The Odyssey is a central text in any discussion of ‘the poet's voice’ in Greek poetry. Not only is Homer throughout the ancient world a figure of authority and poetic pre-eminence against whom writers establish their own authorial voice, but also the text of the Odyssey demonstrates a concern with the major topics that will recur throughout this book. For the Odyssey highlights the role and functioning of language itself, both in its focus on the hero's lying manipulations and in its marked interest in the bewitching power of poetic performance. It is in the Odyssey, too, that we read one of the most developed narratives of concealed identity, boasted names and claims of renown, and the earliest extended first-person narrative in Greek literature. Indeed, the Odyssey is centred on the representation of a man who is striving to achieve recognition in his society, a man, what's more, who is repeatedly likened to a poet.

In this opening chapter, I shall begin by looking at the fundamental issues of recognition and naming, and then discuss the interplay of the hero's lying tales with the poet's own voice as narrator. I shall be particularly concerned with the relation between representation in language (story-telling, naming, the exchanges of social discourse) and the construction of (social) identity.