Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: In a recent pair of articles, I argued that the Odyssey presents itself as the heroic analogue to, or even substitute for, fertility myth.1 The return of Odysseus thus heralds the return of prosperity to his kingdom in a manner functionally equivalent to the return of Persephone, and with her of life, to earth. The first article focused on a detailed comparison of the plots of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Odyssey2; and the second on the relationship between withdrawal and return narratives and ring-composition.3 In my analysis of ring-composition, I concluded that what began as a cognitive and functional pattern, organizing small-scale narrative structures, evolved into an aesthetic pattern, organizing large blocks of narrative, before finally becoming an ideological pattern, connecting the hero’s return to the promise of renewal offered by fertility myth and cult. In the story of Persephone, the pattern of withdrawal, devastation, and return with renewal takes place in cyclical time. But I also suggested that the same pattern can be reimagined in linear time as a return of the past, and specifically the heroic age.4 In what follows, I argue that the Odyssey involves just such a return, of the heroic age in linear time, and in two, complementary ways. My central claim is that epic performance is a kind of time travel that involves both the internal characters and the external audience. The idea of “return” has thus exerted a centripetal force on the narrative so that return is a narrative ring-structure, representing a spatial journey-pattern by the protagonist(s), which has assimilated to itself complementary, cyclical, and linear temporal processes.5 Abetting this assimilation is the underlying idea that return brings with it renewal for the community; and that the returning hero is thereby assimilated to the function of a returning Persephone is further abetted by the status of both as chthonic deities.
Source: Literary Imagination
Author: Erwin Cook
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4407376331