Para-Narratives in the Odyssey. Stories in the Frame by Maureen Alden (review)

Seventeen years after her book on the para-narratives in the Iliad, Maureen Alden has published a companion volume on the Odyssey. Her working programme is the same: to show how narratives that are embedded in the main story influence our interpretation of that story. Alden walks on well-trodden ground since the stories of the Odyssey have been extensively discussed. She has chosen to consider all embedded narratives which means that sometimes she offers no more than a paraphrase of the text. But most of the time she gives at least a clear summary of existing interpretations and regularly adds original interpretations of her own. The systematic treatment of her topic is an asset in itself since it turns her book into a useful and practical overview with ample coverage of secondary literature. Her systematic interest in the para llels between the main story and the para-narratives yields many convincing or at least thought-provoking observations but also strained ones.

Let me give examples of both categories, starting with those that seemed appealing to me: Aeolus' refusal to help Odysseus, the object of divine displeasure (10.73–4), offers Alcinous a model for refusing to help Odysseus whom the Cyclops' prayer and Zeus' rejection of his sacrifice have shown to be in trouble with the gods (40); both Sirens and Demodocus tell about "all that the Greeks suffered in" Troy: (12.189–90≈8.490) and through the parallel (in combination with Circe's warning that whoever listens to the Sirens never returns to his wife and children) Odysseus "implies that if he stays with the Phaeacians on their lovely island listening to Demodocus' poetry he will never return to his wife and son" (65); the catalogue of women (11.225–330) evokes "Odysseus' awareness of the range of possibilities" of how Penelope might have acted in his absence and at the same time show how Clytemnestra's crime (which is told immediately afterwards) is without precedent (112); the para-narratives which Telemachus receives help him to construct a picture of his long absent father but also present the narratees "with possible tactics Odysseus might employ to deal with the suitors" and as such "invite speculation, intrigue curiosity, create suspense, and heighten the impact of the resolution when it comes" (171); the Phaeacians entertain Odysseus "like a Trojan horse in their midst" since in the end they are to suffer for their reception of him (219); Odysseus' words spoken at the moment of his revenge on the suitors (οὔ τινα γὰρ τίεσκον ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων: 22.414) echoes his former nickname Οὖτις which he employed vis-à-vis the Cyclops (237).

Examples of what appears to me as strained parallelism are: Eidothea's advice to Menelaus on how to escape from the island of Pharos, namely by forcing Proteus in providing him with information, would mirror "the recent experience of Telemachus" who visits Nestor and Menelaus to gain information about Odysseus (but there no force is involved), and "anticipate how Odysseus could escape from Calypso's island" (but there Odysseus' problem is not information but the lack of a boat) (240); the Laestrygonians eating their guests instead of feeding them would reveal anxiety on Odysseus' part that the Phaeacians might be intending to eat him (I fail to see any sign of cannibalism in the Phaeacians or a fear thereof in Odysseus) (42); when Telemachus asks Nestor how Aegisthus managed to kill a man far better than himself (3.248–50) he "seems to take Aegisthus as a pattern for how someone weak, as he considers himself to be, might kill the suitors" (I find it strained to take the adult adulterer Aegisthus as model for young Telemachus, who moreover already has a compelling model in Orestes) (83).

Sometimes I would reason the other way around when analysing parallels: thus Alden writes that "the debacle at Ismarus is redolent of the raid on Egypt described in Odysseus...