Para-Narratives in the Odyssey: Stories in the Frame by Maureen Alden

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS Para-Narratives in the Odyssey: Stories in the Frame. By MAUREEN ALDEN. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017, Pp. xii + 424. Hardcover, $110.00. ISBN 978-0-199-29106-9. n Para-Narratives in the Odyssey Maureen Alden has written an impressive, hefty book that serves as a companion volume to her 2000 Homer Beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the Iliad (Oxford). That volume studied in great detail all the narratives that occur “beside” the main narrative of the Iliad,building up to a comprehensive, 121-page analysis of the famous paradigm of Meleager in Book 9. Her study remains a helpful guide to that crucial part of the poem. Alden’s ambitions are similarly large in this second book, in which she examines how the main narrative of the Odyssey “is explored and illuminated by all the manysubsidiarynarratives bythe poetandhis characters” (vii). In an introduction, Alden outlines the different kinds of para-narratives. There are “parallel situations” in the voice of the main narrator (e.g., Telemachus’ journeyandhomecoming =Odysseus’); “paradigms” toldbycharacters (perhaps the most studied already of the different kinds of para-narratives); “paradigmatic models,” when a character or a ritual stands as a model for another character to follow (e.g., Heracles for Odysseus); “story shapes” (e.g. returning hero); “mirror stories” (e.g. the Trojan Horse story); the ainos or “veiled hint,” an allusive tale with hidden meaning (e.g. Odysseus’ story to Eumaeus about the cloak); and a catch-all category of other digressions,whichincludes things like genealogies and omens. These categories can be overlapping and they do not serve as Alden’s template for how she organizes the book. The rest of the chapters are organized more loosely around characters, and each includes examples from several of the types listed above. Most of the analysis in the chapters that follow proceeds by identifying shared motifs among narratives and showing how these motifs function differently or similarly in different narratives. Much of this is welltrodden territory,thoughitis helpful tohave itall broughtintoone place. Chapter 2 covers return stories. The nostoi of Menelaus, Agamemnon, Nestor and Ajax all have elements that reflect one another and, most of all, reflect Odysseus’ nostos. Alden has some good original insights here: for instance, the seer mentioned in the Nekyia (later named as Melampus) is a parallel for I BOOKREVIEWS 111 Odysseus. Chapter 3 deals with the “Oresteia” story, to which the poem makes frequent allusion. The most interesting element of Alden’s analysis here is her discussion of Clytemnestra’s “trick” (dolos), which she understands to be an allusion to the “robe” (pharos) with which Clytemnestra traps Agamemnon in the version of the myth known from Aeschylus. The link might be too weak for the work Alden wants it to do, but the pay-off is interesting: it makes both Penelope’s trick of the shroud (pharos) and Odysseus’ aversion to sleeping under blankets in his home seem more ominous. Chapter 4 follows closely on the previous chapter and concentrates on Penelope. Chapter 5 covers para-narratives involving Odysseus that Telemachus hears, especially Helen’s and Agamemnon’s stories from Book 4. Chapter 6 examines some of the important para-narrative models for Odysseus: e.g. Heracles and Apollo. The discussion of Apollo as a model for Odysseus is suggestive, as is seeing the opening of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo as an intertext (in the sense that both poems draw on a traditional way of depicting Apollo). However, the definition of para-narrative has been stretched at this point: there is no “narrative” of any length involving Apollo actually told in the Odyssey. Chapter 7 is on firmer groundwithasolidanalysis of the songs of Demodocus. Chapter 8 on the Cyclops is the best section of the book. It builds on a brief examination Alden had already published in her Iliad book, which is drawn from an earlier article.1 She shows how this episode presents a “split image”: “In the first fragment of this image, the suitors correspond to the Cyclops and Odysseus is equated with his narrative self in the Cyclopeia: the second fragment presents Odysseus as a grim reflection of the Cyclops, who returnedlate and alone, tofind...