OUP (2016) h/b 225pp £45 (ISBN 9780199589418)
This collection from the author of the excellent The Mortal Hero (California, 1984) is made up of twelve chapters, ten of which are reprints of articles in or contributions to journals or Festschriften over the last 45 years, some lightly revised. The central theme is the literary interpretation of the Iliad and Odyssey, plus one offering on the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.
Chapter 1 is a straight examination of the death of Simoeisius in Il. 4, anticipating Jasper Griffin’s treatment of Homeric pathos. In Chapter 2, S. uses the horses of Achilles episode in Il. 17 to bring out the contrast between humanity (Achilles’ mortality) and divinity. The third chapter places the Polyphemus story (Od. 9) in the context of similar folk tales, bringing out the double meaning of mētis/mē tis, while the fourth explores the resonances of Odysseus’ bow, acquired ultimately from Heracles, who outraged the laws of hospitality by killing his house guest Iphitus, with its use in slaying the suitors, who were offending the same laws. Chapter 5 deals again through the Hymn with the contrast between human and divine ‘in the context of “cosmic history”, with which all of early Greek epic resonates’.
So far so good, if somewhat unremarkable. Chapter 6 is a close analysis of intertextuality inherent in two kinds of conflict: first, Odysseus v. Irus (Od.18.46-7 = 83-4) and Paris v. Menelaus (Il.3.71-3 = 92.4), where comparison is triggered by the same metrical anomaly; and second, when in Od.22.61-7 Odysseus is shown as possessing Achillean characteristics, the language echoes Achilles’ famous rejection of Agamemnon’s gifts in Il.9.
Chapter 7, ‘A Cognitive Approach to Greek Metre’, is a largely technical investigation of the effect on audience expectation of violations of the metrical norm known as Hermann’s Bridge, and whether this can be explained by reference to recent advances in electro-encephalography. It is not certain how far measuring brain activity can help here. One can ‘explain’ the mental shock of witnessing a successful Cruyff turn in neurological terms without adding to the pleasurable surprise at its execution.
Chapters 8 and 9 are devoted to two of S.’s heroes, Milman Parry and Ioannis Kakridis, ‘who founded the two most fruitful 20th century approaches to Homeric epic’. S. uses Parry’s little known 1934 essay on ‘The Historical Method in Literary Criticism’ to tease out ‘the tension between the romantic anthropologist and the historical philologist’. Recent work in both disciplines, he remarks, would have helped Parry to reconcile these two sides of his academic nature. ’Twas ever thus. Kakridis is praised for inventing an approach to Homer (Neoanalysis) that resolves the old Analyst:Unitarian debate. His search for sources entailed both reconstructing a notional Achilleis to illuminate Homer’s portrayal of Patroclus, as well as searching in medieval and modern Greek folktales and popular culture. Though both methods have their critics, it is certainly true that both scholars ‘opened up the Homeric epics to new kinds of literary interpretation based on the poet’s ability to generate, and his audience’s ability to appreciate, meaningful departures from norms of language, style, narrative, and characterization’.
Chapters 10 and 11 deal with ‘reception’. Chapter 10 is a detailed comparison between Il.24 and an early Cavafy poem, ‘Priam’s Night-Journey’; and Chapter 11 (‘War – What is It Good For?’) examines three writers’ use of Homer to feed their anti-war stance, in particular Simone Weil, and then goes on to an appreciative study of Christopher Logue’s tremendously imaginative reworking of parts of the Iliad (now collected in one volume and reviewed in CfA, May 2016).
Chapter 12 is a thoughtful and at times sharply critical analysis of the history of Homer translations in American ‘Great Books’ college courses. While S. admits that these make ‘knowledge and culture accessible to all’, he maintains that they also take for granted, as pre-texts, traditional American myths and (supposed) Western values, especially as concerns the individual’s conflict with society, and as such are highly constrained and even illiberal. These simplistic interpretations should be corrected by study of the poems in their context. Surface reading is probably worse than no reading at all.
This slim volume, gathered from S.’s professional life, will certainly appeal to Homeric scholars and university libraries, and should be seriously considered by school libraries.
Anthony Verity