An Odyssey in Fractals?

Like its predecessor the Iliad, the Odyssey contains any number of proto-novelistic elements: its rich description of seemingly trivial phenomena (for example, the description of  Odysseus’ scar along with the backstory as to how he sustained that scar in Book XIX); narrative presented through dialogue; and of course intimations of the psychological state of various characters through understated actions. It is a delicious slip of the tongue when even professional readers of text refer to the narrative as “a novel” or its indiscrete books as “chapters.” To some literary critics these malapropisms are a natural result of the genre of the novel’s fully-formed birth from the thigh of the epic. Nevertheless, as we will see this semester, generic distinctions are much more porous than theorists might like them to be, and this seems especially true when one engages with the psychological sophistication of a familial epic like the Odyssey.        

In her essay “Genre as World System: Epic and Novel on Four Continents” (2006), Wai Chee Dimock uniquely problematizes the critical tendency of proclaiming rather rigid generic definitions. In response, Dimock offers a nuancing solution to that problem. Beginning by summarizing some of the more compelling views on generic construction since Plato, Dimock notes that this rigidity does a disservice to generic messiness. She summarizes Benedetto Croce’s view that the problem of genre is in its desire to  “only want to label it [i.e. a text]” and not, in Croce’s words ask “before a work of art if it be expressive and what it expresses” (86). Dimock seeks different “lines of differentiation” (86) and offers a few approaches toward avoiding genre’s fault of pigeonholing a text and consequently diminishing it. Drawing on Derrida’s view that generic law is in essence only honored in its breach, Dimock seeks to “invoke genre less as a law, a rigid taxonomic landscape, and more as a self-obsoleting system, a provisional set that will always be bent and pulled and stretched by its many subsets” (86). 

For Dimock, classification becomes more about “interconnection” or “kinship” than affinity. She explains this as  “a remote spectrum of affinities, interesting when seen in conjunction, but not themselves organically linked” (86). Although this may seem like a moot point, what it suggests for the literary critic and genre theorist is that, real or not, the supposed linearity of genre is less interesting than the overlapping twists and turns of generic conventions. Borrowing metaphors from fractal geometry and Wittgenstein’s idea of kinship (first applied to the commonalities of games) Dimock offers a less rigid definition of what genre might be that in fact thickens the web of interconnection that might be viewed between Dante’s Commedia and Gilgamesh--beyond the mere assertion that each text is an example of "epic."

Dimock’s point is easily applicable to a text like the Odyssey in its relation to other narratives in the western canon, as well as the many rewritings and subsequent iterations of the Odysseus narrative in world literature. What is the relationship between the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and Fitzgerald’s translation of the epic poem that we have been reading in class? Sure, they are examples of different media but is there an illocutionary level that unites the two? When asked about the film in various interviews, the Coen Brothers have replied that they did not in fact seek to rewrite the Odyssey in their telling the story of Ulysses Everett Mcgill, but as the parallels serendipitously became more and more pronounced in making the film, they played those parallels up as best they could. (Of course, strikingly absent from the film is Telemachus, an important “co-star” in the Odyssey’s narrative, if not the equally central protagonist.)

How might you apply some of Dimock’s ideas to the Odyssey itself or that narrative’s relationship to other texts and narratives? How might Dimock’s unique employment of the  concept of a “fractal” to literature and genre theory be applied to the rewriting of such narratives? The questions posed by Dimock's essay will be particularly important when we begin to turn our focus to the "contamination" found in medieval epic and the related romance.

(Dimock, Wai Chee. “Genre as World System: Epic and Novel on Four Continents.” Narrative 14.1 (2006): 85-101. Print. )

Ulysses Books I and II: Who Is the Real Hero of the Odyssey?

As the narrative of the Odyssey begins (in medias res as is typical for epic poetry), ten years have already passed since the ten-year war waged by the Greeks against Troy had ended. This means that Odysseus has been absent from his home of Ithaca for a total of twenty years, plenty of time for his household to presume him dead. If you recall, the Spartan Helen's abduction by Paris precipitated the Greek siege of Troy. By the time at which the  Odyssey is set, Helen is already at home with her husband Menelaus when Odysseus' son, Telemachus, visits them (in Book IV) during the Bildungsroman that forms the early books of the text (often referred to as the "Telemachiad"). In fact, all of the Greek survivors except for the crafty Ithacan Odysseus have long since returned to their homes. Since he is assumed dead, suitors arrive at his palace in order to court Penelope, thus threatening the position of Telemachus, Odysseus’ young son. But we should note that Telemachus is no child at this juncture of the narrative; rather he is a young man who has not yet seized his adulthood. I would suggest that the Odyssey is as much concerned with Telemachus development into a man worthy to be Odysseus' heir as it is concerned with its eponymous yet frequently absent hero.
This point is underscored by the frequent comments regarding Telemachus' physical or aural resemblance to his father.

The Odyssey not only begins with the traditional Invocation to the Muses but it also summarizes both the preceding narrative of the Iliad, of which this text is a sequel, and certain important and specific character traits about Odysseus. We learn three things about him through the poem’s first ten lines alone: Odysseus’ skill in battle and argument (the common Homeric epithet being "Wily Odysseus"); his longstanding wandering; and his dedication to his men and desire to bring them home as well. His men are fools who eat of the sheep of Lord Helios resulting in their destruction. Still as a modern reader I cannot help being somewhat skeptical of Odysseus stated desire to return to Ithaca. Perhaps my reading of Odysseus as a figure is anachronistically colored by Dante's medieval rewriting of the hero as an mad wander seeking knowledge without a telos ("il folle volo di Ulisse" from Inferno XXVI, et passim).   

The poem is organized from Olympus, that is to say that it is presented as divinely structured and ordained. The Muses themselves are divine and the poet's invocation of them is not only formulaic but also religious. This betrays an aspect of the epic of which we will see this semester. Epic in many ways is the synthesis of human and divine desire and production. The human poet calls upon the divine Muses in order to become their mouthpiece, their vessel that transmits the story of a semi-divine being to the realm of men. Zeus and Athena favor Odysseus, thus he has divine aid, but on the other hand, Poseidon is against him. Poseidon is the god of the sea and the Odyssey is an epic of the sea, whereas its predecessor, the Iliad is a story of the land. The question of divine providence versus human free will is paramount in the opening lines as the question is posed by the gods as to why people take them to task for bad things that happen to them. This is the problem of theodicy that confronts us in all literature and perhaps all of life, but it is posed here as a theological (in the literal sense) debate. 

Notice Zeus’ monologue (Book I, vv. 45-59). The poet's placing of this fundamental question of who is to blame for the bad things in the world in the soliloquy of a god is important as it underscores that fortune, fate, and will all play equal parts in human destiny. Again, we have a partnership between the mythic, the historical, and the individual that is forged in epic narratives. And what about Telemachos? What is the relationship between father and son in the Odyssey and what does it imply about the relationship between the divine and man? Notice that Telemachos reluctance to claim his own role as Odysseus' successor comes from a belief that everything--good or evil--comes from the gods and must be ordained by them. Nevertheless, later in the text Telemachos comes to learn that human destiny is forged through a combination of fate (i.e. forces outside of human control), and will. It is then, and seemingly only then, that the epithet "godlike Telemachus" begins to be used in his regard.

Among other things, the Odyssey presents a narrative that seeks to answer the question of how a hero is forged. Many of the suitors are the children of valiant and noble men, but they themselves largely lack those qualities (Amphinomos being an exception, though it doesn't really serve him; as an aside etymologically his name means "both mores" suggesting he has a more bifurcating sense of morality than his counterparts). The text implicitly questions whether Telemachos can will himself to become a man of his father's strength, wiles, and courage, or whether he much like the suitors is doomed by fate. In the end, we learn the answer. But Telemachus is only able to complete the task with the help of Athena and his father. Does this suggest the limitation of will in human action and the supremacy of fate or the contrary? That is to say, does the text suggest that will and fate have a certain reciprocal relationship in forging individual destiny?