<p> CRITICAL SITUATION NOTES</p><p>A CRITICAL SITUATION unfolds whenever a textual representation presents us with something that conflicts with our beliefs, goes against our expectations, or violates some sense of order, normality, or rightness. • The critical situation that is inherent in the architecture of Odyssey comes from the collision of the two narrative situations starting the first half and the second half. Can they be reconciled? • Aristotle: Dialectical reasoning is reasoning from commonplaces or topoi, which are propositions that most people already believe, or are thought to believe, or that the “best” or “wisest” people believe. But they are not adopted because we know them to be true: it is just what we happen to believe.</p><p>Criticism and Crisis: What I have termed a “critical situation” may or may not lead to a crisis, but when it does, there are several possible reasons:</p><p>1. The text that precipitated it is already thought to have a certain protected status, but what it actually says does not support the commonplace understanding of it.</p><p>2. The problem in the text is one that may be inherently anxiety producing.</p><p>3. The problem may be that we just simple don’t know what to think about the text: it escapes us, confuses us, or otherwise resists our intelligence—and that can produce anxiety, anger, frustration, and so on.</p><p>Critical Situations as Crisis</p><p>The collision between Odyssey 1 & 13 calls at least these commonplaces into doubt: 1. That God or the Gods are all powerful 2. That God or the Gods are good 3. That God or the Gods do not make mistakes 4. That God or the Gods are wise. 5. That God or the Gods are just.</p><p>In Plato’s Ion, we have an ‘argument’ presented (it’s a really crummy argument) in which Plato has Socrates make use of the commonplace that Poems about the Gods are inspired by them.</p><p>REPUBLIC is one Critical situation after another, and all of these disciplines start from the crisis of LITERARY CRITICISM.</p>