The Artistry of the Homeric Simile (review)

William C. Scott’s book, a companion to his earlier work (The Oral Nature of the Homeric Simile, Leiden 1974), is a welcome examination of Homeric similes. His general argument for a sophisticated relationship between similes and the narrative will be accepted intuitively by many readers. His supporting theories and the structure of his book, however, may attenuate its effectiveness. The book consists of six chapters, an appendix of simile types, and endnotes.

Chapter 1 explores how similes, like other “expository digressions” (4; ekphraseis, paradeigmata, etc), are intentionally created to enhance the overall narrative and thus offer “clues for the interpretation of longer passages” (8). This process is contingent upon poet and audience knowing the conventions of simile use. Chapter 2 considers these conventions to determine what choices were available to fit similes to the narrative. After reviewing Homeric orality, Scott, invoking Nagler’s use of Gestalt psychology (Spontaneity and Tradition, Berkeley 1974), identifies the underlying framework of similes as a “simileme” (“the nonverbal background material shared by poet and audience” [19]). This potentially fascinating formulation seems more like a placeholder for a process better illustrated through a sustained engagement with cognitive science. Scott cites studies of, and based on, cognitive psychology (e.g., Lakoff and Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor, Chicago 1987; Minchin, Homer and the Resources of Memory, Oxford 2001), and also work on orality that emphasizes the visual (Rubin, Memory in Oral Traditions, Oxford 1995), but these ideas do not seem thoroughly integrated into the argument. While the ontological status of the simileme is dubious, the exercise of imagining it is useful. Acknowledging the simileme allows us to understand that the tradition anticipates similes at certain moments, that each simileme appears in specific contexts, and that similemes are not connected to repeated phrases (thus Scott’s emphasis on the “nonverbal” and limited Greek citations).

Chapters 3–6 examine the Homeric books with the most similes. In chapter 3, Scott argues that for Iliad 2, 11, 21, and 22, similes develop characters and advance the plot. His emphasis on single themes (e.g., failed leadership in book 2) can miss the importance of others (e.g., “unity” in the contrast in wave similes—the Greeks are compared to kúmata crashing together at their most chaotic (144) but later a single kûma [209]). Additionally, Scott’s concern with junctures where similes are absent although anticipated by tradition seems strange and not entirely convincing. To end the chapter, Scott illustrates how movements of similes advance the themes of Iliad 21 and 22 as well as 11. Chapter 4 contemplates how similes support single narrative themes in Iliad 5, 12, Od. 5, and 22. Although Scott isolates movements among similes well, some of the conclusions are odd—the everydayness of the similes in Iliad 12 makes the effort of the Trojan army “almost absurd” (99). Similes organize Diomedes’ aristeia in Iliad 5 while in Od. 22 peaceful similes “tempe[r]” the effect of the slaughtered suitors—although it is not clear that this contrast mitigates rather than emphasizes the carnage.

Chapter 6’s analyses illuminate problematic books. Against criticism of the disorganization of books 13–15, Scott argues that the similes support a “conscious chaos” evoking the ongoing “directionlessness” of the plot. Although Scott says little about remarkable (15.588–90) or “difficult” similes (Hector, the “snowy mountain”), his argument that incongruous comparisons accompany changes in tone and plot is convincing. Less convincing is the ascription of this feature to “purposeful design” (144) by a single poet rather than convention. Similes also impose thematic unity in developing the “increasing power of the Greeks” (155) in book 17. For book 16, Scott shows how similes establish thematic complexity, develop “cross-references” and contribute to an atmosphere of “ambiguity and confusion” (170).

In the conclusion, Scott uses the first-person voice of a poet in a rhetorically interesting...