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The Social and Narrative Functions of Telemachus in the Odyssey

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The Social and Narrative Functions of Telemachus in the Odyssey The Social and Narrative Functions of Telemachus in the Odyssey Master’s Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Graduate Program in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies Dr. Joel Christensen, Advisor In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies by Zachary B. Elliott May 2018 Copyright by Zachary B. Elliott © 2018 Acknowledgements This thesis would not exist were it not for the kindness, commitment, and generosity of those who supported me throughout its production. My advisor, Dr. Joel Christensen, saw the project through its nascent and amorphous stages in a course on the Odyssey to its completion as an MA thesis. He receives my greatest thanks for his, seemingly, endless patience and dedicated mentorship as he showed me what it means to be a scholar and a colleague. My readers, Dr. Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow and Dr. Cheryl Walker, gave thoughtful comments and enjoyable conversation toward the final stages of the thesis, and both have served as exceptional teachers during my time in the MA program. I give my gratitude also to Dr. Andrew Koh for providing early support in the program, to Dr. Patricia Johnston for improving my Latin, and to Dr. Alex Ratzlaff for being a constant pillar of support and encouragement. I thank my graduate student colleagues for creating an environment of camaraderie and collegiality which has made my two years in the program remarkable on a personal and professional level. In particular, I thank my fellow Graduate Department Representatives during my time at Brandeis, Jim Martin, Erin Brantmayer, and Anna Krohn, who gave their time and dedication to making the program better. Angela Hurley, Will Callif, Ruthie Portes, Kathryn Joseph, Evan McDuff, and Matthew Previtto each participated in conversations that made this thesis better. I must also thank those who made my study of Classics possible; Dr. Ralph Smith, John Karras, and Dr. Holly Haynes were unflagging mentors who showed me that I can and should pursue my academic goals. Molly Cowan has supported me at every point of my journey with unsurpassable compassion, patience, and grace, and I cannot thank her enough. iii ABSTRACT The Social and Narrative Functions of Telemachus in the Odyssey A thesis presented to the Graduate Program in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts By Zachary B. Elliott The character of Telemachus occupies a place of great significance in the plot of the Odyssey. In addition to being a figure whose development the audience observes for four books of the poem before the introduction of the epic's main character, he returns in the final books of the poem to participate in the resolution of the plot alongside his father. His plot in the narrative is inextricably tied to his need to navigate his social world about which he learns through his travels and interactions with other characters. In this thesis, I examine how the Odyssey presents the way in which Telemachus fulfills social and cultural roles within the poem and how it uses his performance of those roles to create and reinforce a model of the proper performance in a society that no longer supports the structures of the heroic age. I argue that these roles do not end at those which Telemachus overtly takes over the course of the narrative; instead, he extends into the position of a reader, or auditor, of epic poetry, especially in the context of his reception of and engagement with the narrative of Orestes, and the poem encourages the audience to evaluate how effectively Telemachus participates in the tradition of which they are currently a part. I iv further explore the evidence of how later texts present the character of Telemachus to see to what extent these authors engage with the problems of his socio-cultural place in the Odyssey. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1: THE SOCIAL POSITIONS OF TELEMACHUS .................................................10 CHAPTER 2: TELEMACHUS AND PARABOLIC NARRATIVES OF ORESTES .................32 CHAPTER 3: TELEMACHUS AFTER THE ODYSSEY .............................................................50 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................................................................................................65 vi Introduction The Odyssey, in addition to being a poem about a “complicated man,” as Emily Wilson positions Odysseus at the start of her translation, is a complicated poem.1 It defies simple categorization by theme and has provided a fruitful ground for interpretation since antiquity. While it is certainly a story about Odysseus’ journey to Ithaca and his reunion with his wife through the destruction of the suitors who have been attempting to woo her, the poem deals with larger and more general issues of the way in which society functions. Consistently, the narrative confronts its internal and external audiences with characters who figure differently into the complex world of the epic through their performance of various social roles and encourages them to engage with how the models provided by those characters represent effective or ineffective examples for the proper fulfillment of those roles. While the majority of the poem focuses on the titular hero of the epic, his trouble-filled journey home, and his triumphant restoration to power and prominence in Ithaca, the first four books of the poem, the Telemachy, deal with the development of Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, as he attempts both to learn whether or not his father is alive and to discover how he can deal with the suitors who have overrun his house and are consuming his wealth. Just as the epic as a whole is deeply concerned with social structures, the Telemachy lays the framework for these themes and begins the process of engaging with them. The character of Telemachus, then, plays a pivotal role in defining the epic's central themes. The emphasized position of his educative journey and his transition from a self-described infant (νήπιος, Od. 2.313) to a figure on the cusp of 1 Wilson (2018): 105. 1 adulthood encourages the audience to consider how he develops in his performance of the roles which he undertakes. The link between the education and growth of Telemachus and the poem’s own function as an educational text makes Telemachus necessarily a metapoetic figure.2 The audience observes as he learns through his experience how to function in his society and learns from their observations how they themselves ought to perform these roles. This metapoetic function is heightened by the shared position of Telemachus and the audience of the poem; both are outside the heroic age which Homeric poetry presents. Just as Telemachus must go through a process different from that of those in his father’s generation to obtain kleos, the audience cannot access those traditional models and can look to Telemachus to better understand how to, or not to, cope with this position. The questions and problems raised by the content and function of the Telemachy have led modern interpreters to understand the place of the first four books of the poem differently. One tradition, following the Analysts, reads the Telemachy as produced by a different poet than that of the rest of the poem and separate its content from the rest of the poem, which they view as composed by an individual master. The other tradition of scholarship treats the text as a whole and reads the Telemachy in the context of the rest of the poem.3 Despite Analyst arguments that Homeric characters do not undergo development, the audience patently sees Telemachus’ move from a youth lacking confidence through burgeoning masculinity to an active participant in the slaughter of the suitors and a force of moral guidance for Odysseus.4 The characterization of Telemachus has important ideological implications for 2 Martin (1993) remarks that Telemachus and, indeed, the Odyssey as a whole are highly metapoetic. This thesis builds on his ideas and attempts to specify how and in what contexts Telemachus functions metapoetically throughout the text. 3 For a more complete overview of this division, see Martin (1993): 223. 4 For a detailed summary of scholarship on the development of Telemachus from the perspective of both Unitarians 2 understanding his narrative function and that of the characters with whom he interacts. Indeed, this goes beyond those characters whose presence in the epic are necessitated by the plot of the Telemachy, such as Nestor, Menelaus, and Helen. Telemachus serves a foil for the character with whom he interacts throughout the epic; the narrative presents oppositions between Telemachus and the suitors, particularly, and also Odysseus and Penelope to define each character. The prominent position and length of the Telemachy at the start of the poem bolster the importance of Telemachus’ characterization for interpretation of the thematic content of the epic.5 By introducing Telemachus
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