. Since wishful thinking is generally understood as childish, romance is often regarded as a poor cousin among literary genres, haughtily dismissed by highbrows who associate it with the infantile pleasures of their childhood reading and with lowbrow fiction in general. This is precisely why so many sophisticated readers are reluctant to grant science fiction and other forms of fantasy any enduring literary value. In their view the pleasures of such works can not be taken seriously.Yet those childhood pleasures have a lasting appeal that lingers in the mind of every adult. There must be few grown readers who do not harbor a special fondness for the first heroes and heroines they encountered in their favorite childhood stories. Many of those heroes possess [End Page 18] some magical power; and when they place that power in the service of justice, especially the justice of revenge, their appeal is irresistible. I have seen grown men, armed and dressed for battle, avidly reading Superman comics. What stirred them, as it stirred many educated men and women in their childhood, was the spectacle of an omnipotent hero fighting to overcome the wrongs of this world.Even if our sentimental memory of these heroic figures is nothing more than nostalgia for irrecoverable pleasures, their initial impact may be seen as having a formative influence on a child's expectations, as many commentators have thought. In either case, they are all descended from a venerable tradition of literary figures. Superman himself is a direct descendant of Sherlock Holmes, who comes from a long line of English heroes going back to Robin Hood and Merlin, each of whom is involved in righting some injustice. Ultimately, all of them are descended from Odysseus, who reclaimed his rightful kingdom, after an absence of twenty years, by murdering his wife's suitors.Romance, like comedy, is a conflict between destructive and restorative impulses, and these impulses are embodied in the characters that inhabit this dream fiction.1 Like comic characters, the characters of romance evoke in us the same responses of wish and fear, and like comedy itself romance builds toward a catharsis of those two emotions. To achieve that catharsis, romance requires our "willing suspension of disbelief" (as Coleridge put it so memorably), which we have no difficulty in granting, provided only that the story is skillfully told. What we want from romance is the fulfillment of the wishes it arouses; what we get from their fulfillment is the pleasure of story-for-the-sake-of-story. It is this pleasure, in fact, that constitutes the basic, generic purpose of romance.The difference between the two genres, however, can be seen in the kinds of wish and fear they evoke in us, for unlike comedy the feelings of wish and fear evoked by romance are uncomplicated by ambivalence. We may wish to experience the destructive impulse vicariously through the protagonist, but only in order to see him triumph in the end. We are so entirely sympathetic to his enterprise that we cannot possibly wish for his destruction. If he is destroyed, as in the case of Tristan, the hero of the eponymous medieval romance, we are forced to recognize that the love potion he drank with Isolde was his... (shrink)

nos numerus sumus et frugis consumere nati,sponsi Penelopae nebulones Alcinoiquein cute curanda plus aequo operata iuuentus,cui pulchrum fuit in medios dormire dies et 30ad strepitum citharae cessatum ducere curam.ut iugulent hominem, surgunt de nocte latrones:ut te ipsum serues, non expergisceris?We are ciphers, born to eat bread, the worthless suitors of Penelope and the young men of Alcinous’ court, all too concerned with keeping their skin attractive, who thought it a fine thing to sleep till midday and * * * (...) To murder a man, thieves get up at night; to save yourself, won't you wake up? (shrink)

Odysseus’ Apologue, Books 9 to 12 of the “Odyssey”, is characterized by a substantial repetition of acts/scenes of eating/feasting. The following analysis serves, firstly, as a structural indication of the pervasiveness of eating acts to several episodes in Odysseus’ internal narrative, observing parallels between certain episodes which have not as yet been noticed. Secondly, I illustrate how acts of eating come to connote secondary associations in the Apologue, oscillating between the danger of destruction and of delay for the Ithacan travellers. (...) These connotations of eating ultimately respond both to Odysseus’ situation in Scheria and to the threat of the suitors in Ithaca. (shrink)

What have the following in common: Epimetheus, Paris, Anchises, and the suitors of Penelope? The ready answer might be that it must have something to do with women, for it requires no great thought to see that the attractions of femininity proved the undoing of three of them, while for Anchises life was never to be the same again after his encounter with Aphrodite. But suppose we add to our first group such figures as Zeus, Priam, Polynices, and Eumaeus? (...) The fates of all these characters as they, appear at certain points in the poetry of Homer, Hesiod, and others give expression i to a network of interrelated sexual and economic anxieties that seem to underlie a { great deal of what the Archaic poets say about the female sex. In this article I 1 propose to explore a particular part of that network, which I have called the ? ‘Pandora complex’, since it is Hesiod′s version of the Pandora myth which provides the classic statement of the male dilemma over women, poised between the conflicting desires for sexual gratification and domestic stability.1. (shrink)

Acontius rhetorically addresses the young man to whom Cydippe's parents have betrothed her, whom he imagines as showing excessive familiarity while visiting the girl's sickbed. In line 146, ‘spes’ may be considered the vulgate reading; the noun can be used concretely, of the object of one's hopes , a person in whom hopes are centred , or sometimes as an endearment . For application to a girl with suitors, cf. Ovid, Met. 4.795 ‘multorumque fuit spes invidiosa procorum’. Or one (...) could take ‘spes’ in Her. 20.146 generally, = id quod spero. But, in any case, ‘spes’ is somewhat disappointing. After the strong imagery of 145 , we expect something no less definite in the pentameter, and, in particular, a word which will cohere with, and reinforce, the notion of providing access . In this respect ‘spes’ fails to contribute anything. Nor does the manuscript evidence point unambiguously to ‘spes’. Some manuscripts have the unmetrical ‘spem’, while Heinsius found in a Medicean manuscript the reading ‘sepem’, which was taken up by Burman, and by a number of other editors. To this, however, A. Palmer made an objection which seems not merely pedantic: ‘I should rather have expected per sepem; for a man has a right to go up to, as far as, another man's boundary.’. (shrink)

ὣς φάτο, τοῦ δ’ ἤκουσε Μέδων πεπνυμένα εἰδώς·πεπτηὼς γὰρ ἔκειτο ὑπὸ θρόνον, ἀμφὶ δὲ δέρμαἕστο βοὸς νεόδαρτον, ἀλύσκων κῆρα μέλαιναν.So [Telemachus] spoke, and wise Medon heard him; for he had crouched down and was lying under a chair, and had wrapped around himself the newly flayed skin of an ox, avoiding grim death. (Od.22.361–3)Immediately following the death of the suitors, near the end ofOdyssey22, we witness three scenes of supplication in quick succession. The first and unsuccessful suppliant is Leodes, (...) the only suitor to survive, albeit briefly, theMnesterophonia. The second and third suppliants, respectively, are the bard Phemius and the herald Medon. Leodes pleads directly with Odysseus for his life, citing his previous conduct, that he had said or done no wrong to the women of the household. He also claims that he had actually attempted to keep the suitors' bad behaviour in check, an assertion corroborated by the narrator's own words (21.146–67). Odysseus rejects Leodes' plea and decapitates the prophet, putting a sudden end to his supplication (22.310–29). After this failed supplication, Phemius nervously considers either seeking refuge at the altar of Zeus Herkeios, located in Odysseus' courtyard, or directly supplicating Odysseus. He chooses the latter and also appeals to Telemachus as witness that he sang for the suitors only under compulsion (330–53). Telemachus intervenes and Medon, who overhears Telemachus' plea for mercy on behalf of Phemius and Medon, suddenly jumps up, throws off the ox hide under which he has escaped notice, grasps Telemachus by the knees, and asks the young man to vouch for and save him from Odysseus too (354–77). (shrink)

This prose translation of the Odyssey is so successful that it has taken its place as one of the few really outstanding versions of Homer's famous epic poem. It is the story of the return of Odysseus from the siege of Troy to his home in Ithaca, and of the vengeance he takes on the suitors of his wife Penelope. Odysseus's account of his adventures since leaving Troy includes his encounter with the enchantress Circe, his visit to the Underworld, (...) and the lure of the Sirens. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Odysseus’ Three Unsworn OathsCathy CallawayMuch attention has been given to the series of stories in the Odyssey termed “The Cretan Lies.”1 Somewhat neglected, however, are the three oaths which Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, offers to swear, but does not actually swear (14.151–72, 19.302–9, 20.229–35). These three unsworn oath scenes deserve attention for several reasons. First, their similarity to one another causes the listener to connect them, and together (...) they form a tripartite structure that creates a strikingly dramatic effect. Each foreshadows the next, and the series contributes to the buildup of tension leading to the climactic slaughter of the suitors. Second, oath scenes in Homer follow certain patterns, and these three scenes deviate from the expected form. This deviation highlights the irony that Odysseus, the master deceiver who is involved in an intricate deception to test the loyalty of his family, friends, and followers in Ithaca, is actually telling the truth when he offers these oaths—and is not believed. Third, the rejection of the oaths highlights Odysseus’ isolation and the difficulties that he faces. And finally, these three scenes contribute to the effectiveness of Homer’s narrative by increasing the suspense as Homer tantalizes his audience with the possibility of an early recognition.Before discussing the narrative impact of these three oaths offered but not sworn by Odysseus, we need to confront the usual misconception [End Page 159] that they have, in fact, been sworn.2 To do so, it is necessary to examine the structure of the Homeric oath scene. Walter Arend’s model for typical oath scenes in Homer provides the basic schema.3 Using the oath that Achilles offers to the Achaeans at Iliad 1.233–46, we can illustrate this pattern, as well as its deviations:The first element of a typical oath scene is the Invitation to swear an oath, or the Introduction in cases where the oath is offered rather than invited. Achilles offers his oath in the Introduction at line 233. The use of the future tense emphasizes the idea of the offer. He invokes the scepter (which he describes at length, 234–39) in the Call to Witness (or Invocation).4 The Tenor, the second necessary element, spells out the conditions for the oath, in this case, that the Achaeans will miss him, that Agamemnon will not be able to help them as they fall to Hector, [End Page 160] and that Agamemnon will regret his treatment of him (240–44). Finally, in order for an oath to be considered sworn, it must contain either an Execution (a description of the actual swearing of the oath) or a Conclusion (a portrayal of the completion of the oath), or the oath must be accepted by the party to whom it is offered.5 Achilles’ oath has a rather unorthodox Execution and Conclusion, but his state of high emotion would account for this. Rather than through simple narrative, the Execution of Achilles’ oath is portrayed by the physical action of hurling the scepter to the ground: (245–46).6 The Conclusion element is represented by the words which conclude the description of Achilles’ speech: (246).Thus an oath may be considered sworn when the poet supplies all four elements in a formal or identifiable manner (as seen in Od. 10.343–47). Achilles’ oath has no formal Execution or Conclusion, but his actions can be construed as performing these functions. If, however, there is neither an Execution nor Conclusion element, and the oath is [End Page 161] not accepted, it remains unsworn.7 The three oaths which Odysseus offers fall into this last category: they are all unsworn.The first of these oath scenes occurs after Odysseus’ kind reception by Eumaeus.(Od. 14.151–72)After listening to the loyal Eumaeus praise his long–absent master, Odysseus offers an oath without Invitation: (151). The Tenor follows: (152), and he then asks for a reward for this pronouncement, as soon as Odysseus does appear (152–57). Returning to the oath, he calls to witness Zeus, the guest table, and the hearth of Odysseus (158–59). Repeating the Tenor, he says: [End Page 162... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Scaena Feralium Nuptiarum: Wedding Imagery In Apuleius’ Tale Of Charite ( Met. 8.1–14)Stavros FrangoulidisThe implicit presence of wedding imagery in the servant’s narrative regarding the tragic end of Charite in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (8.1–14) 1 has received little scholarly attention. 2 In the tale of Charite, her unsuccessful suitor, Thrasyllus, devises a scheme to kill her husband, Tlepolemus, during a hunt and to marry the widowed Charite. After the ghost (...) of Tlepolemus has exposed to his wife the actual circumstances of his death, the heroine devises a scheme for exacting vengeance on Thrasyllus, both for his cunning in killing her husband in the boar hunt and for his sexual ambitions toward her. The former is revealed in the similarities between Charite’s revenge scheme and Thrasyllus’ plot to bring about Tlepolemus’ death; the latter emerges from Charite’s clever exploitation of aspects of the wedding ritual in her revenge scheme. To be persuasive, the (fictional) marriage ritual, like the hunting scheme before it, requires role playing 3 and a reversal in gender roles such that [End Page 601] the heroine punishes her opponent most appropriately for his actions within the tale’s narrative. This wedding imagery is further sustained in the conclusion of the tale: Charite’s suicide on her husband’s tomb is represented as (re)marriage to her husband in death, since it reenacts several aspects of the wedding ritual from the earlier narrative of Tlepolemus’ liberation of his bride from her captivity in a robbers’ cave, and their subsequent marriage. 4 In the end, Thrasyllus’ suicide by starvation is also represented as a marriage in death, as Charite herself foreshadows in her angry speech as she prepares to attack him in his sleep.Our object here is to explore the ways in which Apuleius artfully designs the narrative of the latter portion of Charite’s story: the wedding imagery enhances her scheme for revenge, which is based both on Thrasyllus’ murderous plot against her husband and on Thrasyllus’ amatory designs upon her, and also intensifies the tragedy of the narrative, as all three marriages, Tlepolemus’, Charite’s, and Thrasyllus’, are fulfilled only in death. 5There are a number of intriguing resonances between the story of Charite and the tale of Cupid and Psyche that features so centrally in the novel as a whole. Space here does not permit much development of comparisons between the two narratives, but particularly striking points of similarity or contrast are indicated in the notes as we proceed.In the servant’s tale, Thrasyllus, the unsuccessful suitor, assumes the persona of a trusted friend in order to gain admission to the house of the married couple. After being forbidden access to Charite, he tricks his rival, Tlepolemus, into going hunting. Their departure on the hunt marks a spatial shift, from the interior of Tlepolemus’ home to the open space of wild nature, where Thrasyllus works his scheme.Charite has forbidden Tlepolemus to hunt horned and tusked animals (except mountain goats), a request that reveals her concern for her husband’s safety. Her apprehensions about his vulnerability also suggest a female aspect to Tlepolemus’ identity, an ambivalence of gender role that adumbrates her later worship of him as Liber/Dionysus, with both male and female characteristics. [End Page 602]For the tale’s authorial audience, Thrasyllus’ invitation to go hunting also recalls his own earlier advice to some robbers, to go on a hunt to collect animals for a sacrifice to their patron deity, Mars the Companion (7.10). In contrast to Tlepolemus’ earlier success in a hunt (which led to Charite’s liberation from captivity in the robbers’ den, and his marriage to her), Thrasyllus’ hunting scheme brings about Tlepolemus’ death, putting a violent end to Charite’s marriage. 6In a wedding context, Tlepolemus’ death may be interpreted as a prenuptial sacrifice for Thrasyllus’ planned marriage to Charite. Thrasyllus’ “sacrifice” here mirrors Tlepolemus’ earlier sacrifices of various animals at temples and public places in connection with the symbolic abduction of his bride from her parental home, at the opening of the Charite complex (4.26, ad nuptias... templis et aedibus publicis victimas [End Page 603] immolabat... (shrink)

In the beginning was an aborted word. The first example of a woman’s literary criticism in Western tradition, or more accurately the first miscarriage of a woman’s criticism, occurs early in the Odyssey. High in her room above the hall of suitors, Penelope can hear a famous minstrel sing that most painful of stories, the Greek homecoming from Troy—significantly, the matter of the Odyssey itself. That is no song for a woman. She comes down the stairs to protest. “Phêmios, (...) other spells you know, high deeds of gods and heroes, as the poets tell them; let these men hear some other, while they sit silent and drink their wine. But sing no more this bitter tale that wears my heart away. It opens in me again the wound of longing For one incomparable, ever in my mind— His fame all Hellas knows, and midland Argos.”It seems a reasonable request. But her words meet an immediate brutal rebuff from an unexpected source: her own son Telemachus. “Mother, why do you grudge our own dear minstrel Joy of song, wherever his thought may lead? Poets are not to blame, but Zeuswho gives what fate he pleases to adventurous men.Here is no reason for reproof: to singthe news of the Danaans! Men like besta song that rings like morning on the ear.But you must nerve yourself and try to listen.Odysseus was not the only one at Troynever to know the day of his homecoming.Others, how many others, lost their lives!”9Men like to hear the news; women must learn not to take songs so personally! And Penelope gives in. Marveling at the wisdom of her son, she goes back to her room and cries herself to sleep.Telemachus’ words do not seem very much to the point. Penelope had not asked Phêmios to stop singing, after all, or to sing something fit for women; she only asked him to choose some other adventure. And to reproach her for not considering that others besides Odysseus had failed to come home seems irrelevant as well as cruel. The fact that others feel pain is hardly a reason for her not to feel it. Penelope cannot bear even to name her husband, but Telemachus seems to take pleasure in saying “Odysseus.” By proclaiming his own indifference to pain, he argues just like a man. And that, of course, is the point. The scene has been contrived exactly to show his new maturity. He proves himself no longer a boy in the time-honored fashion, by rejecting any tenderness of heart and by putting down a woman. Henceforth he will be equal to the suitors. Lawrence Lipking is Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University and director of the program in comparative literature and theory. He is the author of The Ordering of the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England and The Life of the Poet, which won the Christian Gauss Award of Phi Beta Kappa in 1982. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “The Marginal Glass” and “Arguing with Shelly” . The present essay was originally given as a lecture at the School of Criticism and Theory in the summer of 1982. It is part of a book, Abandoned Women and Poetic Tradition, which is to appear in 1984. (shrink)

A woman's right to say no to a proposal of marriage, in defiance of her family and friends, was an essential feature of Victorian middle- and upper-class ideology, as it is represented in novels of the time. This right was based on the assumptions that falling in love is to some degree fortuitous, but that it is a permanent ontological change of selfhood. A good woman is justified in saying no even to an advantageous marriage proposal if she does not (...) love her suitor. Anthony Trollope's novels offer varied dramatizations of these assumptions, while Henry James's novels recount their incipient breakdown. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Penelope in Ovid's Metamorphoses 14.671Mark PossanzaIn a passage in Ovid's Metamorphoses, book 14, the god Vertumnus, who has transformed himself into an old woman, is speaking to the orchardist nymph Pomona, who finds plants and trees more companionable than the opposite sex:1concubitusque fugis nec te coniungere curas.atque utinam uelles! Helene non pluribus essetsollicitata procis nec quae Lapitheia mouitproelia nec coniunx +timidi aut+ audacis Vlixei.(668-71) timidi aut codd.Vertumnus offers three (...) mythological exempla, Helen, Hippodamia, and Penelope, to persuade the nymph that if she did show an interest in men, she would attract more suitors than those illustrious heroines. Although the reference to Penelope in 671 is obvious and the epithet audacis looks genuine, it is not clear whether what lies hidden under the corrupt +timidi aut+ has to do with Penelope or Ulysses.2 Most of the proposed [End Page 89] emendations are based on the assumption that the words after coniunx belong to an epithet phrase that describes Ulysses.3 Of these, timidis audacis Vlixei, adopted by Heinsius from Vaticanus Barberinianus Lat. 70 (13th cent.),4 seems by far the least implausible, although the super fi cial attractions of the collocation timidis audacis begin to fade when one considers that the addition of timidis fits neither Ulysses nor the context. If we take audax as an epithet expressing a permanent quality of the hero, then timidus unduly limits the range of that quality embodied in audax, a quality that allowed Ulysses to best foes, the Cyclops, for example, who certainly cannot be called timidus. If, on the other hand, we are to interpret the combination of timidus and audax as the speaker's jibe at Ulysses' pretensions to heroic valor,5 it must be pointed out that such a jibe, while appropriate in the mouth of an Ajax, is completely out of place here where suitors, courtship, and sex are uppermost in the speaker's mind, not the ranking of Achaean warriors.6 Moreover, the [End Page 90] epithet phrase timidis audacis, by virtue of its riddling quality (are we to think of the encounter with Dolon? the slaughter of the suitors?) distracts attention from Penelope herself, who is, after all, the exemplum. In short, the addition of timidus either disparages the heroic stature of Ulysses in a context where such disparagement is clearly out of place or undercuts the force of the Penelope exemplum by giving prominence to the husband, when in fact it is Penelope who is the more important of the two.I want, therefore, to suggest that in its original form the line contained an epithet for Penelope, prudens, which can be taken as the equivalent of the Homeric epithet most often applied to Penelope, 7: line 671 would then read "proelia nec coniunx prudens audacis Vlixei." It may be coincidence that prudens, corresponding to Homeric, identifies the unnamed coniunx through her characteristic trait, which associates her with Pomona, who exhibits that same trait in shunning suitors. And it may be coincidence that prudens produces with audacis a pleasing iunctura that is worthy of our poet, bringing together the distinctive and contrasting traits of husband and wife that helped to make possible their reunion.8 But that both of these coincidences should occur within the metrical space () occupied by the corruption timidi [End Page 91] aut is one coincidence too many, especially in a context where Penelope's prudentia and Ulysses' audacia are relevant to the situation of Pomona and Vertumnus.There is more to these epithets than the clever collocation of contrasting traits. When a lover in disguise (Vertumnus), speaking to his beloved (Pomona), cites Penelope as an example of a woman much sought after by suitors, the poet achieves a heightening of the erotic tension through the Penelope exemplum because the meeting between Pomona and the disguised Vertumnus recalls the meetings between Ulysses, disguised as a beggar, and his wife, Penelope, in the Odyssey. In its present context the exemplum suggests that the revelation of identity, though long delayed (Odysseus' by his taking revenge on the suitors and Vertumnus' by his telling of the Iphis-Anaxarete tale), will bring the two... (shrink)

본고의 목표는 구혼자들의 악행의 본질이, 영웅의 재산과 아내에 대한 그들의 탐욕에 있는 것이 아니라, 인간가치에 대한 전면적인 파괴라는 것을 보이는 것이다. 이해를 돕기 위해, 구혼자들과 많은 유사성을 보이는 폴뤼페모스와의 비교연구가 이루어질 것이다. 한편, 인간가치를 파괴하고, 신들처럼 살고자 하는 구혼자들의 욕구를 이해함으로써, 민담이나 기타 구송 귀향시에 등장하는 남편의 승리와는 근본적으로 다른, 오뒷세우스의 복수의 의미를 좀 더 깊은 차원에서 이해하고자 한다. 구혼자들은 이타카의 실질적인 지배자들로서, 신과 인간을 능멸하며, 인간의 행위를 지배하는 모든 규범들을 무시한다. 그들은 신들과 인간의 경계를 무시한 채, 마치 신들처럼 행세한다. (...) 따라서, 오뒷세우스와 구혼자들의 전투는 인간조건과 인간의 삶을 두고 대립하는 자들의 대결로 파악할 수 있으며, 이는 양립할 수 없는 두 가치의 충돌이다. (shrink)