Actually the Odyssey has many passages that make me shudder. The Iliad, which begins with warriors who diss each other like professional wrestlers - that's more my style.
But Wilson has a point. We can read works with passages like this for the same reason we listen to outlaw ballads, i.e., to broaden our sensibilities. And with Tom Dooley, at least, justice is done.
We are, after all, the boss is here: we do not have to construct a mental image of the author from their words that corresponds closely to the actual author, and we do not have to believe that the author is a reliable narrator
I think the author of the Homeric works probably is "reliable" - or at least not intending to deceive us - when he or she reports on the mores, values, norms, etc. of heroic culture. Of course there's no way of sorting out how much these were the actual standards of Homer's age or of a lost or imagined age that the author/s find normative. Homer perhaps makes up stories and characters - but they are characters for whom these standards are true measures, whether they embody them or not. He certainly thought that his courtly audience should take the same view.
One can, as you suggest, stand apart from this expectation - and in the end we must - but to stand too far apart would be not to enter into these works and to lose a lot thereby. I first read them in children's versions and sensed, when I wasn't living and dying with Hector and Achilles or genuinely frightened by the Cyclops, that they contained patterns (as did my other favorite books) for being a grown-up or a hero. The real Homer (that is, Lattimore's translations - the Iliad, in Columbia Hum 101, was literally my first college assignment) came as quite a shock. But my sense of it as an intended norm didn't change, even as I questioned its validity.
But as I write this I realize I'm making it way more clear a case than it was to me then. In that sense I'm a less reliable narrator than Homer.
Thank you. It's a fascinating and disturbing passage, whose memory I had repressed completely. It makes me wonder what Mary Douglas (of 'Purity and Danger') would have made of it. (It wouldn't surprise me if Douglas did consider it, and I've repressed that too!)
We live very different lives than the original audience of this epic. Originally, this was probably presented to an audience with the story told aloud. The twenty four books must have taken a long time to present, a real miniseries. The killing of the enslaved women came at the end after the fantastic adventures that Odysseus had. I wonder whether the original listeners and recounters believed in Cyclops, Sirens, Circe, and the other wonders. Perhaps, this conditioned their attitude toward the hangings; did they think it was just another tall tale that seafarers are known for?
We, of course, don’t believe in sea monsters, but our times have certainly seen great suffering by innocents during conflicts.
Actually the Odyssey has many passages that make me shudder. The Iliad, which begins with warriors who diss each other like professional wrestlers - that's more my style.
But Wilson has a point. We can read works with passages like this for the same reason we listen to outlaw ballads, i.e., to broaden our sensibilities. And with Tom Dooley, at least, justice is done.
We are, after all, the boss is here: we do not have to construct a mental image of the author from their words that corresponds closely to the actual author, and we do not have to believe that the author is a reliable narrator
I think the author of the Homeric works probably is "reliable" - or at least not intending to deceive us - when he or she reports on the mores, values, norms, etc. of heroic culture. Of course there's no way of sorting out how much these were the actual standards of Homer's age or of a lost or imagined age that the author/s find normative. Homer perhaps makes up stories and characters - but they are characters for whom these standards are true measures, whether they embody them or not. He certainly thought that his courtly audience should take the same view.
One can, as you suggest, stand apart from this expectation - and in the end we must - but to stand too far apart would be not to enter into these works and to lose a lot thereby. I first read them in children's versions and sensed, when I wasn't living and dying with Hector and Achilles or genuinely frightened by the Cyclops, that they contained patterns (as did my other favorite books) for being a grown-up or a hero. The real Homer (that is, Lattimore's translations - the Iliad, in Columbia Hum 101, was literally my first college assignment) came as quite a shock. But my sense of it as an intended norm didn't change, even as I questioned its validity.
But as I write this I realize I'm making it way more clear a case than it was to me then. In that sense I'm a less reliable narrator than Homer.
Very well put...
Thank you. It's a fascinating and disturbing passage, whose memory I had repressed completely. It makes me wonder what Mary Douglas (of 'Purity and Danger') would have made of it. (It wouldn't surprise me if Douglas did consider it, and I've repressed that too!)
We live very different lives than the original audience of this epic. Originally, this was probably presented to an audience with the story told aloud. The twenty four books must have taken a long time to present, a real miniseries. The killing of the enslaved women came at the end after the fantastic adventures that Odysseus had. I wonder whether the original listeners and recounters believed in Cyclops, Sirens, Circe, and the other wonders. Perhaps, this conditioned their attitude toward the hangings; did they think it was just another tall tale that seafarers are known for?
We, of course, don’t believe in sea monsters, but our times have certainly seen great suffering by innocents during conflicts.