The Silence of Homer's Sirens

This paper argues that Homer's Odyssey essentially tricks its audience into believing that the deadly, narrative song of the Sirens, which is in fact left in silence, has been overheard and overcome. Making a strong distinction between narrative and nonnarrative singing, I describe several ways in which the epic poem creates the illusion that the Sirens are narrators. Through instances of embedded narrative and proleptic repetition, the Sirens' self-description—which coincides with the foretold event of their singing a narrative—comes to stand in for the narrative song they are expected to sing.