Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Perfect Surveyor
- 1 The Eusynoptic Iliad: Visualizing Space and Movement in the Poem
- 2 Paths and Measures: Epic Space and the Odyssey
- 3 The World in the Hand: Anaximander, Pherecydes, and the Invention of Cartography
- 4 Map and Narrative: Herodotus's Histories
- 5 Losing the Way Home: Xenophon's Anabasis
- 6 Finding (Things at) Home: Xenophon's Oeconomicus
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Index Locorum
2 - Paths and Measures: Epic Space and the Odyssey
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Perfect Surveyor
- 1 The Eusynoptic Iliad: Visualizing Space and Movement in the Poem
- 2 Paths and Measures: Epic Space and the Odyssey
- 3 The World in the Hand: Anaximander, Pherecydes, and the Invention of Cartography
- 4 Map and Narrative: Herodotus's Histories
- 5 Losing the Way Home: Xenophon's Anabasis
- 6 Finding (Things at) Home: Xenophon's Oeconomicus
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Index Locorum
Summary
In the previous chapter, we considered how the iliad put forward the notion of a synoptic or cartographic view of space, and how, as a result, the Homeric plot might be visualized in the mind's eye as a kind of landscape. Following Aristotle, we noted that this kind of view of the plot is characteristic of Homer's poetry. In the Introduction and in Chapter 1, I tried to get to the heart of what this eusynoptic ideal really meant for epic storytelling through a reading of the panoptic points of view suggested in the Iliad by the invocation to the Muses before the Catalogue of Ships, the gods' view from Olympus, the Shield of Achilles, and the Trojan plain. Toward the end of the first chapter, I also explored the notion of the telos or endpoint in Homer's work, trying to see how it fit within the shape of a plot that is “protocartographic” or can be viewed as a whole from above. There, we saw that the line of the running track provided a useful medium for conceptualizing the size of the eusynoptic plot and for giving the reader a model with which to look toward the end.
It will not be my concern in this chapter to describe the protocartographic aspects of the Odyssey. The poem adheres to those basic properties that Aristotle laid out for it, but my interest will instead be focused on the small ways in which the Odyssey resists being categorized as a closed and unified system, especially at the very end of the poem.
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- Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative , pp. 65 - 96Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010