Eurykleia and Odysseus' Scar
Odyssey 19.393–466
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9312493 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Irene J F De Jong (University of Amsterdam, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1985 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 517-518 |
| Publication date | 1985-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Classical Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0009-8388 • E-ISSN: 1471-6844 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0009838800040349 |
| OpenAlex | W2160934118 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 3 |
In this article I shall argue for an interpretation of Odyssey 19.393–466 as a flash-back taking place in the mind of Eurykleia at the moment she recognises Odysseus' scar. That Eurykleia somehow forms the connection between main story and digression has been suggested before, but so far other interpretations have been defended with more fervour. Most famous of these interpretations is the one given by E. Auerbach in the first chapter of his Mimesis . He had chosen 19.393–466 to illustrate his thesis that in Homer everything is ‘fully externalized’ and that there is no background, only a ‘uniformly illuminated’ foreground. According to Auerbach the digression on the scar stands in complete isolation to its context. It is meant to ‘relax the tension’, to make the hearer/reader ‘forget what had just taken place during the footwashing’, and although it might have been presented as a recollection of Odysseus (by inserting the story ‘two verses earlier, at the first mention of the word scar’), this ‘subjectivisticperspectivistic procedure, creating a foreground and background’ was not chosen, being ‘entirely foreign to the Homeric style’. Some twenty years later this interpretation was challenged by A. Köhnken, who, however, stuck to the idea that the digression is not told from the restricted perspective of one of the characters but from the perspective of the omniscient narrator; he claims that foreground and background are marked as such through a difference in narrative style: ‘berichtende Erzählung’ for the digression itself and ‘szenische Darstellung’ for the context. I disagree with both points
Art · Context (archaeology · Digression · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Perspective (graphical · Style (visual arts · Visual arts · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · History · Organic Chemistry Synthesis Methods · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.14 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1998 - 2016 (19) |
| Highly cited | No |