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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Homer's Roads Not Taken: Stories and Storytelling in the Iliad and Odyssey Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5314c166 Author Russell, Craig Morrison Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Homer’s Roads Not Taken Stories and Storytelling in the Iliad and Odyssey A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Classics by Craig Morrison Russell 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Homer’s Roads Not Taken Stories and Storytelling in the Iliad and Odyssey by Craig Morrison Russell Doctor of Philosophy in Classics University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Alex C. Purves, Chair This dissertation is a consideration of how narratives in the Iliad and Odyssey find their shapes. Applying insights from scholars working in the fields of narratology and oral poetics, I consider moments in Homeric epic when characters make stories out of their lives and tell them to each other. My focus is on the concept of “creativity” — the extent to which the poet and his characters create and alter the reality in which they live by controlling the shape of the reality they mould in their storytelling. The first two chapters each examine storytelling by internal characters. In the first chapter I read Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s quarrel as a set of competing attempts to create the authoritative narrative of the situation the Achaeans find themselves in, and Achilles’ retelling of the quarrel to Thetis as part of the move towards the acceptance of his version over that of Agamemnon or even the Homeric Narrator that occurs over the course of the epic. In the second chapter I consider the constant storytelling that [ii ] occurs at the end of the Odyssey as a competition between the families of Odysseus and the suitors to control the narrative that will be created out of Odysseus’s homecoming. The war that the two sides begin to fight literalizes the combativeness with which Homeric narratives are created. The final two chapters consider the process by which the poet(s) of the Iliad and Odyssey have shaped the epics themselves. With special emphasis on the linear process through which oral poetry is created, I examine the gods for their role in managing and controlling plot. In the third chapter I consider ways in which gods represent the voice of the audience, and in which divine intervention allows the epics to be expanded and modified constantly through the process of composition in performance. In the fourth chapter, I read Zeus as a stand-in for the poet, and consider his words, actions, and Will as part of the machinery through which the poet controls the central plot of an epic poem. [iii ] The dissertation of Craig Morrison Russell is approved. Joseph F Nagy Mario Telo Kathryn Anne Morgan Alex C. Purves, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 [iv ] TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements.................................................................................................................................................... vi Vita................................................................................................................................................................................. viii Introduction................................................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter One Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s Iliad.............................................................................................................. 22 Chapter Two The Suitors’ Odyssey..................................................................................................................................... 81 Chapter Three The Gods’ Interruptions........................................................................................................................... 140 Chapter Four Zeus’s and Thetis’s Iliad............................................................................................................................ 203 Bibliography............................................................................................................................................................... 253 [v ] Acknowledgements It is my pleasure to give thanks to some of the people who have supported me as I wrote this dissertation (πληθὺν δ᾽ οὐκ ἂν ἐγὼ μυθήσομαι οὐδ᾽ ὀνομήνω). First, I am extremely fortunate to have worked with such a insightful and supportive dissertation committee. My thanks to Joseph Nagy for his bottomless knowledge and kindness. I thank Kathryn Morgan for the intellectual rigor she always demands of me in exchange for subjecting my work to her own. I thank Mario Telò for dedicating so much of his time, energy, and intelligence to my work and myself, and for his unending support and mentorship. To the chair of my committee, Alex Purves, I can never express enough gratitude for the attention and care she has given this project from its inception and completion, and for the guidance she has offered towards my career and intellectual growth. I will always be in awe of her effortless brilliance as a reader, and grateful that she is willing to apply it to my work. I cannot imagine writing this dissertation with anyone else. My gratitude to the UCLA Classics faculty for the encouragement and mentorship they have provided me. I have benefitted from all of their wisdom and experience in many ways, large and small, but I would like to particularly thank David Blank, Sander Goldberg, Michael Haslam, Sarah Morris, Amy Richlin, and Brent Vine for their intellectual and professional guidance. I thank David Maust and the California Classical Association for inviting me to present a version of my first chapter at their Fall Meeting in 2011, and the audience for their feedback. To my colleagues in the UCLA Classics Graduate Program I express my gratitude for your friendship, for making this weird, maddening journey a bit more fun. I will always love arguing or agreeing (or anything in between) with ἅλλους τε καὶ Michael Brumbaugh, Grace Gillies, Rob Groves, Emily Kratzer, Hilary Lehmann, Alex Lessie, Kristie Mann, Kathy Piller, Charlie Stein, Justin Vorhis, Brian Walters. You each know why I mention your names, so you hardly need me to explain. Thank you. [vi ] Finally, my love and gratitude to my family for their love and support: to Dad, to Andrew, to Rob, to Lou, to Hunter, and of course to Jessie, with whom I mutually and perpetually bring grief and joy to enemies and friends. [vii ] VITA 2003 B. A., Classics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 2005-2007 Teaching Assistant Department of Classics University of California, Los Angeles 2006 M.A., Classics University of California, Los Angeles 2007-2009 Latin Teacher Fayetteville Academy Fayetteville, NC 2009-2012 Teaching Assistant Department of Classics University of California, Los Angeles 2011 Pre-dissertation Research Fellowship Andrew W. Mellon Foundation 2011, 2012 Instructor (summer) Department of Classics University of California, Los Angeles 2012-2013 Dissertation Year Fellowship Graduate Division University of California, Los Angeles [viii ] PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS 2010 Panel Respondent, “That’s What She Said: The Construction and Expression of Women’s Voices in Antiquity.” UCLA Graduate Student Conference, 12 November. 2011 “Homer’s Narrative Multiverse.” Invited Talk; California Classical Association, South. Fall Meeting, 8 October. 2011 “Boy Interrupted: Liminalities of Gender and Genre in Statius’s Achilleid and Silvae 3.4.” American Philological Association. Annual Meeting, 8 January. Winner of 2012 Lambda Graduate Student Paper Award. 2012 “Narrative Tension and Suspension: The Ivory Cheek Piece Simile at Iliad 4.141-145.” Classical Association of the Middle West and South. Annual Meeting, 30 March. 2013 “What Did Rhapsodes Do? Imagining the Physical Details of Homeric Performance.” Classical Association of the Pacific Northwest. Annual Meeting, 16 March. 2014 “The Most Unkindest Cut: Gender, Genre and Castration in Statius’s Achilleid and Silvae 3.4.” American Journal of Philology 125.1. [ix ] Introduction This is a dissertation about creativity in Homeric storytelling. I explore moments in Homer when the multiform that is an unspoken tradition is transformed into the specific set of choices that are the text of an individual story or poem, such as we have in the Iliad and Odyssey. This consolidation of infinite possibility into a particular narrative has been described in at least two rather surprisingly complementary ways by Homerists. First, there is a narratological analysis — as employed in the work of scholars such as Irene de Jong and Scott Richardson1 — which considers the stories presented in our texts of the Iliad and Odyssey as focalizations of a fabula. The distinction between story and fabula is built upon the basic concept that behind every narrative one tells is at least the notion of a real or realistic set of events and characters, of which this particular telling is only one of the countless ways these facts could potentially be presented. And second, there is what can broadly be termed “oral theory,” inspired largely by the seminal work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord.2 Their basic argument is that the formulaic nature of Homer’s language and typical scenes is best explained
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