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1
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2
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- Contending with the outer world and the “others”
- Contending with the familiar world and the “neighbors”
- The two-edged protagonist
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3
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- When, precisely, does Odysseus return?
- Bodily return in book 12 (p. 233):
- They hoisted up Odysseus
unruffled on his bed, under his cover,
handing him overside still fast asleep,
to lay him on the sand…
- How much does that count?
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4
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- Recognition: “This is Odysseus”
- Re-establishing Odysseus in all the dimensions of his “extended body”
- Homecoming a return to the position, the role, of “Odysseus”
- Strategies of selfhood: negotiating identity
- Agamemnon, the bad example
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5
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- The brooch and the interview (p. 360)
- The scar (365-8)
- Odysseus’s bow
- “Like a musician, like a harper” (404)
- The bed (435)
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6
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- Beggar: parody of the heroic, ritual humiliation
- An utter denial of the “extended body” (reputation, wealth, associates,
most abilities)
- A series of temporary adopted “selves”
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7
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- “Wandering men tell lies for a night’s lodging” (251)
- The stories the Stranger tells about himself:
- To Athena (p. 238)
- To Eumaios: Krete (252-8)
- To Eumaois: cloak (262)
- To the suitors: Egypt (325)
- To Penelope: Krete, Dodona (358-363)
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8
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- And the stories told to Alkinoos?
- A reading-experiment
- Counter-intuitive, but what if?
- Our faith in the narrator, in the gods, in Odysseus, in Penelope…
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9
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- Or “an Odysseus,” as in “he’ll do”?
- Is identity functional or intrinsic?
- How known?
- Individual history
- Capabilities (Only Odysseus…)
- Individual networks of relations
- Marks, possessions
- Matching the fame (the story) of the hero
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10
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- No writing in the Odyssey?
- Too bad Odysseus wasn’t a speaker of English: we could read the scar on
his thigh as writing, namely the word “I”
- Through this “writing,” the memory (fame) of Odysseus and the person of
the tested stranger merge
- Putting a body to the name
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Notes
