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The "Odyssey" In Athens: Myths Of Cultural Origins, Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

A study in poetic interaction, The Odyssey in Athens explores the ways in which narrative structure and parallels within and between epic poems create or disclose meaning. Erwin F. Cook also broadens the scope of this intertextual approach to include the relationship of Homeric epic to ritual. Specifically he argues that the Odyssey achieved its form as a written text within the context of Athenian civic cults during the reign of Peisistratos.

Focusing on the prologue and the Apologoi (Books 9–12), Cook shows how the traditional Greek polarity between force and intelligence informs the Odyssean narrative at all levels of …

Introduction To The Iliad, Erwin F. Cook

Erwin F. Cook

Sing of rage, Goddess, that bane of Akhilleus,Peleus' son, which caused untold pain for Akhaians,sent down throngs of powerful spirits to Aides, war-chiefs rendered the prize of dogs and everysort of bird.

Edward McCrorie’s new translation of Homer’s classic epic of the Trojan War captures the falling rhythms of a doomed Troy. McCrorie presents the sundry epithets and resonant symbols of Homer's verse style and remains as close to the Greek's meaning as research allows.

The work is an epic with a flexible contemporary feel to it, capturing the wide-ranging tempos of the original. It underscores the honor of soldiers …

Homeric Reciprocities, Erwin F. Cook

Erwin F. Cook

A modified version of Marshall Sahlins’s model of reciprocity, which maps the modes of reciprocity across kinship distance, helps elucidate reciprocity in Homer. With important qualifications, Homeric reciprocity can also elucidate the social realities of Archaic Greece. There are three primary modes of Homeric reciprocity: general, or altruistic giving, balanced exchange, and negative taking. The model for general reciprocity is family relationships, and it characterizes a ruler’s relationship with the community, where it masks the reality that the upward flow of chiefly tribute exceeds the downward flow of the ruler’s largesse. Balanced reciprocity is practiced between peers within the same …

The Mythological Background Of Homer: The Eternal Return Of Killing Dragons, Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

Myth, according to a well known formulation by Walter Burkert, “is a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something of collective importance” (1979: 23). Andrew von Hendy, who declares Burkert’s definition the “gold standard” in classical studies, offers a Marxist reformulation, so that myth “is traditional narrative with a high degree of ideological saturation” (2002: 269, 277). This definition accords with the fact that muthos, the Greek word that most closely approximates myth, also designates “story” generally, and, as we might expect in an oral culture, “speech” (its meaning of “fiction” is post-Homeric). It also allows us to sidestep …

Structure As Interpretation In The Homeric Odyssey, Erwin F. Cook

Erwin F. Cook

No abstract provided.

Structure As Interpretation In The Homeric Odyssey, Erwin F. Cook

Erwin F. Cook

No abstract provided.

Kingship In The Mycenaean World And Its Reflections In The Oral Tradition [Review], Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

Shear undertakes a detailed comparison of archaeological evidence from Mycenaean Greece, the surviving Linear B tablets, and the Homeric epics with the aim of showing that, contrary to the reigning scholarly consensus, Homer preserves a detailed and accurate portrait of the age he purports to describe. Indeed, Shear believes that both epics and much of Greek myth took shape during this period and reflect actual historical events (hence the reference to "oral tradition" rather than "Homer" in the title). Thus, because Pelops is the eponym of the Pcloponnesos, "he should logically belong to the early tradition that evolved soon after …

A Note On The Text Of Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. 7.131, Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

No abstract provided.

The Ferrymen Of Elysium: Nostratic Eschatology And The Homeric Phaeacians, Erwin F. Cook

Erwin F. Cook

Belief that the Homeric Phaeacians belong to the afterlife is old; but its supporters have always found themselves in the minority. Friedrich Welcker, who first argued the point in 1833, held that the Phaeacians were ferrymen of the dead, and that Scheria was set in or near Elysium. Wilamowitz accepted Welcker's identification of the Phaeacians, and maintained that Arete and Alcinous were modeled on the underworld rulers Persephone and Hades. Rehearsal of the arguments advanced by these scholars reveals that the evidence has been incompletely and on occasion incorrectly applied; however, a modified version of their theory is still viable …

A Referential Commentary And Lexicon To Homer, Iliad Viii [Review], Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

A 14,305 page Iliad commentary? That is what we get if we multiply the pages Adrian Kelly lavishes on Book 8 with the poem’s dimensions. And, Book 8? This is never really explained, though I suspect the long scholarly tradition that the book strays from Homer’s typical compositional practices and standards is one reason. For Adrian Kelly’s stated objective is to recreate at least part of the rich network of associations available to the early auditors of epic, with the result that Book 8 is shown to be as traditional as any other.

Heroism, Suffering, And Change, Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

Today I will address the issue of identity in the Odyssey. To do so I need to make a few general observations about the structure and content of the poem. It is immediately apparent that the Odyssey is organized by three narrative sequences: the story of Telemachus in Books 1-4, including his journey to Pylus and Sparta, the journey of Odysseus from Ogygia to Scheria in Books 5-12, and the return of Odysseus and his revenge on the suitors in Books 13-24. It is well recognized that Books 1-4 recount Telemachus’ coming of age, and that his journey plays a …

Epiphany In The Homeric Hymn To Demeter And The Odyssey, Erwin F. Cook

Erwin F. Cook

In the following essay I investigate the Odyssey’s sustained engagement with the theme of epiphany. Within the poem’s own narrative, the central epiphanic moment is the recognition scene between Odysseus and Penelope, and it resonates powerfully with a series of other such moments throughout the poem, beginning with Athene’s epiphany to Telemakhos in Book 1. But I also hope to show that these Odyssean scenes resonate just as powerfully with Demeter’s epiphanies in the Homeric hymn to the goddess.

Myth And History In Ancient Greece: The Symbolic Creation Of A Colony [Review], Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

Myth and History in Ancient Greece is certain to burnish Calame's (C.) reputation as one of the world's preeminent scholars of Greek mythology and cultural history. In certain respects, Myth and History can be seen as an outgrowth of and complement to C.'s earlier Le récit en Grèce ancienne: enonciations et représentations de poètes (and of a lengthy article in an anthology on approaches to myth). Both books are first and foremost concerned with methodology, and in both C. seeks to demonstrate how individual 'myths' are fundamentally shaped by the media and other contexts in which they are communicated. Myth …

On The “Importance” Of “Iliad” Book 8, Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

The scene from Homer's Iliad book 8 where Diomedes rescues a chariot-wrecked Nestor from the advancing Hektor has been accused of being inadequately motivated. Not only is this scene well integrated into book 8, but it has been carefully prepared for in the preceding books. What motivates Homer to incorporate the scene of rescue is the practical consequence of having Zeus impose arbitrary defeat on the Akhaian army. To give the narrative of that defeat minimum dimensions, and appropriate dramatic force, the Akhaians must stage a counteroffensive. However, continuing to fight in the face of direct opposition by Zeus would …

The Modern Construction Of Myth [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Erwin F. Cook

The Modern Construction of Myth, by Andrew yon Hendy, is an interdisciplinary survey of the construction of myth in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The author's thesis is that modern theories of myth can be divided into three broad groups, folkloristic, ideological, and constitutive, and that they all derive from an original, romantic, construct. The survey is organized diachronically, with some attention to taxonomy and axiology. I find the author's thesis entirely persuasive: what follows is meant to serve as a guide to the overall argument and additionally to highlight various important threads that remain somewhat diffuse in …

The Returns Of Odysseus: Colonization And Ethnicity [Review], Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

The Returns of Odysseus will be essential reading for specialists in Homer, early Greek history, and ancient ethnology. They and others willing to expend the time and energy necessary to read this densely argued and worded book will win a perspective on Greek (pre)colonization and its mythology unavailable from any other source. I myself required a full week for a careful reading, after which I noted to my surprise that I had taken over 50 pages of notes, many of which now belong to my permanent files. If, in what follows, I concentrate on some illustrative problems with Malkin's (M.) …

A Note On Odyssey 3.216-38, Erwin F. Cook

Erwin F. Cook

No abstract provided.

Homer, His Art And His World [Review], Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

First let me say what this book is not. Although the dust-jacket claims that the book includes "sections on the relevance of Homer to modern issues in literary criticism", it cannot be said to offer anything approaching a representative, let alone a comprehensive, survey of modern criticism, even as it is currently applied to Homer (H.). It does, in 34 pages, outline "the historical background to Homer and his poetry", but only for those who share the author's assumptions on the time, place, and circumstances of composition.

"Active" And "Passive" Heroics In The Odyssey, Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

No abstract provided.

The Contemporary Relevance Of The Iliad, Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

I initially balked at the request to talk about the contemporary relevance of Homeric poetry. I did so because I am of the camp that maintains great art does not need to be defended on these terms, which is to say its skill, beauty, and profundity give it all the relevance it needs to be of lasting relevance. But I do recognize that my justification, which also keeps me from studying ancient graffiti and medieval doorknockers, assumes that at some level of remove there are enduring qualities to these works that do indeed, and will always, give them contemporary relevance. …

The Raft Of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination Of Homer's Odyssey, Erwin F. Cook

Erwin F. Cook

In The Raft of Odysseus, Carol Dougherty wishes to read several major episodes of the Odyssey as ways of imagining colonial experience, and as informed by the discourse of colonial foundation. Odysseus can be compared to an ethnographer, who gains self-knowledge through a process of “decoding” a foreign culture and “recoding” it for one’s own, so that “the strange becomes familiar and the familiar strange” (p. 10). At the same time, he is also a colonist, whose experiences among the Phaeacians and Cyclopes offer complementary images of colonial encounters, and a traveling poet, who trades his stories for commercial profit. …

Near Eastern Sources For The Palace Of Alkinoos, Erwin Cook

Erwin F. Cook

The last quarter century of archaeological discoveries have significantly enriched and nuanced our understanding of interactions between the Greek world and the Levant during the Greek Archaic period (conventionally defined as 776-479 B.C.E.). They have also allowed us to construct an increasingly detailed model explaining the diffusion of knowledge from Mesopotamia to Greece at this time. In addition, advances in our understanding of oral cultures, and the role of oral narrative traditions within them have cast valuable new light on the ways in which the Homeric epics appropriate, adapt, and preserve cultural knowledge. The palace of Alkinoos, described in Book …