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The paper proposes a solution to the problem with Odysseus' kingship in the Odyssey by maintaining that Odysseus is not officially considered dead. Consequently, Telemachus cannot inherit the position of king and Penelope must leave Odysseus' household before remarrying. After discussing the modern concept of legal death and previous interpretations of the Ithacan situation, the paper focusses on Athena's speech at 1.275–92. A close reading demonstrates that erecting a cenotaph to Odysseus would be tantamount to a modern declaration of death in absentia , since it will render Penelope a widow and Telemachus the head of the household. This legal convention chimes with the Homeric depiction of Hades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to offer some considerations on Telemachus' journey to Pylos and Sparta (Hom. Od. 1–4), interpreting it in the light of his social position as heir of a basileus. Can the beginning of the Odyssey represent a sort of formation for the young prince? And how does the text support this reading? After a brief review of the features of a Homeric basileus , it will be argued that the narrative presents the growth of Telemachus as that of a young prince who needs to comply with those features, and become acquainted with the heroic world he lives in at peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the interrelationship between two events taking place simultaneously in Odysseus' megaron : Phemius' performance and the conversation between Telemachus and Athena. I argue that at Hom. Od. 1.298–302 Athena, in her mention of Orestes' kleos , refers directly to Phemius' song that Telemachus can hear from where he is sitting. This reading sheds new light on the characters' receptions of Phemius' song. Between the well-known contrasting responses of the nearest and the farthest audiences – the suitors' silence and Penelope's over-reaction – stands Athena's cognitively constructive use of it, by which the goddess attempts to establish a shared understanding with Telemachus, whose kleos is one of the main concerns of her visit to Ithaca. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses some social and psychological aspects involved in two of Odysseus' lying tales (Od. 14.192–359 and 19.165–248). If one understands remembering as reconstructing the past, this reconstructive element leaves room for forgery and deception. Telling credible lies involves many of the same cognitive structures used in the sharing of authentic personal memories. Odysseus' fake autobiographical stories in the guise of a Cretan beggar offer an interesting case study of this overlap between reconstructed memories and credible lies. Drawing on recent studies on autobiographical memory and on parallel examples in our contemporary world, the aim of this paper is to analyse some narrative and psychological features of Odysseus' fake memories, as well as the social functions that they fulfil in the fiction of the poem. It will be shown that, speaking with Eumaios, Odysseus builds his story using a conventional structure common to 'truthful' autobiographies in the fictional world of the epics, while with Penelope his autobiographical memories are co-narrated during the dialogue, guided by the emotions mutually aroused between narrator and narratee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A close reading of the contexts of several Homeric passages reveals that Homer often uses εἰδώς with ironic force. This realization sheds light on several passages discussed herein, including: 1) Homer's description of the location of Ithaca, which is shown to be Odysseus' strategic lie that directs the Phaeacians to the local stronghold (nearby Dulichium), and 2) the manuscript reading of Parmenides B1.3, which is shown to harbour no internal conflict even if its εἰδότα φῶτα ('one who knows') is in a state of confusion (ἄτῃ), because εἰδότα can signal incomplete or confused knowledge, or even a lack of it. Other literary clues in Parmenides B1 are shown to support this reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies and defends an intertextual approach to Heraclitus B51 DK, the 'bow-lyre fragment'. It argues that the fragment alludes to the climactic scene of the Odyssey in which the hero strings the bow and is likened to an expert lyre-player (Od. 21.404–11). It then explores some implications of this point for our understanding of the significance of the fragment, of the sixth-century reception of the Odyssey and of Parmenides' reception of Heraclitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is intrinsically plausible that the Odyssey , which freely uses realistic details of many aspects of life on and beside the sea, was informed by real seafaring experience. This paper corroborates that hypothesis. The first part catalogues parallels between details of Odyssean and real-world seafaring. Odyssean type-scenes in particular echo real practice. The second part argues that three larger episodes have real-world parallels—the visit to the Lotos Eaters anticipates incidents of sailors deserting in friendly ports; the escape from Skylla and Charybdis demonstrates a safe course through a turbulent strait, and the encounter with Ino / Leukothea foreshadows the contemporary phenomenon of a sensed presence during a crisis. The pattern of coincidence between the Odyssey and the real world of seafaring constitutes a cumulative argument that suggests that those episodes in particular, and the poem as a whole, was informed by that world—a conclusion with consequences both for our understanding of the poem, and for our knowledge of the early Mediterranean maritime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note argues for a previously unnoticed allusion in Terence's Andria to Odysseus and the Sirens, in a wish expressed by the play's old man that his son will escape the alluring clutches of the sex-labourer next door. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In NTQ 123 (August 2015) Michael Walling, Artistic Director of Border Crossings, wrote about his production of This Flesh is Mine, adapted by Brian Woolland from the Iliad. Here he discusses When Nobody Returns, based on The Odyssey, a co-production with Palestine's Ashtar Theatre that reflected contemporary events in a way that was not allegorical but allusive. He explores how the play related to its 2016 context in terms of the refugee crisis, the idea of occupation, and the concept of return. As well as describing the generation of meaning through the interaction of text and context, the piece explores the production in relation to Border Crossings’ wider programme of work, which also includes community engagement with refugees and policy consultation.When Nobody Returns was written by Brian Woolland and co-produced by Border Crossings, Ashtar Theatre, and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. It was funded by Arts Council England, British Council Palestine, RBKC's Nour Festival, Arts University Bournemouth, and Rose Bruford College. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The study of lyric epiphany, essential to any coordination of sociolinguistics and literature, is defined in terms of five considerations (e.g., its role in political rhetoric), and linguistic criteria such as phonic compression. One track in the argument deals with lyric epiphany in ordinary language (e.g., M.L. King's speeches), in prose (e.g., Cather and Tolstoy), and in the long poem. The second, intermittently intersecting track consists of intense analyses of four cases of linguistic epiphany in The Odyssey that involve (1) semantically ramifying root symbols such as the olive in Greece, (2) simile concentration, as in the reverse similes that commute antithetical subcategories, (3) phonic texturing (e.g., alliteration, phonaesthesia), and as a limiting case, (4) epiphany through chiasmus. The conclusions suggest the universal, cross-language and cross-cultural reality of lyric epiphany (e.g., not just classic Russian and Homeric Greek, but Quechua, Eskimo, and Sanskrit and Hebrew religious texts). Lyric epiphany is a subtype of generic epiphany: an intuition or revelation of truth values beyond language and empirical experience. Lyric epiphany, while a component of classical poetics - both Western and Eastern - and a subcategory of ideologies of Primitivism and, within that, of Modernism, is also, like the human body, part of the human experience that can and should be studied as part of cultural linguistics and socio-linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]