Odysseus of Many Ways: Divine, Human and "Sub-Human"

Yamagata, Naoko (2024). Odysseus of Many Ways: Divine, Human and "Sub-Human". In: Christopoulos, Menelaos and Paizi-Apostolopoulou, Mache eds. Human and Non Human in Homeric and Archaic Epic: Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on the Odyssey 29 Oct 2021 – 11 Mar 2022. Ithaca, Greece: Centre for Odyssean Studies, pp. 57–76.

Abstract

This paper examines how Homer charts Odysseus’ passage through his near-divine and sub-human experiences to return to his normal, human life back in Ithaca, with particular attention to the uses of epithets and similes that compare him to various non-human beings. For example, in what ways can Odysseus be ‘godlike’ or like a lion, a cow or an octopus? How does he overcome all the situations that could turn him into something other than a human being in order to return home? The similes in the Odyssey have often been underrated compared with those in the Iliad, but we must take into account how the whole range of beings to which Odysseus is compared, often through quite short similes, has a cumulative effect of echoing the central theme of the poem, πολύτροπος Odysseus, the man of many ways.

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