A Guide to the Odyssey: A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald (61 page)
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Authors: Ralph J. Hexter,Robert Fitzgerald
Tags: #Homer, #Language Arts & Disciplines, #Greek Language - Translating Into English, #Greek Language, #Fitzgerald; Robert - Knowledge - Language and Languages, #History and Criticism, #Epic Poetry; Greek - History and Criticism, #Poetry, #Odysseus (Greek Mythology) in Literature, #Literary Criticism, #Translating & Interpreting, #Ancient & Classical, #Translating Into English, #Epic Poetry; Greek
Tyndáreus: husband of Leda, father of Klytaimnéstra, father or foster-father of Kastor and Polydeukês (at least later Zeus was claimed to be the true father of one or both boys, the so-called Dioskouroi; see note under Kastor, above), and foster-father of Helen, whom Homer calls Zeus’ daughter (although at times he also calls her Tyndáreus’ daughter). As brother of Ikários, he is Penélopê’s uncle.
Tyro: daughter of Salmoneus, wife of Krêtheus, she is mother of Pelias and Neleus by Poseidon, who appeared to her in the figure of the river god Enipeus, with whom she was infatuated; she later bore her mortal husband three children, Aison, Pherês, and Amytháon; her shade appears to Odysseus.
Zakýnthos: wooded island near Ithaka, so named to this day.
Zêthos: son of Zeus and Antiopê; with his brother, Amphion, he built the walls of Thebes; his wife, Aedon, killed his only child, Itylos.
Zeus: chief of the Olympian gods, son of Kronos, brother and consort of Hêra, father of Athena, Apollo, Hermês, Heraklês, Helen, and many other gods and heroes.
1
The translator’s spellings are meant as a guide to readers’ pronunciation, not as consistent transliterations. For example, Fitzgerald writes “Kikonês” to indicate that the word should be pronounced as a three-(i.e., Ki-kō-nes) rather than a two-syllable word (Ki-kōnz), as English speakers might otherwise have done. Likewise, “Gigantês,” “Kyklopês,” and “Laistrygonês.” A strict system of transliteration would have demanded that he represent the final vowel of all three words as an “e,” since in Greek it is a short “e” [
epsilon
], not a long “e”
Suggestions for Further Reading
The secondary literature on Homer is vast, and it would be easier to list far too much than too little. I have emphasized books and (a very few) articles of recent vintage; each of the items will give access to earlier scholarship, much of which is still of great value. With an eye on the requirements of most users of this volume, I have restricted these “suggestions for further reading” to material in English, at the same time taking comfort in the fact that, again, the notes and bibliographies of the works cited will give readers access to the richly international world of Homeric scholarship. Finally, I have arranged the list in categories; needless to say, many of the books could be placed under more than one heading.
Heubeck, Alfred, et al.
A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey:
Alfred Heubeck, Stephanie West, and J. B. Hainsworth,
Volume I: Introduction and Books I-VIII;
Alfred Heubeck and Arie Hoekstra,
Volume II: Books IX-XVI;
Joseph Russo, Manuel Fernández-Galiano, and
Alfred Heubeck,
Volume III; Booh XVII-XXIV
. Oxford, 1988, 1989, and 1992, respectively. [Referred to in the Commentary as HWH 1, HWH 2, and HWH 3.]
Stanford, W. B.
The Odyssey of Homer
, vol. 1, Books I-XII; vol. 2, Books XIII-XXIV. 2nd edition. London: Macmillan, 1959 and 1958, respectively (both volumes frequently reprinted, with addenda, through 1971).
Note: These two commentaries on the Greek text have been indispensable in my work on
The Odyssey
, Stanford my constant companion in reading the poem for some twenty years now, and the Oxford commentary more recently. Both are excellent in very different ways. They may also be of great value to readers of
The Odyssey
with little or no Greek. Both have helpful introductory sections, and indexes to lead users to longer notes on specific issues. Finally, the line numbers of the Greek originals of the translated passages appear in the running heads of the Fitzgerald translation, and these should be sufficient to get users to the appropriate pages in the commentaries for detailed analysis.
THE ODYSSEY
Austin, Norman.
Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer’s Odyssey
. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975.
Bergren, Ann. “Helen’s ‘Good Drug’:
Odyssey
IV 1–305.” In S. Kresic, ed.
Contemporary Literary Hermeneutics and Interpretation of Classical Texts
. Ottawa, 1981. Pp. 201–14.
Clarke, Howard W.
The Art of the Odyssey
. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967.
———, ed.
Twentieth Century Interpretations of the Odyssey: A Collection of
Critical Essays
. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1983.
Clay, Jenny Strauss.
The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey
. Princeton, 1983.
Dimock, George E.
The Unity of the Odyssey
. Amherst, 1989.
Fenik, Bernard.
Studies in the Odyssey
. Hermes Einzelschriften 30. Wiesbaden, 1974.
Finley, John.
Homer’s Odyssey
. Cambridge, Mass., 1978.
Finley, Moses I.
The World of Odysseus
. Rev. ed. New York, 1978.
Foley, Helene. “‘Reverse Similes’ and Sex Roles in the
Odyssey.” Arethusa
11 (1978), 7–26.
Griffin, Jasper.
Homer: The Odyssey
. Cambridge, 1987.
Katz, Marylin Arthur.
Penélopê’s Renown: Meaning and Indeterminacy in Homer’s Odysseus
. Princeton, 1991.
Murnaghan, Sheila.
Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey
. Princeton, 1987.
Page, Denys L.
Folktales in Homer’s Odyssey
. Cambridge, Mass., 1973.
Peradotto, John.
Man in the Middle Voice: Name and Narration in the Odyssey
. Princeton, 1990.
Pucci, Pietro.
Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and Iliad
. Ithaca, 1987.
Schein, Seth L. “Odysseus and Polyphemus in the
Odyssey.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies
11 (1970), 73–83.
Segal, Charles. “
Kleos
and Its Ironies in the
Odyssey.” L’antiquité classique
52 (1983), 22–47.
———. “The Phaeacians and the Symbolism of Odysseus’ Return.”
Arion
1 (1962), 17–64.
Thornton, A.
People and Themes in Homer’s Odyssey
. Dunedin and London, 1970.
Winkler, John J. “Penélopê’s Cunning and Homer’s.” In
The Constraints of Desire
. New York, 1990. Pp. 129–61.
III. HOMER, THE HOMERIC POEMS, ISSUES OF COMPOSITIONWoodhouse, W.J.
The Composition of Homer’s Odyssey
. Oxford, 1930; rpt. 1969.
Carpenter, Rhys.
Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics
. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1946.
Clarke, Howard.
Homer’s Readers: A Historical Introduction to the Iliad and the Odyssey
. Brunswick, N.J., 1981.
De Jong, Irene J. F.
Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad
. Amsterdam, 1987.
Fenik, Bernard.
Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad: Studies in the Narrative Techniques of Homeric Battle Descriptions
. Hermes Einzelschriften 21. Wiesbaden, 1968.
Ford, Andrew.
Homer: The Poetry of the Past
. Ithaca, 1992.
Griffin, Jasper.
Homer on L ife and Death
. Oxford, 1980.
———. “Homeric Words and Speakers.”
Journal of Hellenic Studies
106 (1986), 36–57.
Hainsworth, J. B.
The Flexibility of the Homeric Formula
. Oxford, 1968.
Hoekstra, Arie.
Homeric Modifications of Formulaic Prototypes
. Amsterdam, 1965.
Janko, Richard.
Homer
,
Hesiod and the Hymns: Diachronic Development in Epic Diction
. Cambridge, 1982.
Kirk, Geoffrey.
The Songs of Homer
. Cambridge, 1962.
Lord, Albert B.
The Singer of Tales
. Cambridge, Mass., 1960.
Lüthi, Max.
The European Folktale: Form and Mature
. Tr. John D. Niles. Philadelphia, 1982.
Martin, Richard P.
The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad
. Ithaca, 1989.
Moulton, Carroll.
Similes in the Homeric Poems
. Hypomnemata 49. Göttingen, 1977.
Nagler, Michael N.
Spontaneity and Tradition: A Study in the Oral Art of Homer
. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974.
Nagy, Gregory.
The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry
. Baltimore, 1979.
———.
Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past
. Baltimore, 1990.
Page, Denys L.
History and the Homeric Iliad
. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959.
Parry, Adam. “Have We Homer’s
Iliad?” Yale Classical Studies
20 (1966), 177–216.
———. “Language and Characterization in Homer.”
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
76 (1972), 1–22.
———. “The Language of Achilles.”
Transactions of the American Philological Association
87 (1956), 1–7.
———.
The Language of Achilles and Other Papers
. Oxford, 1989.
Parry, Anne Amory.
Blameless Aegisthus
. Leiden, 1973.
Parry, Milman.
The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry
. Ed. and with introduction by Adam Parry. Oxford, 1971; rpt. 1987.
Propp, Vladimir.
Morphology of the Folktale
. Tr. Laurence Scott 2nd ed. Austin, Texas, 1968; rpt. 1977.
Redfield, James.
Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector
. Chicago, 1975.
Sacks, Richard.
The Traditional Phrase in Homer: Two Studies in Form, Meaning and Interpretation
. Leiden, 1987.
Schein, Seth.
The Mortal Hero
. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984.
Scott, William C.
The Oral Nature of the Homeric Simile
. Leiden, 1974.
Shive, David M.
Naming Achilles
. Oxford, 1987.
Vivante, Paolo.
The Epithets in Homer
. New Haven, 1982.
———.
The Homeric Imagination: A Study of Homer’s Poetic Perception of Reality
. Bloomington, 1970.
IV. THE WORLD OF HOMER AND HIS HEROES: ARCHEOLOGY, “EVERYDAY LIFE,” LINGUISTICSWhitman, Cedric.
Homer and the Heroic Tradition
. Cambridge, Mass., 1958; rpt. New York, 1965.
Bernai, Martin.
Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization
. Vol. II:
The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence
. New Brunswick, N.J., 1991.
Biegen, C. W., et al.
The Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Western Messenia
. Princeton, 1966–73.
Boardman, John.
The Greeks Overseas
. 2nd ed. London, 1980.
Casson, L.
Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World
. Princeton, 1971.
Crouwel, J. H.
Chariots and Other Means of Land Transport in Bronze Age Greece
. Amsterdam, 1981.
Dicks, D. R.
Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle
. London, 1970.
Finley, Moses I. “Homer and Mycenae: Property and Tenure.”
Historia
6 (1957), 133–59. Reprinted in Geoffrey S. Kirk, ed.
Language and Background of Homer
. Cambridge, 1964. Pp. 191–217.
Havelock, Eric.
The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present
New Haven, 1986.
———.
Preface to Plato
. Cambridge, Mass., 1963.
Lorimer, H. L.
Homer and the Monuments
. London, 1950.
Morrison, J. S., and R. T. Williams.
Greek Oared Ships
. Cambridge, 1968.
Nilsson, Martin P.
Minoan-Mycenaean Religion
. 2nd ed. Lund, 1950.
Powell, Barry.
Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet
. Cambridge, 1991.
Renfrew, Colin.
Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins
. Cambridge, 1987.
Simpson, R. Hope, and J. F. Lazenby.
The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer’s Iliad
. Oxford, 1970.