The Beginning of Story-telling of the Western Tradition: Homer's Narrative Structure

What's the difference between oral and written form of story-telling? How do Homer's poetic narratives set the canon for Western literature? We will walk through The Illiad and The Odyssey  together to find the answers.

Suggested Readings:
The Illiad
The Odyssey 
Troy [movie]
The Odyssey[movie]
Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method

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Transcript

10 years have passed since the fall of Troy, and yet the  hero Odysseus has not returned to his kingdom in Ithaca, as a large and rowdy mob of suitors have overrun hispalace, pillaging his land and coveting his wife Penelope who has remained faithful to her husband. Their son Telemachus is eager to throw out the suitors but has neither the confidence nor the experience. 

Thanks for turning in. I'm Claire Hennessy, a scholar podcasting from Southern California. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are perhaps the oldest yet most enduring narratives of World Literature. Today we will discuss its narrative features such as how the story is told and why its storytelling techniques are considered canonical for Western literature. 

You are listening to the Global Novel, a podcast that shares a critical lens on the narrative features of world literatures from antiquity to modernity and aims to deliver free education in literature to the world.

we will begin this episode by contextualizing where epic genre stands in human history as well as the nature of mythmaking itself. And from there we will focus on the meta narrative structure of these two epic poems. Last but not least, we will close read two important critiques. One of them is the scholarship of Sheila Murnagan, who wrote the editorial introduction for Odyssey, translated by Stanley Lombardo, and the other is Gerard Genette, noted author of narrative discourse: an essay in method.

Greek mythology usually concerns the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities of deities, heroes, and mythological creatures,  and significance of the ancient Greeks own cult and ritual practices. 

The Greek myths were initially propagated in the oral poetic tradition, most likely by Minoan and Mycenaean singers starting in the 18th century BC. Eventually, the myths of the heroes of the Trojan War and its aftermath became part of the oral tradition of Homer's epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, two poems by Homer's near contemporary Hesiod: The Theogony and The Works and Days contain accounts of the genesis of the world, the succession of divine rulers, the succession of human ages, the origin of human woes, and the origin of sacrificial practices. 

The achievement of epic poetry was to create story cycles, and as a result to develop a new sense of mythological chronology. Thus, Greek mythology unfolds as a phase in the development of the world of humans. 

The mythological history of the world may be divided into three or four broader periods. The first is the myth of origin, or “age of gods,” and the second is the age when gods and mortals mingle freely. And the third is the Age of Heroes, or heroic age, where divine activity was more limited. 

While the age of Gods often has been of more interest to contemporary students of myth, the Greek authors of the archaic and classical era have a clear preference for the Age of Heroes, establishing a chronology and record of human accomplishments after the question of how the world came into being is explained. Under the influence of Homer, the hero cult leads to a restructuring in spiritual life, manifest in the separation of the realm of the gods from the realm of the dead. 

An expert in the field, Dr. Sheila Murnagan considers the Odyssey as the product of a long poetic tradition that developed over several periods of early Greek history. The Trojan legend is a mythic account of the end of the first stage of ancient Greek history, known as the Bronze Age, after the widespread use of bronze rather than iron, which was not yet in common use, or the Mycenaean period after the city of Mycenae, one of the main power centers of that era. 

Mycenaean civilization developed in the centuries after 2000 BCE, which is approximately when Greek speaking people first arrived in the area at the southern end of Belkan Peninsula that we now know as Greece.

This civilization used to have a system of writing called a Syllabary, in which each symbol stands for a particular syllable, as opposed to an alphabet in which each symbol stands for a particular sound . 

This earliest Greek writing system is known to the present day scholars as Linear B , which is incised on clay tablets. Mycenaean civilization reached its height at about 600 BCE, and came to an end in a series of natural disasters and political disruptions about 400 years later, around 12,00 BCE, 

we do not really know what happened. But all of the main archaeological sites show some evidence of destruction, burning or hasty abandonment at about that time, and a sharp decline thereafter, in the ambition and complexity of their material culture. 

Among these is the site of Troy itself, which was discovered in the late 19th century. 

Such a cultural decline is known as the dark age. One result of the transition to the dark age was that writing, which was probably practiced in the Mycenaean period, only by a small class of professional scribes fell out of use, and the Greeks became once again a culture without writing. On the other hand, they had always relied and they continued to rely on oral communications as their central means of recalling, preserving and transmitting the historical memories, religious beliefs, and shared stories that in our culture would be committed to writing. 

This so-called Dark Age came to an end during a period roughly corresponding to the eighth century and 700 BCE. The cultural shift that would label the end of the Dark Age, and the beginning of the archaic period involved not a series of upheavals, as with the end of the Bronze Age, except for the emergence of a new activity in a variety of fields. 

A growth in population led to a wave of colonization, which established a Greek center sending out colonies to such places as the Black Sea, Sicily, Southern Italy, and southern France. 

This led to the development of institution designed to unite those communities culturally, and to reinforce a shared Greek or Pan-hellenic heritage, such as the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and the Olympic Games founded in 776 BC. 

Through their dealings with the Phoenicians, a Semitic people living in the present day Lebanon, the Greeks learned a new system of writing, not a syllabary like Linear B, but an alphabet—The alphabet which is still used to write Greek and which was adapted to become the Roman alphabet, now widely used for many languages, including English. 

This new way of writing Greek quickly became much more widespread than Linear B had been, and it was put to a greater variety of uses. Among these was the writing down of poetry, and it is generally believed among scholars that the Odyssey and a number of other surviving poems came into being in the written form in which we know them at the time. 

 what we know these poems in written form, we can see in their style, and in their narrative techniques traces of their origins. Although there is considerable disagreement among scholars over how close to the original these particular words maybe, specifically, these poems manifest a use of repeated elements, phrases, lines, group of lines and types of episodes that are an essential feature of a normal poet style. 

Because a poet who performs orally does not memorize and recite an unchanging artifact, but composes his song as he goes at the same rate at which he delivers it, he relies on a supply of stock elements, acquiring that supply is a key aspect of his training.

 Analysts of Homeric style have discovered that these repeated features from a library system involving both ready made whole lines and shorter phrases that allow the poet easy to generate new lines that fit the meter in which he composed, which is known as Dactylic Hexameter. 

A key step in that process was the point at which the traditions that were oral performance intersected with a new practice of writing, and the epics took on the written form in which we now know them. One of the main challenges now facing Homeric scholars is that of the figuring out to what extent the distinctive qualities of the Iliad and the Odyssey are due to the use of writing. On the one hand, the poems bear all the marks of oral style, which tend to disappear quickly once a poet learns to write. On the other hand, there are far too long to have ever been performed on a single occasion, like the ones depicted in the Odyssey, and there's considerable debate about whether the large scale design and complex structure exhibited by both the Iliad and the Odyssey could have been produced without the aid of writing. 

Most scholars believed that the poems were written down in the eighth century BC, when writing first became available. Others argue that this happened later, possibly in the sixth century BC, where we know that the official version of both epics were produced. 

Whenever they were actually written down, and however much they may have been shaped by writing, the Homeric epics were still primarily oral works, in the sense that they were regularly performed and were known to their audiences through performance well into the classical period. The process of transmission by which the Iliad and the Odyssey became what they are today, poems experienced almost exclusively through reading, whether in Greek or in translation is a long and complicated one. 

It starts with a first still mysterious moment when the epics were first written down, and encompasses many stages of editing and copying.

The biggest plot suspense in the Illiad and Odyssey is whether major characters follow their destinies which are usually dictated by prophecies. Readers would anticipate the outcome of that prophecy, or find resolution along with these characters to an uncertain, puzzling or mysterious world. In book nine of the Iliad, for example, Homer writes: "cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding, tripods all for the trading and towny headed stallions. But a man's life breath cannot come back again. Mother,  the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet tells me that two fates bear me on the day of my death. If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride and my glory dies". 

With these words, Achilles rejects the Embassy of Achean commanders who come to win him back to the war effort. His response here shows that Agamemnon's effrontery, which he discusses earlier in his speech does not constitute the sole reason for his refusal to fight. Achilles also fears of the consequence in store for him if he remains in Troy, his mother Thetis has told him that fate has given him two options, either live a short but glorious life in Troy or return to Pythia and live on in old age but obscurity. 

As he confronts this choice, the promise of gifts and plunder doesn't interest him at all. Because such material gifts can be traded back and forth, or even taken away as his prize Briseis has been. In contrast, the truly precious things in the world are those that cannot be bought or sold, seized or commodified in any way. These include glory and life itself. 

The choice that Achilles must take in this scene is between glory and life, it is not merely a matter whether to accept the gifts or to continue protesting Agamemnon's arrogance. At this point in the epic Achilles has chosen life over glory, and he explains that he plans to return to Pythia. Nevertheless, the allure of the glory later proves irresistible when he finds a compelling occasion for it, avenging the death of his beloved friend patroclus. Odysseus fate, however, is foretold quite differently, in book 11 of the Odyssey, Tiresias foretells Odysseus'  fate in the following quote, Odysseus, son of Laertis, Master of wills, why have you come leaving the sunlight to see the dead and destroy this place? move off from the pit and take away your sword, so I may drink the blood and speak truth to you. I drew back and slid my silver steadied sword into its sheath. 

After he had drunk the dark blood, the flawless seer rose and said to me, You seek a homecoming sweet as honey, shining Odysseus, but a God will make it a bitter, for I do not think you will elude the earthshaker, who has laid up wrath in his heart against you, furious because you blinded his son. Still you may just get home, though not without pain. 

You and your man if you curb your own spirit, and there is too when you beach your ship on Thranatia you will be marooned on an island in the violent sea and find there the cattle of Helio’s sun and his sheep grazing, leave these unharmed. Keep your mind on your homecoming and you may still reach Ithaca, though not without pain. But if you harmed them, I foretell Doom for you, your ship and your crew. And even if you yourself escape, you will come home late and badly having lost all companions and in another ship, you will find trouble in your house. Arrogant man devouring your wealth and courting your wife, yet vengeance will be yours. And after you have slayed the suitors in your hall, by rules or by sword, that you must go off again carrying abroad laded ore until you come to man who knew nothing of the sea, 

who eat their food unsalted and have never seen red pro ships or ores that wind them along and I will tell you a sure sign that you have found them. One you cannot miss. When you meet another traveler who thinks you're carrying a winnowing fan, that you must fix your ore in the earth and offer a sacrifice to Lord Poseidon around a bull and a bore in his prime that returned to your home and offer perfect sacrifice to the immortal gods who hold high heaven to each in turn and death will come to you off the sea. 

A death so gentle and carry you off. When you're worn out in sleek old age, your people prosperous all around you, all these will come true for you as I was told, unquote. 

By juxtaposing Odysseus' wanderings to the woes of these legendary figures, Homer both broadens the scope of his poem and further entrenches his hero in his culture's mythology and even being allowed to enter Hades or these spheres attains a privilege to transcendence status.

Odysseus's conversation with Achilles reveals a nuanced view of warfare , which is, Kleos in Greek or glory in English, an ideal and trait that is harder to find in the Iliad.

 Achilles declaration " I'd rather slave on earth for another man than rule down here over all the breathless dead" alludes to his dilemma depicted in the Iliad of choosing between earning glory on the battlefield but dying young and living out a long and uneventful life. Whereas the Iliad, which celebrates the glory of warfare, wholeheartedly endorses Achilles choice of glory over long life. Achilles Lament in book 11 of the Odyssey issues a strong caveat to this ethic of Kleos, which is the Greek word often translated into renown or glory. It is related to the English word loud and carries the implied meaning of what others hear about you. In the Iliad, the clash between Achilles and Agamemnon highlights one of the most dominant aspects of the ancient Greek value system, the vital importance of personal honor. 

A Greek hero learns Kleos through accomplishing great deeds. This change in Achilles' sentiment from one poem to the next is understandable given that as we have seen with Odysseus, the Odyssey tends to focus on characters in our lives. Yet Achilles doesn't completely shun the idea of Kleos from his warrior ethos. He still rejoices to hear that his son has become a great warrior. Kleos thus evolved from an accepted cultural value into a more complex and somewhat problematic ethical dilemma. Nevertheless, to struggle through this fundamental dilemma speaks to what it means to be human.

The Odyssey begins in  medias res, which in Latin means “middle of the things.” The story is told with prior events described through flashbacks and interruptions by the current narrator and the characters.  The modern edition of the Odyssey do not have a title for each chapter. However, in the classical period where scholars intensively studied Homer's works, they've divided the text into three sections, with each given its own title, book 1-4 constitute chapter one, called Telemachy, focusing on the perspectives of Telemachus. Part two is from books 9 to 12 with the title of Apollogoy, with Odysseus recalling his adventures to his Phoenician host. Part Three is entitled Nestrophobia, which means the slaughter of the suitors. 

This careful choice of an end point like the equally careful choice of a starting point is one of the many ways in which the Odyssey shows its self consciousness about storytelling as a sophisticated craft. 

Odysseus himself is a master storyteller who is at several points compared to a professional Bard, and who fully recognizes the effectiveness of artfully shaped narrative.

 In addition to his great account of his adventure's at Alcinous' banquet, which Alcinous finds so well told that he concludes that Odysseus could not be a liar. Odysseus tells many invented stories while on Ithaca, each carefully tailored to his audience, and designed with a particular aim in mind. 

Many other characters tell stories as well. Nestor and Menelaus tells Telemachus about their own and other experiences returning from Troy, Helen and Menelaus tell him stories about Odysseus in Troy. Both Penelope and one of the suitors tell the story of her trick with the shroud. And after the reunion, Penelope tells Odysseus the story of all she suffered in his absence. 

The pointed arrangement of these internal narratives within the larger plot is a defining feature of the Odyssey, and serves as the means by which the poem represents his own relationship to history and to the larger poetic tradition out of which it comes. For example, in book 24. The conversation between Achilles and Agamemnon functions as recounting and replenishing what abruptly ended in Iliad while providing a detailed a reconciliation between the two heroes. 

Therefore, the Odyssey seems to go out of his way to fill in the rest of the story of the Iliad. Not only does it give a comprehensive account of the returns of the Greeks. But it finishes the story of the war itself, recounting events that are implicit but still untold at the end of the Iliad, namely, the death and burial of Achilles, and the taking of Troy. 

Genette in his book narrative discourse has a very trenchant analysis on the anachronism in Homer's works, it goes by, quote, folklore narrative habitually conforms at least in his major articulations to a chronological order. But our Western literary tradition, in contrast, was inaugurated by a characteristic effect of anachrony. In the eighth line of the Iliad, the narrator having evoked the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, that he proclaims as the starting point of his narrative goes back about 10 days to review the cause of the quarrel in some 140 retrospective lines. We know that this beginning in medias res, 

followed by an expository return to an earlier period of time will become one of the formal topoi of epic, and we also know how faithfully the style of novelistic narration follows in this respect, the style of his remote ancestor, even in the heart of the realistic 19th century. Unquote. 

In this episode, we talked about the development of oral narrative form, as well as how narrative content and form together, restructured the ways in which the Iliad and the Odyssey's creator construes about the world, a world of mortal heroes. Thanks for listening.