Re: The Odyssey - question for all!
More interesting stuff about The Odyssey from Louden's "Homer's Odyssey and the Near East". This is for those of you who find your enjoyment and understanding heightened by broader analyses. ALSO, this is all about comparing The Odyssey to other Near Eastern myths, mainly those found in the Bible. Sometimes comparing The Odyssey to other similar stories aids understanding of Homer OR the understanding of the other stories. It is totally fascinating to see how closely the Bible has been modeled on The Odyssey with the polemic twists that are intended to promote Yahweh as the “only true god.”
I’ve cleaned up a lot of the scan errors but there will be some. It was too tedious to remove all the footnote numbers, so just ignore them. Some characters represent symbols that didn’t transfer to the available forum fonts.
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Romance
THE ODYSSEY AND THE MYTH OF JOSEPH (Gen. 37, 39–47); Autolykos and Jacob
Most of the different subgenres of myth The Odyssey employs are subordinated under the broader rubric of “the return of Odysseus.” Odysseus’ return, his voyages from Troy to Ithaka, and vanquishing the suitors constitutes the organizing framework of the entire epic (much as the strife between Akhilleus and Agamemnon provides the larger framework within which the Iliad incorporates other different types of myth),1 from Book 1 to Book 24. Even theoxeny, in this respect, is subordinated under “the return of Odysseus” because the destruction of the suitors is presented as necessary to the hero regaining control of his home.
The Odyssey has a specific term for a hero’s return from Troy, nostos.2 But The Odyssey does not use nostos to denote a type of myth, but merely to designate the act of a return. The Odyssey uses nostos not only of Odysseus’ return, but also those of Nestor, Agamemnon, and Aias, narratives that employ radically different motifs, and which are, in fact, different genres of myth than that which The Odyssey uses for Odysseus’ return. The other nostoi do not help construct a context for interpreting Odysseus’ return, except by serving as foils (Menelaus’ nostos is a partial exception, containing several motifs in common with Odysseus’ own return). Instead, The Odyssey figures Odysseus’ nostos within the well-defined conventions of another kind of traditional narrative, romance.
From the first mention of Odysseus trapped on a distant isle (Od. 1.14–15), to the recognition scene with his father, Laertes (Od. 24.216– 355), romance is the other mythic type that, along with theoxeny, exerts the greatest influence on the structure and plot of The Odyssey.
As noted in Chapter 2, the negative theoxeny that starts in Book 1 is not concluded until Odysseus slays the suitors in Book 22.
Romance is started up in Book 1, and not concluded until Book 24.
These two most important genres of myth provide the majority of the poem’s episodes and motifs, and are the reason the epic gives the impression of having two endings.
While the destruction of the suitors concludes the theoxeny, the emotional recognition scenes with Penelope (Book 23) and Laertes (Book 24) conclude The Odyssey’s use of romance.
Not only do many episodes, and overarching movements of the poem, employ motifs and type-scenes frequent in romance, but several smaller, inset narratives, Eumaios’ tale (Od. 15.403–84) and stories the disguised Odysseus tells (Od. 13.253–86; 14.192–359; 17.415–44; 19.165–202 + 221–48 + 268–99; 24.244–79 + 303–14) also utilize romance elements.
Why would The Odyssey employ romance?
As with theoxeny, romance narratives feature a protagonist who is rewarded for acting virtuously.
In this respect the romance story type illustrates and supports Zeus’ opening thesis about mortals’ responsibility (Od. 1.32–4), and Athena’s opening remarks, to which Zeus quickly agrees, about Odysseus as an antitype to Aigisthos (Od. 1.45–62). However, romance, like theoxeny, does not typically focus on heroic acts. But again, as with theoxeny, The Odyssey subordinates romance under the governing norms of heroic epic, imbuing it with a heroic modality by having a warrior hero as protagonist.
Though romance is not usually thought of as a type of myth, it has a natural affinity with myth because a miraculous return from apparent death, and reunion with family, is at the core of romance. The theme of the miraculous return is central to ancient myth, whether in heroes, such as Herakles, Theseus, Odysseus, and Aeneas, who return from the land of the dead, or in a figure such as Orpheus, whose return depends on music, rather than heroism. A narrative with an apparent return from death thus resembles myth at a foundational level, regardless of other aspects of its plot.
I define romance as a narrative with the following characteristics (though a given romance may lack one or more features).
The protagonist is regarded as a moral man who has the favor of the supreme god.
Through his own mistake, however, he becomes separated from his family for many years, usually the equivalent of a generation.
He is trapped in a foreign land, a marvelous, exotic place, for all or much of this period. His imprisonment suggests thematic parallels with being in the underworld.
Because of his piety the gods help reunite him with his family, who presume he is dead.
He returns home with fabulous treasures.
His return from such a long absence and reunion with family resembles a triumph over death.
Romances climax in a recognition scene, in which the protagonist, in highly emotional circumstances, is reunited with a beloved family member.
Romances depict a world in which the moral are rewarded and the immoral are punished in accord with the gods’ dictates.
In its larger sweep a romance depicts a cycle, the ending of which implies a return to the beginning, a reunion with a previous state. The reunion suggests a healing, a miraculous restoration of wholeness for the protagonist.
As with many types of myth, romance tends to have a patently unrealistic, or perhaps it would be better to say, idealistic structure. A key instance of this is its tendency to have a clear stratification of characters as good or evil. Characters on Ithaka are either loyal to Odysseus or they are disloyal.
The classic film, It’s a Wonderful Life, which might be thought of as the Great American Romance, has a number of structural features reminiscent of The Odyssey, including a similar stratification of characters by their moral standing. The film opens with a divine council, in which the angels, Franklin, Joseph, and Clarence, discuss the larger fate of the protagonist, George Bailey, much as do Zeus and Athena in The Odyssey’s opening divine council. Clarence goes on to play a role more than a little like that of Athena in The Odyssey. When Clarence grants George’s wish never to have been born the film even presents a modified descent to the underworld, with the town of Bedford Falls now turned into the demonic Pottersville. When all the selfless acts that George Bailey performed through his life, including saving several lives, never happened, the town instead receives its guiding impulse from the selfish Potter, the embodiment of greed.
Now the suitors run the whole town, from The Odyssey’s perspective. Greek literature has the single richest and most influential tradition of romance. Though The Odyssey is the earliest representative, the classical period has Euripides’ Helen, Ion, Iphigenia in Tauris, and the Alcestis (though it lacks the typical gap in time of a generation). The prose romances of Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius, and others prompted the tremendous vogue for romance in the sixteenth century.
But Greece is not the only ancient culture to develop romance. Ancient Indian literature has several romances including the acknowledged masterpiece of classical Sanskrit drama, Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, which, in its inclusion of a Yavani, a Greek woman, suggests unexpected ties with Greek culture. “Yavani” is the same word, mutatis mutandis, that Old Testament myth uses for Greeks, Javan (Gen. 10:2; Ezek. 27:13, et al.), both words reflecting the older form of “Ion,” or “Ionic.”
Throughout this chapter I will adduce parallels from romances that post-date both The Odyssey and Genesis, especially from Euripides (though he may not post-date Genesis as we have it) and Shakespeare.
Romance remains a remarkably conservative or stable narrative organization over the millennia. Hence, an instance of a given motif in Euripides, Shakespeare, or other author, can help us understand how the same motif works in The Odyssey and Genesis.
Egypt
Near Eastern narratives also offer a considerable context for romance. The ancient romance offering the most significant parallels for The Odyssey is the myth of Joseph (Gen. 37, 39–50). Before investigating the valuable context it provides, however, we first note that both Greek and Israelite romance have thematic connections with Egypt. Egypt provides not only the central setting for the myth of Joseph, but for The Odyssey’s tale of Menelaus’ wanderings (Od. 4.83, 126–30, 351–586; 3.300), two of the tales the disguised Odysseus tells (Od. 14.246–86, 17.426–42), as well as the name of an elder Ithakan, Aiguptios (Od. 2.15). In subsequent Greek romance a connection with Egypt is even stronger, from Euripides’ Helen, to Heliodorus’ An Ethiopian Story, and the fragments of Sesonchosis (Reardon 1989: 819–21). Romance clearly has an affinity with things Egyptian. Or we might say that, since romance has a central concern to set part of its story in an exotic locale, Egypt has long served as the default exotic setting. But romance’s association with Egypt may go deeper than that. A few Egyptian narratives that predate the Genesis account of Joseph suggest that some elements of romance may have originated in Egypt.10
{Here one thinks about the older Egypt as described by Wilkens' in Where Troy Once Stood. Of course, this analysis takes nothing like that into account, but we should keep it in mind.}
The Tale of Sinuhe (Hallo 2003: 77–82, Pritchard 1969: 18–22)11 features as its protagonist a royal attendant who flees from Egypt because he fears turmoil at the court. He makes his way to Byblos, settling in Asia, apparently among the Hyksos. He prospers, becomes a leader, defeats a champion warrior, but after many years, more than a generation (he now has grown children in his adopted homeland), is homesick and wants to return to Egypt. Receiving permission from the Pharaoh to do so, he returns, escorted by the Pharaoh’s men, but leaving his children and family in Asia. The tale offers the earliest instance of such standard romance motifs as the protagonist’s absence from home for a generation, the virtuous man prospering after a period of difficulty, and the emotional return home. At the same time, however, it lacks other hallmarks such as the reunion with family, and the use of complex, highly emotional recognition scenes to depict this. Sinuhe’s desire for his homeland is stronger than his desire for his own family. Back in Egypt he has a recognition scene, but with the princesses of the court (his superiors), not with any family members. Consequently, the scene is devoid of the profound emotions normally found in a romance’s climactic recognition scene.
A second Egyptian narrative, The Shipwrecked Sailor (Hallo 2003: 83–5), employs even more of what will become key romance motifs. Here the protagonist is an attendant of a court official, who, to cheer up his despondent lord, tells the tale of what earlier happened to him. He is at sea with a crew of 120 sailors, when a storm suddenly wrecks his ship, killing everyone aboard except the protagonist. He washes up on an island, a virtual paradise, with food that grows there as if tended. He learns the island is ruled by a prophetic serpent, who tells him he shall stay on the island for four months, and not to worry (lines 133–5):
If you are brave and control your heart, you shall embrace your children, you shall kiss your wife, you shall see your home. It is better than everything else.
The attendant vows to make sacrifices to the serpent when he reaches home (“I shall slaughter oxen for you as burnt offering”), which the serpent says will be unnecessary.
When the four months have passed, a ship comes for the attendant, as the serpent had prophesied. The serpent gives him all kinds of treasures when he leaves, and the ship takes him home.
Though the tone of the tale and the principal characters have little in common with Homeric epic, nonetheless, The Shipwrecked Sailor features a number of elements found in The Odyssey and central to romance conventions. There is not only the generic motif of the shipwreck, but the more specific subtype in which the protagonist is the only survivor of a large group of men, as The Odyssey presents with Odysseus at the end of Book 12, and, in slightly different form, in Book 13. After their shipwrecks both protagonists come ashore on paradise-like islands ruled by a god. The serpent god is beneficent, and broadly parallels several of Kalypso’s tendencies. But in his prophecies the serpent also serves functions very like those of Teiresias in The Odyssey, and, given the brevity of the myth, we should not be surprised if one character serves functions that in The Odyssey are performed by separate entities.
Perhaps most surprising of all the parallels, however, are the lines quoted above, set in one of the serpent god’s prophecies. The lines sum up much of what is central to romance, the return home and reunion with family, but also strike notes particularly reminiscent of one of The Odyssey’s central themes, the importance of self-control, “if you. . . control your heart . . . you shall see your home.” This could almost serve as a shorthand version of Teiresias’ prophecy of Odysseus’ homecoming (Od. 11.100–37), which highlights the episode on Thrinakia, in which Odysseus’ self-control will enable him to refrain from eating Helios’ cattle. Teiresias concludes by mentioning sacrifice Odysseus must perform to Poseidon, but that his people will flourish around him, and he will die at a ripe old age. The serpent god rather similarly concludes, “You will embrace your children. You will flourish at home, you will be buried” (line 169). The protagonist returns home with considerable treasure given him by the serpent, who now suggests broad parallels with the island-dwelling Phaiakians, who similarly escort Odysseus home laden with their gifts. The attendant’s role also broadly suggests some aspects of Eumaios’ relationship with Odysseus, each telling a tale within a tale, with his master as audience.
A third Egyptian narrative, The Tale of the Two Brothers has an earlier version of the motifs Genesis presents in the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (Gen. 39:6–20).15 An older brother’s wife propositions the younger brother, and, when he refuses her, falsely accuses him of rape. Much of the rest of the narrative develops into less relevant areas, and I would not necessarily classify it as a romance, as I do the Tale of Sinuhe and The Shipwrecked Sailor. But it has further common ground with the myth of Joseph, and thus, if indirectly, additional relevance to romance. There is conflict between the brothers, causing the younger brother to go away, which, as discussed below, suggests central parallels to the myth of Joseph.
The myth of Joseph and the Tale of Sinuhe both present instances of romance involving the intersection of Egyptian and West Semitic culture. The protagonist in The Tale of Sinuhe first sees himself as quite distinct from the peoples he encounters whom he refers to as “Asiatics.” The Egyptians define themselves as distinct from “Asiatic” culture, by which they apparently mean West Semitic cultures that would include the later Israelites, and what the Greeks will call Phoenicians. The tale has references to defensive installations designed to safeguard Egypt from “Asiatics” (line 17). Yet eventually Sinuhe assimilates with these peoples and, once he has returned to the Pharaoh’s court, the princesses refer to him as an “Asiatic” (line 266). The Odyssey has similar references to West Semitic culture, the Phoenicians/Sidonians (Od. 4.84, 618; 13.285; 14.288; 15.118, 425, 473), against whom the Greeks define themselves in opposition, as do the Egyptians in the Tale of Sinuhe.
THE MYTH OF JOSEPH (Gen. 37, 39–47)
It has generally escaped notice that the most relevant ancient parallel to The Odyssey’s use of romance is the myth of Joseph (Gen. 37, 39–47). A few commentators have noted Joseph’s myth’s basic affinities with romance,17 but as far as I know there is no substantive previous engagement of it and The Odyssey’s use of romance.
Joseph’s myth is essentially romance without the heroic modality that The Odyssey develops for its protagonist. Instead of a heroic modality, the myth of Joseph has imposed other concerns, providing etiologies for the Israelites’ presence in Egypt, and offering interconnections with other OT myths of the patriarchs. But beyond the absence of a heroic modality, the parallels are otherwise extensive and profound. Both narratives contain all of the motifs defined above as the constituent elements of romance.
The protagonist is regarded as a moral man who has the favor of the supreme god. The Odyssey articulates this key point when Zeus himself emphasizes the singular extent of Odysseus’ sacrifices at Troy (Od. 1.65–7). Though The Odyssey has no scenes in which Zeus appears to or speaks with Odysseus, just as the Iliad has none with Akhilleus, it is clear that Odysseus has Zeus’ full support in the present time of the poem, though the execution of his support is delegated to Athena.19 Odysseus is aware of Zeus’ support, as when he asks Telemachos, with some irony, to consider whether the support of Athena and Zeus against the suitors will be enough (Od. 16.260).
The Odyssey’s final divine council depicts Zeus still supporting and guiding Odysseus’ fortunes (Od. 24.478–86). Genesis repeatedly emphasizes Yahweh’s support for Joseph throughout his myth. Such favor is implicit in his first dreams (Gen. 37:7, 9), but more explicit once he is in Egypt, where it is expressed in a recurring formula, “Joseph prospered, for the Lord was with him” (Gen. 39:2), “the Lord was with him” (Gen. 39:3), “the Lord blessed the household through Joseph” (Gen. 39:5), “the Lord was with him and gave him success in all that he did” (Gen. 39:23).
Through his own mistake, he becomes separated from his family for many years, usually the equivalent of a generation.
The Odyssey ignores Odysseus’ time at Troy as irrelevant to the concerns of romance. Within the heroic ethos of epic he was correct to go, which the larger (extra-Homeric) tradition buttresses in the account of the oaths sworn by the suitors of Helen. At the beginning of his return home from Troy, however, the earliest episodes The Odyssey depicts (other than very brief retrospective narratives such as at Od. 19.393–466), Odysseus commits two errors, from which it takes him ten years to recover.
His key mistake is his disrespect of Poseidon, whom he recklessly provokes when he asserts that not even the sea god will be able to heal a now blind Polyphemos (Od. 9.525). The poem has carefully foregrounded references to this event so that the audience is aware of the broad outlines, but not the specific details, much earlier (Od. 1.20–1, 68– 75). This one incident is the cause of Poseidon’s wrath, which remains in effect from Book 1 to 13, and still has repercussions beyond the end of The Odyssey, as Teiresias’ prophecy implies (Od. 11.121–35).
Shortly before the Polyphemos episode, however, the violent storm that erupts after they sack Ismaros already signals some unspecified divine wrath:
And now I would have come to the land of my fathers unharmed, but a wave and the current and the North wind beat me off course as I was rounding the Cape of Maleia, and drove me on past Kythera. Odyssey 9.79–81
The verb used here for “drive” is a compound of plazo used in The Odyssey to articulate a divine wrath against a mortal, particularly Poseidon’s against Odysseus. However, since this storm precedes the Polyphemos incident, it should not be Poseidon, but some other deity who is angry here. I have argued elsewhere that The Odyssey here implies divine displeasure with the crew, not Odysseus, for their insubordination at Ismaros (Od. 9.44–5), a foreshadowing of their graver disobedience at Thrinakia, which will result in a Zeus-sent storm that kills all remaining crew members (Od. 12.405–19). But it is this earlier storm that drives Odysseus and crew off the map, without which they would not have encountered Polyphemos, and provoked Poseidon’s wrath. In this indirect manner, then, the two episodes are linked.
In Joseph’s case there are two mistakes, or two sets of mistakes: those that drive his brothers against him, and those he commits in Potiphar’s house after coming to Egypt. The intimations of negative traits in Joseph are well analyzed by Kugel. At the beginning of the myth the narrator suggests a pattern of behavior in Joseph that is the cause of his brothers’ ill will toward him. While accompanying them as they shepherded flocks, “he told tales about them to their father,” Genesis (37:2). Speiser (1962: 87) translates the passage more bluntly, “Joseph brought his father bad reports about them.” As Kugel (1990: 276) interprets, “he was a tattle-tale.” When the narrator later declares that he is Jacob’s favorite, Joseph is quite tactless, even arrogant, when he recounts his dreams (in which they bow down to him) to his brothers (Gen. 37:6–9), and even to Jacob (Gen. 37:10–11). Their anger fueled by a series of incidents, the brothers conspire to kill him, but instead sell him into slavery, a common motif in The Odyssey’s inset narratives (Od. 14.296–7, 340; 15.483).
When in Egypt, working for Potiphar, the narrative emphasizes how physically attractive he is, “Now Joseph was handsome in both face and figure” (Gen. 39:6). In this comment by the narrator which precipitates the episode which causes Joseph to be imprisoned, Kugel sees a parallel with the earlier report that Joseph seemed to be tattling on his brothers (1990: 277), “since his days as a shepherd his besetting sin has been his vanity and open cultivation of his winning good looks.” In the famous episode that follows, which gives its name to the motif (though as we noted The Tale of the Two Brothers has an earlier instance; cf. Speiser 1962: 304), Potiphar’s wife desires Joseph, but, when rejected, falsely accuses him of rape, prompting Potiphar to imprison him.
Since Joseph is seventeen years old shortly before his brothers sell him into slavery (Gen. 37:2), thirty years old when he begins to serve Pharaoh (Gen. 42:46), and is reunited with his brothers in the second year of drought (Gen. 45:11) after seven years of bumper crops, his absence from his family thus amounts to twenty-one or twenty-two years, virtually identical to The Odyssey’s gap of twenty years. Romances often involve a gap of a generation so the protagonist’s offspring (or in the case of the Ion, the protagonist himself ) may grow to adulthood and play a role in the narrative, as is clearly the case in The Odyssey, and The Winter’s Tale, to name only a couple.
The myth of Joseph has altered this traditional motif and applied it to his youngest brother, Benjamin, though Speiser is certainly correct when he notes (1962: 335) what must be the central reason for Benjamin’s prominence. As discussed below, Joseph tests his brothers by seeing if they would treat Benjamin, the brother most like him, the youngest, and Jacob’s favorite, as they had treated him.
Much as The Odyssey uses romance within a larger myth, an epic with at times a very different modality and set of goals than those of romance, so the myth of Joseph uses romance within the larger myth of the patriarchs, and is weighted with additional concerns at times counter to the usual goals of romance. The over-riding task of providing etiologies for the twelve tribes may thus exert influence on, and alter, this particular motif.
He is trapped in a foreign land, a marvelous or exotic place, for all or much of this period.
The notion of wandering against one’s will in foreign lands (which is often mistaken for traveling) is central to romance, which frequently involves the protagonist in a state of unwilling exile from his homeland. For almost all of Books 5–12, Odysseus is in exotic lands, off the map, unable to return home. In the episode we identified as his key mistake, the encounter with Polyphemos, he voluntarily goes ashore when he does not need to. But this is the exception. The opening and closing storms of the Apologue (Od. 9.67–81, 12.405–25) drive Odysseus against his will. This is not traveling. The majority of Odysseus’ absence, seven of the ten years, is spent on Ogygia with Kalypso, as her prisoner. Though the goddess loves him, she keeps him against his will, as the poem repeatedly states (Od. 1.55–9, 4.557–8, 5.14–15, 17.143– 4).
In the myth of Joseph the captivity in Egypt, the country that has long embodied exotica, serves the same overall function. Joseph is not off the map, as Odysseus is, but for an even longer period of time, for all the years he is apart from his family, he is among an exotic alien people.
Both protagonists are desired by a sensuous female (Kalypso, Potiphar’s wife) who has power over them and whose desire leads to their imprisonment.
Kalypso may be grouped with a number of other goddesses who have sexual relations with mortals, which in Greek myth include Eos and Demeter, with whom Kalypso herself implies connections (Od. 5.121–8), and in Near Eastern myth, Ishtar in particular. Book 5 foregrounds these similarities with its initial focus on Eos leaving the bed of one of her mortal lovers, Tithonos (Od. 5.1–2). Hainsworth elaborates (1993: 254), “Tithonus is cited as a type of beauty by Tyrtaeus . . . he may bear a genuinely Asiatic name.” Typically, a goddess who initiates this kind of episode is drawn by the mortal’s beauty, as The Odyssey specifies of Eos with another lover:
But Eos of the golden throne abducted Kleitos because of his beauty, that he might live among the immortals. Odyssey 15.250–1
The sexually aggressive Eos is linked with three different mortal lovers in The Odyssey, Tithonos, Kleitos, and Orion, whose story Kalypso relates:
So, when rosy-fingered Eos took Orion for herself you gods, who live without effort, begrudged her this, until chaste Artemis of the golden throne coming upon him in Ortygia, slew him with her gentle arrows. Odyssey 5.121–4
In Gilgamesh, the goddess Ishtar is attracted to the hero when he bathes and dons fresh clothing after having slain Humbaba, “And Ishtar the princess raised her eyes to the beauty of Gilgamesh” (Vi.i. 6–7, Dalley [1991]; cf., “looked covetously on the beauty of Gilgamesh”, George [2003]). Much as The Odyssey implies of Eos, the Gilgamesh epic contains a catalogue of Ishtar’s mortal lovers which Gilgamesh himself recites to her when she propositions him (VI.ii.9–iii.9). Her previous lovers include Dumuzi, the allallu bird, a lion, a horse, a shepherd, and Ishullanu, her father’s gardener. Aware that her previous lovers have suffered dire injuries or transformations Gilgamesh rightly rejects her proposition that he be her lover. This episode has proven seminal for subsequent myth and seems to hover behind both Odysseus with Kalypso and Joseph with Potiphar’s wife.
Though commentators more often compare Ishtar with Kirke because of the goddess’ connection with animals, and ability to change men into them, The Odyssey simply does not depict Kirke as having sexual desire for a lover as do Kalypso, Eos, Demeter, and especially Ishtar. Opposite Kalypso, Kirke has no interest in keeping Odysseus with her when he wants to leave (Od. 10.483–9), and apparently only has sex with him on his first day, in accord with Hermes’ instructions. The Odyssey does not portray her as desiring Odysseus sexually, as does Kalypso. So strong is Kalypso’s sexual desire that it leads her to commit what our own culture would regard as rape, repeatedly compelling Odysseus to have sex with her against his will:
But, by nights he was compelled to lie with her in the hollow caves, against his will, but she was willing it. Odyssey 5.154–5.
The oxymoronic juxtaposition of “against his will,” coupled with “willing,” encapsulates the problems in their relationship, and the chasms between Odysseus, Gilgamesh, and Joseph, and Kalypso, Ishtar and Potiphar’s wife. Critical reception of both Kalypso and Kirke has tended to be highly romanticized, with commentators assigning them qualities the text does not actually indicate, seeing Odysseus as the willing lover of each goddess. Critics almost uniformly pass over the negative attributes the text assigns Kalypso.
Though Potiphar’s unnamed wife may not at first glance appear much like Kalypso or Ishtar, her interactions with Joseph have a fair amount in common with both. Like Ishtar with Gilgamesh, and Eos with Kleitos, Potiphar’s wife first desires Joseph because of his physical beauty:
Now Joseph was handsome in both face and figure, and after a time his master’s wife became infatuated with him. (Genesis 39:6–7)
As Speiser (1962: 303) notes, the phrase used of Potiphar’s wife’s first attraction to Joseph, which he renders as “fixed her eye on” (Gen. 39:7), is the same as that used of Ishtar first noticing Gilgamesh, “The identical idiom is used in Akkadian to describe Ishtar’s designs on Gilgamesh” (VI, 6). Potiphar’s wife immediately goes on to ask Joseph to have sex with her (Gen. 39:7), much as Ishtar propositions Gilgamesh. Suggesting the sexual aggression of Eos and Kalypso, she propositions him, not once, but over and over, “Though she kept on at Joseph day after day, he refused to lie with her” (Gen. 39:10). Finally she grabs him by the loincloth, holding on so tightly that it remains in her hand as he runs off (Gen. 39:12). Her use of force against him, even if unsuccessful, approaches The Odyssey’s depiction of Kalypso acting out her desire for Odysseus.
His imprisonment suggests thematic parallels with the underworld.
Though Kalypso’s island, Ogygia, in some respects resembles a paradise (discussed in Chapter 5), at the same time it instantiates aspects of the underworld. A similar notion is already present in Ishtar’s proposition to Gilgamesh. Abusch argues (1986: 152–3) that when Ishtar propositions Gilgamesh to be her husband she is also offering to make him lord of the Dead. Gilgamesh’s rejection of Ishtar nonetheless still associates him with death, if less directly, as it leads both to Enkidu’s death, and Gilgamesh’s own concern with escaping mortality. Kalypso descends from similar conceptions and traditions. Many features of her island are common to depictions of the underworld (Crane 1988: 16–17, 24, n. 12). As Crane notes (1988: 16), Hermes’ appearance on Ogygia suggests overlap with his usual association with the underworld as psychopomp, another way of implying Ogygia’s thematic overlap with Hades. The detail of Odysseus not eating the special food Kalypso would serve him (Od. 5.196–9) suggests that he is participating in other underworld themes, and, as Crane puts it (1988: 20), “avoids a snare that entraps Persephone (and various other figures in folklore).” The repeated mention that she lives in a cave (Od. 1.15, 5.57, 63, 77, 155, 9.30), which in myth often serves as a displaced version of the underworld (e.g., as in Odysseus’ escape from Polyphemos’ cave), is another such pointer. Eos’ lover Orion and Demeter’s lover Iasion, whom Kalypso mentions as parallels to her own involvement with Odysseus, as well as several of Ishtar’s lovers, all meet with premature deaths. Odysseus held against his will on Ogygia thus invokes parallels with a stay in the underworld.
Joseph’s lengthy imprisonment, a result of being desired by Potiphar’s wife, serves a similar function in his myth. Falsely accused of attempted rape, Joseph is imprisoned for years as a consequence of rejecting her. We noted that there are two sets of mistakes by Joseph, those with his brothers, and those in Potiphar’s house. The friction with his brothers leads to his larger confinement in Egypt, while the friction with Potiphar’s wife leads to his being cast in prison. The two episodes exhibit additional parallels. The brothers first strip him of his clothes (Gen. 37:23), then throw him into a pit, before selling him to slave traders. Potiphar’s wife removes his loincloth (Gen. 39:12–13), before making the charges against him that result in his being cast in prison.
His being cast into a pit by his brothers thus prefigures his later imprisonment, as well as evoking, if only briefly, the sense of a descent to the underworld which internment often suggests in romance. Frye (1976) sets out the general tendency:
At the beginning of a romance there is often a sharp descent in social status, from riches to poverty, from privilege to a struggle to survive, or even slavery. Families are separated. (p. 104)
The general theme of descent, we saw, was that of a growing confusion of identity and of restrictions on action. There is a break in consciousness at the beginning, with analogies to falling asleep, followed by a descent to a lower world, which is sometimes a world of cruelty and imprisonment, sometimes an oracular cave . . . hero or heroine are trapped in labyrinths or prisons. (p. 129)
Shakespeare uses Hermione’s imprisonment in similar ways in The Winter’s Tale. Like Joseph, she is imprisoned after a false charge of adultery (Act 2 Scene 1). Her time in prison is prelude and transition to her apparent death (Act 3 Scene 2), which lasts for sixteen years, a gap in time similar to the myths of Joseph and Odysseus. As in both of those myths, the sixteen-year gap provides sufficient time for her offspring, newborn daughter Perdita, to grow to young adulthood.
Because of his piety the gods help reunite him with his family.
As noted, Zeus’ comment about Odysseus’ sacrifices at Troy (Od. 1.65–7) establishes him as a righteous man. In the second divine council Zeus declares that Hermes will go to Ogygia and command Kalypso to let him leave. With Athena as the other speaker at both divine councils, three gods are thus involved in freeing Odysseus from confinement with Kalypso. But in accord with an epic modality, though free to leave, Odysseus will have to cross the sea alone, on a raft he himself builds, and perform several heroic feats just to reach Scheria, an intermediate stage between Ogygia and Ithaka.
Like Odysseus, Joseph makes his way out of prison with help from god. His ability to interpret dreams, discussed below, brings him to the attention of Pharaoh, leading to a rapid reversal of his status, and startling rise in his fortunes. Joseph himself ascribes his ability to interpret dreams entirely to god (Gen. 40:8, 41:16), and it is through the medium of dreams that god most frequently acts in his myth. Making him his right-hand man, Pharaoh gives Joseph a bride, Asenath, daughter of a high priest. This is a stock romance motif. Apollonius, at roughly the same point in his romance, is given as bride the daughter of King Archistrates. Shakespeare’s Pericles, modeled on the Apollonius romance, follows suit and has the title character marry Thaisa, daughter of King Simonides. Apollonius and Pericles marry their royal brides after they have lost everything in shipwrecks, a rough parallel with Joseph’s fortunes until he meets Pharaoh. The Odyssey offers up this same motif in Nausikaa, but Odysseus does not marry her. Joseph, Apollonius, and Pericles are the stock age for a romance protagonist, a young man, not yet married. Odysseus’ greater age, at least forty when he meets Nausikaa, and greater maturity than Joseph, prevents The Odyssey from doing more than merely alluding to this standard motif.
He returns home with fabulous treasures.
The Phaiakians, in accord with Zeus’ earlier declaration (Od. 5.38–40), give Odysseus more treasure than the fabulous winnings he would have brought back from Troy (but are now lost). Three different passages attest how lavish are the Phaiakians’ gifts (Od. 8.387–406; 13.10–15, 217–18). When he awakes, unaware that he is on Ithaka, he is concerned that the Phaiakians, who left while he was asleep, took some of the treasures. Joseph attains extraordinary prosperity when serving the Pharaoh. As we noted above, this is a formulaic theme in the myth, “the Lord blessed the household through Joseph” (Gen. 39:5), “the Lord was with him and gave him success in all that he did” (Gen. 39:23; cf. 39:2, 3). This tendency is codified in the name Joseph gives Ephraim, his second son by Asenath, “for God has made me fruitful in the land of my hardships” (Gen. 41:52). Joseph’s unprecedented prosperity partly serves as his disguise when his brothers eventually come to meet with him during the famine.
In Joseph’s myth his return has been adapted to serve another purpose, to provide an etiology for the Israelites dwelling in Egypt. Hence, the family, in the form of his brothers, comes to Joseph (discussed below) rather than the usual return of the protagonist to his homeland. But the traditional pattern reasserts itself when Joseph does go home to meet with his father. Both The Odyssey and the myth of Joseph find their conclusion in the protagonists’ meetings with their father after recognition scenes between the protagonist and other family members have already taken place.
His return after such a long absence is an apparent triumph over death.
Both protagonists are presumed dead during their lengthy absences, a stock motif throughout the romance tradition.
In The Odyssey, even those loyal to Odysseus, declare that he must be dead (Telemachos: Od. 1.166, Eumaios: 14.130, 17.318–19), or refuse to believe that he could return (Telemachos: Od. 16.194–5, Eurykleia: 19.369; cf. Penelope: 18.271).29 Those in the suitors’ party often make such declarations (Melanthios: Od. 17.253, Agelaos: 20.333; cf. Eurymakhos: 18.392), on which tendency Odysseus himself comments (Od. 22.35). Infrequent is the opposite view, firm belief that Odysseus will return (Halitherses’ prophecy: Od. 2.174–6).30 Though Joseph’s myth sounds the theme less frequently, when the brothers come to Egypt, and the unrecognized Joseph inquires about their family, they respond that one of their brothers remains with their father, “and one is lost” (Gen. 42:13; cf. 44:20). This is the same form of irony frequent in The Odyssey: when he stands before them in disguise, characters reminisce about the presumably absent Odysseus (Fenik 1974: 16, 22, 28–9, 42, 45; cf. de Jong 2001: 386). As Joseph presses his brothers about their family, demanding that they produce their youngest sibling, the brothers are prompted to further thoughts about the presumably deceased Joseph: “No doubt we are being punished because of our brother. We saw his distress when he pleaded with us and we refused to listen. That is why this distress has come upon us.” Reuben said, “Did I not warn you not to do wrong to the boy? But you would not listen, and now his blood is on our heads, and we must pay.” (Genesis 42:21–2) Speiser sums up their situation (1962: 323–4), “to the best of their knowledge, Joseph perished long ago in the wilderness near Dothan.”
The narratives reach their climax in recognition scenes, in which the protagonist is reunited with family members under highly emotional circumstances.
While such a climax is the standard way of romance, highly emotional recognition scenes between the protagonist and long-separated family members, the parallels between such scenes in The Odyssey and the myth of Joseph are closer than mere generic affinity. Both works feature preliminary encounters between the protagonist and family members in which his identity remains concealed while he subjects the other party to exacting tests. Both sets of scenes are not only highly emotional, prompting participants to break down and cry, but in both works the protagonist seems to act with unnecessary cruelty in doing so. The close parallels offer a context to analyze the more controversial aspects of Odysseus’ interview and recognition scene with Laertes, which finds a surprisingly close parallel in Joseph’s treatment of his brothers when they come to Egypt (Gen. 42–5).
By recognition scenes I mean the meetings between the protagonist and family members after his twenty-year absence. Since the protagonist is presumed dead, the vastly different circumstances in which both parties now find themselves after the twenty-year gap serve as a disguise for him. It is through recognition scenes that the protagonist re-establishes his identity with regard to his family, an identity he has not had since his separation from family. Recognition scenes are thus the core and climax of the “happy ending,” the central marker of the restoration of identity and cyclical movement that typifies romance.
There are several different subtypes of recognition scenes, depending on a few key variables. Are both parties ignorant of each other’s identities, or just one? How long does it take before the other member learns the protagonist’s identity? Does the scene take place before the protagonist has regained his identity, or after? Which family member takes part in the recognition scene? We can construct a typology based on these variables, thereby ascertaining which particular scenes exhibit the closest parallels with each other, belong to the same subtype, and serve as the most reliable guides for understanding the dynamics of a given instance. Two of the variables situate The Odyssey and the myth of Joseph among other romances; two variables set The Odyssey and Joseph’s myth apart from other romance; and one variable is operative only within The Odyssey itself.
When we consider romance in a broader perspective, adducing Euripides, Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, the Greek novels, and Shakespeare, the most significant distinction is the knowledge the characters in a given recognition scene have about each other. Either none of the participants is aware of the other’s identity, or the protagonist is aware of the other family member’s identity but temporarily conceals his own. This basic distinction divides recognition scenes into two broad subtypes. Most ancient romances, including Euripides’ Ion, Helen, and Iphigenia in Tauris, and The Story of Apollonius King of Tyre, as well as Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Pericles, use the first type, in which neither party is aware of the other’s identity. But both The Odyssey and Joseph’s myth use the second type, in which the protagonist conceals his own identity in preliminary meetings with family members. To my knowledge, the only other ancient romances that feature this same subtype are Euripides’ Alcestis and Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, both of which use variants of the type. In the recognition scene between husband and wife that concludes the Alcestis, Admetos is unaware of the identity of the woman whom Herakles compels him to accept. But it is not Alcestis who keeps her identity a secret. Awareness and subsequent manipulation of her identity is transferred to Herakles, a non-relative. Kalidasa’s Shakuntala also suggests a variation on this type. The protagonist is aware of her husband’s identity, but does not disguise herself, or manipulate him. He is under a curse that prevents him from recognizing her.
A second distinction lies in the specific relationship between the protagonist and other family members who take part. Recognition scenes occur between parent and child (mother and son in Euripides’ Ion, father and daughter in Apollonius and Shakespeare’s Pericles), husband and wife (Odysseus and Penelope, Apollonius and his unnamed queen, Dushyanta and Shakuntala in the Shakuntala, Menelaus and Helen in Euripides’ Helen, Leontes and Hermione in The Winter’s Tale), or between siblings (Joseph and his brothers, Iphigenia and Orestes in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris). Of these variations arguably the most dramatic is that between husband and wife, which provides the main climax of The Odyssey, the Shakuntala, and The Winter’s Tale. In the latter Shakespeare was criticized for not dramatizing the recognition scene between Leontes and his daughter Perdita. But he correctly chose, in my view, to concentrate the audience’s response on the recognition between husband and wife because of its deeper resonances.
A third variable is how much time elapses between the protagonist’s first meeting with the family member, and actual disclosure of his identity.
It is Athena who first signals the type of recognition scene that The Odyssey employs. Her first meeting with Odysseus on Ithaka serves as a blueprint for most of the subsequent recognition scenes. In this encounter Athena first approaches him disguised as a young man. Since she knows his identity, while he is unaware of hers, she acts throughout the meeting as Odysseus will in later scenes with family members and trusted servants. She toys with him, implying she knows that he was at Troy (Od. 13.248), deliberately delaying mention of the name Ithaka (Od. 13.248). In playing with his emotions in matters important to him, she plays the same role Odysseus will in subsequent scenes, and which Joseph does with his family members. After she reveals her true identity, and demonstrates to him that he is back on Ithaka, Athena declares that she is there to help him devise schemes (Od. 13.303), and defines Odysseus as a man who tests others, even family members (Od. 13.335–6).
Her assessment is programmatic for the entire second half of the epic. Such testing defines the specific subtype of recognition scenes in The Odyssey and Joseph’s myth. It is interesting to note that, while commentators often criticize Odysseus for this behavior, especially in the scenes with Laertes, Joseph, acting in precisely the same manner, rarely provokes criticism.
All of the recognition scenes in The Odyssey are delayed, except Athena’s and Argos’ immediate recognitions of Odysseus in Books 13 and 17. There are also whole scenes in which Odysseus’ identity is never disclosed while he tests a family member. I call such scenes (in which an unrecognized Odysseus interrogates a family member or servant, and receives proofs of loyalty) postponed recognition scenes. The same type is found in the myth of Joseph. Each protagonist tests his relatives or servants, and only after they have passed the tests does he, in a later meeting, reveal his identity. This type of recognition scene is a hallmark of each character, as Athena declares of Odysseus (Od. 13.296–9), and a tacit form of self-identification for the audience. There is a different context and different rhythm for each family member, a different sense of when is the right moment for the disclosure of identity. The Odyssey thus employs three cadences for disclosure of Odysseus’ identity, immediate, delayed, and postponed. In an immediate recognition the other party recognizes Odysseus as soon as the encounter begins. In delayed recognition the other party learns Odysseus’ identity by the end of the scene. In a postponed recognition the other party only learns Odysseus’ identity in a later scene.
In a fourth variable, two recognition scenes feature Odysseus being tested by the other party, Athena in Book 13, and Penelope in Book 23. I call such episodes reversed recognitions.
A fifth and final distinction in The Odyssey’s recognition scenes is whether they occur before or after Odysseus slays the suitors. If they occur before, they are preparatory to defeating the suitors, and are, to some degree, involved in the conclusion of The Odyssey’s use of theoxeny. These scenes, except that with Argos, involve characters who can in some way assist Odysseus in defeating the suitors. Thus Athena, Telemachos, Philoitios, and Eumaios all take part in the suitors’ destruction, while Eurykleia assists by locking the doors, keeping everyone within (Od. 21.380–7). But if the recognition scenes occur after the suitors’ destruction, such as those with Penelope and Laertes, they conclude The Odyssey’s use of romance.
The Odyssey also employs recognition scenes in conjunction with larger structural concerns. Most recognition scenes have a specific counterpart, a complementary scene constructed in closely parallel fashion. Athena’s scene in Book 13 is paired with Penelope’s in Book 23 in being reversed recognitions, and in having Odysseus bestow a kiss. To a lesser degree Athena’s scene is also paired with Argos’ in being immediate recognitions. The episodes with Eumaios (Books 14–15) are closely connected with the recognition scene with Telemachos (Book 16),42 just as in Book 19 the recognition with Eurykleia is related to the postponed recognition with Penelope. These two pairs of symbiotic recognition scenes frame the scenes of the suitors abusing Odysseus in the two books in between, Books 17 and 18. The final two recognition scenes, with Penelope in Book 23, and the Laertes scene in Book 24, also complement each other, forming a unit after the destruction of the suitors.
continued...
More interesting stuff about The Odyssey from Louden's "Homer's Odyssey and the Near East". This is for those of you who find your enjoyment and understanding heightened by broader analyses. ALSO, this is all about comparing The Odyssey to other Near Eastern myths, mainly those found in the Bible. Sometimes comparing The Odyssey to other similar stories aids understanding of Homer OR the understanding of the other stories. It is totally fascinating to see how closely the Bible has been modeled on The Odyssey with the polemic twists that are intended to promote Yahweh as the “only true god.”
I’ve cleaned up a lot of the scan errors but there will be some. It was too tedious to remove all the footnote numbers, so just ignore them. Some characters represent symbols that didn’t transfer to the available forum fonts.
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Romance
THE ODYSSEY AND THE MYTH OF JOSEPH (Gen. 37, 39–47); Autolykos and Jacob
Most of the different subgenres of myth The Odyssey employs are subordinated under the broader rubric of “the return of Odysseus.” Odysseus’ return, his voyages from Troy to Ithaka, and vanquishing the suitors constitutes the organizing framework of the entire epic (much as the strife between Akhilleus and Agamemnon provides the larger framework within which the Iliad incorporates other different types of myth),1 from Book 1 to Book 24. Even theoxeny, in this respect, is subordinated under “the return of Odysseus” because the destruction of the suitors is presented as necessary to the hero regaining control of his home.
The Odyssey has a specific term for a hero’s return from Troy, nostos.2 But The Odyssey does not use nostos to denote a type of myth, but merely to designate the act of a return. The Odyssey uses nostos not only of Odysseus’ return, but also those of Nestor, Agamemnon, and Aias, narratives that employ radically different motifs, and which are, in fact, different genres of myth than that which The Odyssey uses for Odysseus’ return. The other nostoi do not help construct a context for interpreting Odysseus’ return, except by serving as foils (Menelaus’ nostos is a partial exception, containing several motifs in common with Odysseus’ own return). Instead, The Odyssey figures Odysseus’ nostos within the well-defined conventions of another kind of traditional narrative, romance.
From the first mention of Odysseus trapped on a distant isle (Od. 1.14–15), to the recognition scene with his father, Laertes (Od. 24.216– 355), romance is the other mythic type that, along with theoxeny, exerts the greatest influence on the structure and plot of The Odyssey.
As noted in Chapter 2, the negative theoxeny that starts in Book 1 is not concluded until Odysseus slays the suitors in Book 22.
Romance is started up in Book 1, and not concluded until Book 24.
These two most important genres of myth provide the majority of the poem’s episodes and motifs, and are the reason the epic gives the impression of having two endings.
While the destruction of the suitors concludes the theoxeny, the emotional recognition scenes with Penelope (Book 23) and Laertes (Book 24) conclude The Odyssey’s use of romance.
Not only do many episodes, and overarching movements of the poem, employ motifs and type-scenes frequent in romance, but several smaller, inset narratives, Eumaios’ tale (Od. 15.403–84) and stories the disguised Odysseus tells (Od. 13.253–86; 14.192–359; 17.415–44; 19.165–202 + 221–48 + 268–99; 24.244–79 + 303–14) also utilize romance elements.
Why would The Odyssey employ romance?
As with theoxeny, romance narratives feature a protagonist who is rewarded for acting virtuously.
In this respect the romance story type illustrates and supports Zeus’ opening thesis about mortals’ responsibility (Od. 1.32–4), and Athena’s opening remarks, to which Zeus quickly agrees, about Odysseus as an antitype to Aigisthos (Od. 1.45–62). However, romance, like theoxeny, does not typically focus on heroic acts. But again, as with theoxeny, The Odyssey subordinates romance under the governing norms of heroic epic, imbuing it with a heroic modality by having a warrior hero as protagonist.
Though romance is not usually thought of as a type of myth, it has a natural affinity with myth because a miraculous return from apparent death, and reunion with family, is at the core of romance. The theme of the miraculous return is central to ancient myth, whether in heroes, such as Herakles, Theseus, Odysseus, and Aeneas, who return from the land of the dead, or in a figure such as Orpheus, whose return depends on music, rather than heroism. A narrative with an apparent return from death thus resembles myth at a foundational level, regardless of other aspects of its plot.
I define romance as a narrative with the following characteristics (though a given romance may lack one or more features).
The protagonist is regarded as a moral man who has the favor of the supreme god.
Through his own mistake, however, he becomes separated from his family for many years, usually the equivalent of a generation.
He is trapped in a foreign land, a marvelous, exotic place, for all or much of this period. His imprisonment suggests thematic parallels with being in the underworld.
Because of his piety the gods help reunite him with his family, who presume he is dead.
He returns home with fabulous treasures.
His return from such a long absence and reunion with family resembles a triumph over death.
Romances climax in a recognition scene, in which the protagonist, in highly emotional circumstances, is reunited with a beloved family member.
Romances depict a world in which the moral are rewarded and the immoral are punished in accord with the gods’ dictates.
In its larger sweep a romance depicts a cycle, the ending of which implies a return to the beginning, a reunion with a previous state. The reunion suggests a healing, a miraculous restoration of wholeness for the protagonist.
As with many types of myth, romance tends to have a patently unrealistic, or perhaps it would be better to say, idealistic structure. A key instance of this is its tendency to have a clear stratification of characters as good or evil. Characters on Ithaka are either loyal to Odysseus or they are disloyal.
The classic film, It’s a Wonderful Life, which might be thought of as the Great American Romance, has a number of structural features reminiscent of The Odyssey, including a similar stratification of characters by their moral standing. The film opens with a divine council, in which the angels, Franklin, Joseph, and Clarence, discuss the larger fate of the protagonist, George Bailey, much as do Zeus and Athena in The Odyssey’s opening divine council. Clarence goes on to play a role more than a little like that of Athena in The Odyssey. When Clarence grants George’s wish never to have been born the film even presents a modified descent to the underworld, with the town of Bedford Falls now turned into the demonic Pottersville. When all the selfless acts that George Bailey performed through his life, including saving several lives, never happened, the town instead receives its guiding impulse from the selfish Potter, the embodiment of greed.
Now the suitors run the whole town, from The Odyssey’s perspective. Greek literature has the single richest and most influential tradition of romance. Though The Odyssey is the earliest representative, the classical period has Euripides’ Helen, Ion, Iphigenia in Tauris, and the Alcestis (though it lacks the typical gap in time of a generation). The prose romances of Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius, and others prompted the tremendous vogue for romance in the sixteenth century.
But Greece is not the only ancient culture to develop romance. Ancient Indian literature has several romances including the acknowledged masterpiece of classical Sanskrit drama, Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, which, in its inclusion of a Yavani, a Greek woman, suggests unexpected ties with Greek culture. “Yavani” is the same word, mutatis mutandis, that Old Testament myth uses for Greeks, Javan (Gen. 10:2; Ezek. 27:13, et al.), both words reflecting the older form of “Ion,” or “Ionic.”
Throughout this chapter I will adduce parallels from romances that post-date both The Odyssey and Genesis, especially from Euripides (though he may not post-date Genesis as we have it) and Shakespeare.
Romance remains a remarkably conservative or stable narrative organization over the millennia. Hence, an instance of a given motif in Euripides, Shakespeare, or other author, can help us understand how the same motif works in The Odyssey and Genesis.
Egypt
Near Eastern narratives also offer a considerable context for romance. The ancient romance offering the most significant parallels for The Odyssey is the myth of Joseph (Gen. 37, 39–50). Before investigating the valuable context it provides, however, we first note that both Greek and Israelite romance have thematic connections with Egypt. Egypt provides not only the central setting for the myth of Joseph, but for The Odyssey’s tale of Menelaus’ wanderings (Od. 4.83, 126–30, 351–586; 3.300), two of the tales the disguised Odysseus tells (Od. 14.246–86, 17.426–42), as well as the name of an elder Ithakan, Aiguptios (Od. 2.15). In subsequent Greek romance a connection with Egypt is even stronger, from Euripides’ Helen, to Heliodorus’ An Ethiopian Story, and the fragments of Sesonchosis (Reardon 1989: 819–21). Romance clearly has an affinity with things Egyptian. Or we might say that, since romance has a central concern to set part of its story in an exotic locale, Egypt has long served as the default exotic setting. But romance’s association with Egypt may go deeper than that. A few Egyptian narratives that predate the Genesis account of Joseph suggest that some elements of romance may have originated in Egypt.10
{Here one thinks about the older Egypt as described by Wilkens' in Where Troy Once Stood. Of course, this analysis takes nothing like that into account, but we should keep it in mind.}
The Tale of Sinuhe (Hallo 2003: 77–82, Pritchard 1969: 18–22)11 features as its protagonist a royal attendant who flees from Egypt because he fears turmoil at the court. He makes his way to Byblos, settling in Asia, apparently among the Hyksos. He prospers, becomes a leader, defeats a champion warrior, but after many years, more than a generation (he now has grown children in his adopted homeland), is homesick and wants to return to Egypt. Receiving permission from the Pharaoh to do so, he returns, escorted by the Pharaoh’s men, but leaving his children and family in Asia. The tale offers the earliest instance of such standard romance motifs as the protagonist’s absence from home for a generation, the virtuous man prospering after a period of difficulty, and the emotional return home. At the same time, however, it lacks other hallmarks such as the reunion with family, and the use of complex, highly emotional recognition scenes to depict this. Sinuhe’s desire for his homeland is stronger than his desire for his own family. Back in Egypt he has a recognition scene, but with the princesses of the court (his superiors), not with any family members. Consequently, the scene is devoid of the profound emotions normally found in a romance’s climactic recognition scene.
A second Egyptian narrative, The Shipwrecked Sailor (Hallo 2003: 83–5), employs even more of what will become key romance motifs. Here the protagonist is an attendant of a court official, who, to cheer up his despondent lord, tells the tale of what earlier happened to him. He is at sea with a crew of 120 sailors, when a storm suddenly wrecks his ship, killing everyone aboard except the protagonist. He washes up on an island, a virtual paradise, with food that grows there as if tended. He learns the island is ruled by a prophetic serpent, who tells him he shall stay on the island for four months, and not to worry (lines 133–5):
If you are brave and control your heart, you shall embrace your children, you shall kiss your wife, you shall see your home. It is better than everything else.
The attendant vows to make sacrifices to the serpent when he reaches home (“I shall slaughter oxen for you as burnt offering”), which the serpent says will be unnecessary.
When the four months have passed, a ship comes for the attendant, as the serpent had prophesied. The serpent gives him all kinds of treasures when he leaves, and the ship takes him home.
Though the tone of the tale and the principal characters have little in common with Homeric epic, nonetheless, The Shipwrecked Sailor features a number of elements found in The Odyssey and central to romance conventions. There is not only the generic motif of the shipwreck, but the more specific subtype in which the protagonist is the only survivor of a large group of men, as The Odyssey presents with Odysseus at the end of Book 12, and, in slightly different form, in Book 13. After their shipwrecks both protagonists come ashore on paradise-like islands ruled by a god. The serpent god is beneficent, and broadly parallels several of Kalypso’s tendencies. But in his prophecies the serpent also serves functions very like those of Teiresias in The Odyssey, and, given the brevity of the myth, we should not be surprised if one character serves functions that in The Odyssey are performed by separate entities.
Perhaps most surprising of all the parallels, however, are the lines quoted above, set in one of the serpent god’s prophecies. The lines sum up much of what is central to romance, the return home and reunion with family, but also strike notes particularly reminiscent of one of The Odyssey’s central themes, the importance of self-control, “if you. . . control your heart . . . you shall see your home.” This could almost serve as a shorthand version of Teiresias’ prophecy of Odysseus’ homecoming (Od. 11.100–37), which highlights the episode on Thrinakia, in which Odysseus’ self-control will enable him to refrain from eating Helios’ cattle. Teiresias concludes by mentioning sacrifice Odysseus must perform to Poseidon, but that his people will flourish around him, and he will die at a ripe old age. The serpent god rather similarly concludes, “You will embrace your children. You will flourish at home, you will be buried” (line 169). The protagonist returns home with considerable treasure given him by the serpent, who now suggests broad parallels with the island-dwelling Phaiakians, who similarly escort Odysseus home laden with their gifts. The attendant’s role also broadly suggests some aspects of Eumaios’ relationship with Odysseus, each telling a tale within a tale, with his master as audience.
A third Egyptian narrative, The Tale of the Two Brothers has an earlier version of the motifs Genesis presents in the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (Gen. 39:6–20).15 An older brother’s wife propositions the younger brother, and, when he refuses her, falsely accuses him of rape. Much of the rest of the narrative develops into less relevant areas, and I would not necessarily classify it as a romance, as I do the Tale of Sinuhe and The Shipwrecked Sailor. But it has further common ground with the myth of Joseph, and thus, if indirectly, additional relevance to romance. There is conflict between the brothers, causing the younger brother to go away, which, as discussed below, suggests central parallels to the myth of Joseph.
The myth of Joseph and the Tale of Sinuhe both present instances of romance involving the intersection of Egyptian and West Semitic culture. The protagonist in The Tale of Sinuhe first sees himself as quite distinct from the peoples he encounters whom he refers to as “Asiatics.” The Egyptians define themselves as distinct from “Asiatic” culture, by which they apparently mean West Semitic cultures that would include the later Israelites, and what the Greeks will call Phoenicians. The tale has references to defensive installations designed to safeguard Egypt from “Asiatics” (line 17). Yet eventually Sinuhe assimilates with these peoples and, once he has returned to the Pharaoh’s court, the princesses refer to him as an “Asiatic” (line 266). The Odyssey has similar references to West Semitic culture, the Phoenicians/Sidonians (Od. 4.84, 618; 13.285; 14.288; 15.118, 425, 473), against whom the Greeks define themselves in opposition, as do the Egyptians in the Tale of Sinuhe.
THE MYTH OF JOSEPH (Gen. 37, 39–47)
It has generally escaped notice that the most relevant ancient parallel to The Odyssey’s use of romance is the myth of Joseph (Gen. 37, 39–47). A few commentators have noted Joseph’s myth’s basic affinities with romance,17 but as far as I know there is no substantive previous engagement of it and The Odyssey’s use of romance.
Joseph’s myth is essentially romance without the heroic modality that The Odyssey develops for its protagonist. Instead of a heroic modality, the myth of Joseph has imposed other concerns, providing etiologies for the Israelites’ presence in Egypt, and offering interconnections with other OT myths of the patriarchs. But beyond the absence of a heroic modality, the parallels are otherwise extensive and profound. Both narratives contain all of the motifs defined above as the constituent elements of romance.
The protagonist is regarded as a moral man who has the favor of the supreme god. The Odyssey articulates this key point when Zeus himself emphasizes the singular extent of Odysseus’ sacrifices at Troy (Od. 1.65–7). Though The Odyssey has no scenes in which Zeus appears to or speaks with Odysseus, just as the Iliad has none with Akhilleus, it is clear that Odysseus has Zeus’ full support in the present time of the poem, though the execution of his support is delegated to Athena.19 Odysseus is aware of Zeus’ support, as when he asks Telemachos, with some irony, to consider whether the support of Athena and Zeus against the suitors will be enough (Od. 16.260).
The Odyssey’s final divine council depicts Zeus still supporting and guiding Odysseus’ fortunes (Od. 24.478–86). Genesis repeatedly emphasizes Yahweh’s support for Joseph throughout his myth. Such favor is implicit in his first dreams (Gen. 37:7, 9), but more explicit once he is in Egypt, where it is expressed in a recurring formula, “Joseph prospered, for the Lord was with him” (Gen. 39:2), “the Lord was with him” (Gen. 39:3), “the Lord blessed the household through Joseph” (Gen. 39:5), “the Lord was with him and gave him success in all that he did” (Gen. 39:23).
Through his own mistake, he becomes separated from his family for many years, usually the equivalent of a generation.
The Odyssey ignores Odysseus’ time at Troy as irrelevant to the concerns of romance. Within the heroic ethos of epic he was correct to go, which the larger (extra-Homeric) tradition buttresses in the account of the oaths sworn by the suitors of Helen. At the beginning of his return home from Troy, however, the earliest episodes The Odyssey depicts (other than very brief retrospective narratives such as at Od. 19.393–466), Odysseus commits two errors, from which it takes him ten years to recover.
His key mistake is his disrespect of Poseidon, whom he recklessly provokes when he asserts that not even the sea god will be able to heal a now blind Polyphemos (Od. 9.525). The poem has carefully foregrounded references to this event so that the audience is aware of the broad outlines, but not the specific details, much earlier (Od. 1.20–1, 68– 75). This one incident is the cause of Poseidon’s wrath, which remains in effect from Book 1 to 13, and still has repercussions beyond the end of The Odyssey, as Teiresias’ prophecy implies (Od. 11.121–35).
Shortly before the Polyphemos episode, however, the violent storm that erupts after they sack Ismaros already signals some unspecified divine wrath:
And now I would have come to the land of my fathers unharmed, but a wave and the current and the North wind beat me off course as I was rounding the Cape of Maleia, and drove me on past Kythera. Odyssey 9.79–81
The verb used here for “drive” is a compound of plazo used in The Odyssey to articulate a divine wrath against a mortal, particularly Poseidon’s against Odysseus. However, since this storm precedes the Polyphemos incident, it should not be Poseidon, but some other deity who is angry here. I have argued elsewhere that The Odyssey here implies divine displeasure with the crew, not Odysseus, for their insubordination at Ismaros (Od. 9.44–5), a foreshadowing of their graver disobedience at Thrinakia, which will result in a Zeus-sent storm that kills all remaining crew members (Od. 12.405–19). But it is this earlier storm that drives Odysseus and crew off the map, without which they would not have encountered Polyphemos, and provoked Poseidon’s wrath. In this indirect manner, then, the two episodes are linked.
In Joseph’s case there are two mistakes, or two sets of mistakes: those that drive his brothers against him, and those he commits in Potiphar’s house after coming to Egypt. The intimations of negative traits in Joseph are well analyzed by Kugel. At the beginning of the myth the narrator suggests a pattern of behavior in Joseph that is the cause of his brothers’ ill will toward him. While accompanying them as they shepherded flocks, “he told tales about them to their father,” Genesis (37:2). Speiser (1962: 87) translates the passage more bluntly, “Joseph brought his father bad reports about them.” As Kugel (1990: 276) interprets, “he was a tattle-tale.” When the narrator later declares that he is Jacob’s favorite, Joseph is quite tactless, even arrogant, when he recounts his dreams (in which they bow down to him) to his brothers (Gen. 37:6–9), and even to Jacob (Gen. 37:10–11). Their anger fueled by a series of incidents, the brothers conspire to kill him, but instead sell him into slavery, a common motif in The Odyssey’s inset narratives (Od. 14.296–7, 340; 15.483).
When in Egypt, working for Potiphar, the narrative emphasizes how physically attractive he is, “Now Joseph was handsome in both face and figure” (Gen. 39:6). In this comment by the narrator which precipitates the episode which causes Joseph to be imprisoned, Kugel sees a parallel with the earlier report that Joseph seemed to be tattling on his brothers (1990: 277), “since his days as a shepherd his besetting sin has been his vanity and open cultivation of his winning good looks.” In the famous episode that follows, which gives its name to the motif (though as we noted The Tale of the Two Brothers has an earlier instance; cf. Speiser 1962: 304), Potiphar’s wife desires Joseph, but, when rejected, falsely accuses him of rape, prompting Potiphar to imprison him.
Since Joseph is seventeen years old shortly before his brothers sell him into slavery (Gen. 37:2), thirty years old when he begins to serve Pharaoh (Gen. 42:46), and is reunited with his brothers in the second year of drought (Gen. 45:11) after seven years of bumper crops, his absence from his family thus amounts to twenty-one or twenty-two years, virtually identical to The Odyssey’s gap of twenty years. Romances often involve a gap of a generation so the protagonist’s offspring (or in the case of the Ion, the protagonist himself ) may grow to adulthood and play a role in the narrative, as is clearly the case in The Odyssey, and The Winter’s Tale, to name only a couple.
The myth of Joseph has altered this traditional motif and applied it to his youngest brother, Benjamin, though Speiser is certainly correct when he notes (1962: 335) what must be the central reason for Benjamin’s prominence. As discussed below, Joseph tests his brothers by seeing if they would treat Benjamin, the brother most like him, the youngest, and Jacob’s favorite, as they had treated him.
Much as The Odyssey uses romance within a larger myth, an epic with at times a very different modality and set of goals than those of romance, so the myth of Joseph uses romance within the larger myth of the patriarchs, and is weighted with additional concerns at times counter to the usual goals of romance. The over-riding task of providing etiologies for the twelve tribes may thus exert influence on, and alter, this particular motif.
He is trapped in a foreign land, a marvelous or exotic place, for all or much of this period.
The notion of wandering against one’s will in foreign lands (which is often mistaken for traveling) is central to romance, which frequently involves the protagonist in a state of unwilling exile from his homeland. For almost all of Books 5–12, Odysseus is in exotic lands, off the map, unable to return home. In the episode we identified as his key mistake, the encounter with Polyphemos, he voluntarily goes ashore when he does not need to. But this is the exception. The opening and closing storms of the Apologue (Od. 9.67–81, 12.405–25) drive Odysseus against his will. This is not traveling. The majority of Odysseus’ absence, seven of the ten years, is spent on Ogygia with Kalypso, as her prisoner. Though the goddess loves him, she keeps him against his will, as the poem repeatedly states (Od. 1.55–9, 4.557–8, 5.14–15, 17.143– 4).
In the myth of Joseph the captivity in Egypt, the country that has long embodied exotica, serves the same overall function. Joseph is not off the map, as Odysseus is, but for an even longer period of time, for all the years he is apart from his family, he is among an exotic alien people.
Both protagonists are desired by a sensuous female (Kalypso, Potiphar’s wife) who has power over them and whose desire leads to their imprisonment.
Kalypso may be grouped with a number of other goddesses who have sexual relations with mortals, which in Greek myth include Eos and Demeter, with whom Kalypso herself implies connections (Od. 5.121–8), and in Near Eastern myth, Ishtar in particular. Book 5 foregrounds these similarities with its initial focus on Eos leaving the bed of one of her mortal lovers, Tithonos (Od. 5.1–2). Hainsworth elaborates (1993: 254), “Tithonus is cited as a type of beauty by Tyrtaeus . . . he may bear a genuinely Asiatic name.” Typically, a goddess who initiates this kind of episode is drawn by the mortal’s beauty, as The Odyssey specifies of Eos with another lover:
But Eos of the golden throne abducted Kleitos because of his beauty, that he might live among the immortals. Odyssey 15.250–1
The sexually aggressive Eos is linked with three different mortal lovers in The Odyssey, Tithonos, Kleitos, and Orion, whose story Kalypso relates:
So, when rosy-fingered Eos took Orion for herself you gods, who live without effort, begrudged her this, until chaste Artemis of the golden throne coming upon him in Ortygia, slew him with her gentle arrows. Odyssey 5.121–4
In Gilgamesh, the goddess Ishtar is attracted to the hero when he bathes and dons fresh clothing after having slain Humbaba, “And Ishtar the princess raised her eyes to the beauty of Gilgamesh” (Vi.i. 6–7, Dalley [1991]; cf., “looked covetously on the beauty of Gilgamesh”, George [2003]). Much as The Odyssey implies of Eos, the Gilgamesh epic contains a catalogue of Ishtar’s mortal lovers which Gilgamesh himself recites to her when she propositions him (VI.ii.9–iii.9). Her previous lovers include Dumuzi, the allallu bird, a lion, a horse, a shepherd, and Ishullanu, her father’s gardener. Aware that her previous lovers have suffered dire injuries or transformations Gilgamesh rightly rejects her proposition that he be her lover. This episode has proven seminal for subsequent myth and seems to hover behind both Odysseus with Kalypso and Joseph with Potiphar’s wife.
Though commentators more often compare Ishtar with Kirke because of the goddess’ connection with animals, and ability to change men into them, The Odyssey simply does not depict Kirke as having sexual desire for a lover as do Kalypso, Eos, Demeter, and especially Ishtar. Opposite Kalypso, Kirke has no interest in keeping Odysseus with her when he wants to leave (Od. 10.483–9), and apparently only has sex with him on his first day, in accord with Hermes’ instructions. The Odyssey does not portray her as desiring Odysseus sexually, as does Kalypso. So strong is Kalypso’s sexual desire that it leads her to commit what our own culture would regard as rape, repeatedly compelling Odysseus to have sex with her against his will:
But, by nights he was compelled to lie with her in the hollow caves, against his will, but she was willing it. Odyssey 5.154–5.
The oxymoronic juxtaposition of “against his will,” coupled with “willing,” encapsulates the problems in their relationship, and the chasms between Odysseus, Gilgamesh, and Joseph, and Kalypso, Ishtar and Potiphar’s wife. Critical reception of both Kalypso and Kirke has tended to be highly romanticized, with commentators assigning them qualities the text does not actually indicate, seeing Odysseus as the willing lover of each goddess. Critics almost uniformly pass over the negative attributes the text assigns Kalypso.
Though Potiphar’s unnamed wife may not at first glance appear much like Kalypso or Ishtar, her interactions with Joseph have a fair amount in common with both. Like Ishtar with Gilgamesh, and Eos with Kleitos, Potiphar’s wife first desires Joseph because of his physical beauty:
Now Joseph was handsome in both face and figure, and after a time his master’s wife became infatuated with him. (Genesis 39:6–7)
As Speiser (1962: 303) notes, the phrase used of Potiphar’s wife’s first attraction to Joseph, which he renders as “fixed her eye on” (Gen. 39:7), is the same as that used of Ishtar first noticing Gilgamesh, “The identical idiom is used in Akkadian to describe Ishtar’s designs on Gilgamesh” (VI, 6). Potiphar’s wife immediately goes on to ask Joseph to have sex with her (Gen. 39:7), much as Ishtar propositions Gilgamesh. Suggesting the sexual aggression of Eos and Kalypso, she propositions him, not once, but over and over, “Though she kept on at Joseph day after day, he refused to lie with her” (Gen. 39:10). Finally she grabs him by the loincloth, holding on so tightly that it remains in her hand as he runs off (Gen. 39:12). Her use of force against him, even if unsuccessful, approaches The Odyssey’s depiction of Kalypso acting out her desire for Odysseus.
His imprisonment suggests thematic parallels with the underworld.
Though Kalypso’s island, Ogygia, in some respects resembles a paradise (discussed in Chapter 5), at the same time it instantiates aspects of the underworld. A similar notion is already present in Ishtar’s proposition to Gilgamesh. Abusch argues (1986: 152–3) that when Ishtar propositions Gilgamesh to be her husband she is also offering to make him lord of the Dead. Gilgamesh’s rejection of Ishtar nonetheless still associates him with death, if less directly, as it leads both to Enkidu’s death, and Gilgamesh’s own concern with escaping mortality. Kalypso descends from similar conceptions and traditions. Many features of her island are common to depictions of the underworld (Crane 1988: 16–17, 24, n. 12). As Crane notes (1988: 16), Hermes’ appearance on Ogygia suggests overlap with his usual association with the underworld as psychopomp, another way of implying Ogygia’s thematic overlap with Hades. The detail of Odysseus not eating the special food Kalypso would serve him (Od. 5.196–9) suggests that he is participating in other underworld themes, and, as Crane puts it (1988: 20), “avoids a snare that entraps Persephone (and various other figures in folklore).” The repeated mention that she lives in a cave (Od. 1.15, 5.57, 63, 77, 155, 9.30), which in myth often serves as a displaced version of the underworld (e.g., as in Odysseus’ escape from Polyphemos’ cave), is another such pointer. Eos’ lover Orion and Demeter’s lover Iasion, whom Kalypso mentions as parallels to her own involvement with Odysseus, as well as several of Ishtar’s lovers, all meet with premature deaths. Odysseus held against his will on Ogygia thus invokes parallels with a stay in the underworld.
Joseph’s lengthy imprisonment, a result of being desired by Potiphar’s wife, serves a similar function in his myth. Falsely accused of attempted rape, Joseph is imprisoned for years as a consequence of rejecting her. We noted that there are two sets of mistakes by Joseph, those with his brothers, and those in Potiphar’s house. The friction with his brothers leads to his larger confinement in Egypt, while the friction with Potiphar’s wife leads to his being cast in prison. The two episodes exhibit additional parallels. The brothers first strip him of his clothes (Gen. 37:23), then throw him into a pit, before selling him to slave traders. Potiphar’s wife removes his loincloth (Gen. 39:12–13), before making the charges against him that result in his being cast in prison.
His being cast into a pit by his brothers thus prefigures his later imprisonment, as well as evoking, if only briefly, the sense of a descent to the underworld which internment often suggests in romance. Frye (1976) sets out the general tendency:
At the beginning of a romance there is often a sharp descent in social status, from riches to poverty, from privilege to a struggle to survive, or even slavery. Families are separated. (p. 104)
The general theme of descent, we saw, was that of a growing confusion of identity and of restrictions on action. There is a break in consciousness at the beginning, with analogies to falling asleep, followed by a descent to a lower world, which is sometimes a world of cruelty and imprisonment, sometimes an oracular cave . . . hero or heroine are trapped in labyrinths or prisons. (p. 129)
Shakespeare uses Hermione’s imprisonment in similar ways in The Winter’s Tale. Like Joseph, she is imprisoned after a false charge of adultery (Act 2 Scene 1). Her time in prison is prelude and transition to her apparent death (Act 3 Scene 2), which lasts for sixteen years, a gap in time similar to the myths of Joseph and Odysseus. As in both of those myths, the sixteen-year gap provides sufficient time for her offspring, newborn daughter Perdita, to grow to young adulthood.
Because of his piety the gods help reunite him with his family.
As noted, Zeus’ comment about Odysseus’ sacrifices at Troy (Od. 1.65–7) establishes him as a righteous man. In the second divine council Zeus declares that Hermes will go to Ogygia and command Kalypso to let him leave. With Athena as the other speaker at both divine councils, three gods are thus involved in freeing Odysseus from confinement with Kalypso. But in accord with an epic modality, though free to leave, Odysseus will have to cross the sea alone, on a raft he himself builds, and perform several heroic feats just to reach Scheria, an intermediate stage between Ogygia and Ithaka.
Like Odysseus, Joseph makes his way out of prison with help from god. His ability to interpret dreams, discussed below, brings him to the attention of Pharaoh, leading to a rapid reversal of his status, and startling rise in his fortunes. Joseph himself ascribes his ability to interpret dreams entirely to god (Gen. 40:8, 41:16), and it is through the medium of dreams that god most frequently acts in his myth. Making him his right-hand man, Pharaoh gives Joseph a bride, Asenath, daughter of a high priest. This is a stock romance motif. Apollonius, at roughly the same point in his romance, is given as bride the daughter of King Archistrates. Shakespeare’s Pericles, modeled on the Apollonius romance, follows suit and has the title character marry Thaisa, daughter of King Simonides. Apollonius and Pericles marry their royal brides after they have lost everything in shipwrecks, a rough parallel with Joseph’s fortunes until he meets Pharaoh. The Odyssey offers up this same motif in Nausikaa, but Odysseus does not marry her. Joseph, Apollonius, and Pericles are the stock age for a romance protagonist, a young man, not yet married. Odysseus’ greater age, at least forty when he meets Nausikaa, and greater maturity than Joseph, prevents The Odyssey from doing more than merely alluding to this standard motif.
He returns home with fabulous treasures.
The Phaiakians, in accord with Zeus’ earlier declaration (Od. 5.38–40), give Odysseus more treasure than the fabulous winnings he would have brought back from Troy (but are now lost). Three different passages attest how lavish are the Phaiakians’ gifts (Od. 8.387–406; 13.10–15, 217–18). When he awakes, unaware that he is on Ithaka, he is concerned that the Phaiakians, who left while he was asleep, took some of the treasures. Joseph attains extraordinary prosperity when serving the Pharaoh. As we noted above, this is a formulaic theme in the myth, “the Lord blessed the household through Joseph” (Gen. 39:5), “the Lord was with him and gave him success in all that he did” (Gen. 39:23; cf. 39:2, 3). This tendency is codified in the name Joseph gives Ephraim, his second son by Asenath, “for God has made me fruitful in the land of my hardships” (Gen. 41:52). Joseph’s unprecedented prosperity partly serves as his disguise when his brothers eventually come to meet with him during the famine.
In Joseph’s myth his return has been adapted to serve another purpose, to provide an etiology for the Israelites dwelling in Egypt. Hence, the family, in the form of his brothers, comes to Joseph (discussed below) rather than the usual return of the protagonist to his homeland. But the traditional pattern reasserts itself when Joseph does go home to meet with his father. Both The Odyssey and the myth of Joseph find their conclusion in the protagonists’ meetings with their father after recognition scenes between the protagonist and other family members have already taken place.
His return after such a long absence is an apparent triumph over death.
Both protagonists are presumed dead during their lengthy absences, a stock motif throughout the romance tradition.
In The Odyssey, even those loyal to Odysseus, declare that he must be dead (Telemachos: Od. 1.166, Eumaios: 14.130, 17.318–19), or refuse to believe that he could return (Telemachos: Od. 16.194–5, Eurykleia: 19.369; cf. Penelope: 18.271).29 Those in the suitors’ party often make such declarations (Melanthios: Od. 17.253, Agelaos: 20.333; cf. Eurymakhos: 18.392), on which tendency Odysseus himself comments (Od. 22.35). Infrequent is the opposite view, firm belief that Odysseus will return (Halitherses’ prophecy: Od. 2.174–6).30 Though Joseph’s myth sounds the theme less frequently, when the brothers come to Egypt, and the unrecognized Joseph inquires about their family, they respond that one of their brothers remains with their father, “and one is lost” (Gen. 42:13; cf. 44:20). This is the same form of irony frequent in The Odyssey: when he stands before them in disguise, characters reminisce about the presumably absent Odysseus (Fenik 1974: 16, 22, 28–9, 42, 45; cf. de Jong 2001: 386). As Joseph presses his brothers about their family, demanding that they produce their youngest sibling, the brothers are prompted to further thoughts about the presumably deceased Joseph: “No doubt we are being punished because of our brother. We saw his distress when he pleaded with us and we refused to listen. That is why this distress has come upon us.” Reuben said, “Did I not warn you not to do wrong to the boy? But you would not listen, and now his blood is on our heads, and we must pay.” (Genesis 42:21–2) Speiser sums up their situation (1962: 323–4), “to the best of their knowledge, Joseph perished long ago in the wilderness near Dothan.”
The narratives reach their climax in recognition scenes, in which the protagonist is reunited with family members under highly emotional circumstances.
While such a climax is the standard way of romance, highly emotional recognition scenes between the protagonist and long-separated family members, the parallels between such scenes in The Odyssey and the myth of Joseph are closer than mere generic affinity. Both works feature preliminary encounters between the protagonist and family members in which his identity remains concealed while he subjects the other party to exacting tests. Both sets of scenes are not only highly emotional, prompting participants to break down and cry, but in both works the protagonist seems to act with unnecessary cruelty in doing so. The close parallels offer a context to analyze the more controversial aspects of Odysseus’ interview and recognition scene with Laertes, which finds a surprisingly close parallel in Joseph’s treatment of his brothers when they come to Egypt (Gen. 42–5).
By recognition scenes I mean the meetings between the protagonist and family members after his twenty-year absence. Since the protagonist is presumed dead, the vastly different circumstances in which both parties now find themselves after the twenty-year gap serve as a disguise for him. It is through recognition scenes that the protagonist re-establishes his identity with regard to his family, an identity he has not had since his separation from family. Recognition scenes are thus the core and climax of the “happy ending,” the central marker of the restoration of identity and cyclical movement that typifies romance.
There are several different subtypes of recognition scenes, depending on a few key variables. Are both parties ignorant of each other’s identities, or just one? How long does it take before the other member learns the protagonist’s identity? Does the scene take place before the protagonist has regained his identity, or after? Which family member takes part in the recognition scene? We can construct a typology based on these variables, thereby ascertaining which particular scenes exhibit the closest parallels with each other, belong to the same subtype, and serve as the most reliable guides for understanding the dynamics of a given instance. Two of the variables situate The Odyssey and the myth of Joseph among other romances; two variables set The Odyssey and Joseph’s myth apart from other romance; and one variable is operative only within The Odyssey itself.
When we consider romance in a broader perspective, adducing Euripides, Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, the Greek novels, and Shakespeare, the most significant distinction is the knowledge the characters in a given recognition scene have about each other. Either none of the participants is aware of the other’s identity, or the protagonist is aware of the other family member’s identity but temporarily conceals his own. This basic distinction divides recognition scenes into two broad subtypes. Most ancient romances, including Euripides’ Ion, Helen, and Iphigenia in Tauris, and The Story of Apollonius King of Tyre, as well as Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Pericles, use the first type, in which neither party is aware of the other’s identity. But both The Odyssey and Joseph’s myth use the second type, in which the protagonist conceals his own identity in preliminary meetings with family members. To my knowledge, the only other ancient romances that feature this same subtype are Euripides’ Alcestis and Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, both of which use variants of the type. In the recognition scene between husband and wife that concludes the Alcestis, Admetos is unaware of the identity of the woman whom Herakles compels him to accept. But it is not Alcestis who keeps her identity a secret. Awareness and subsequent manipulation of her identity is transferred to Herakles, a non-relative. Kalidasa’s Shakuntala also suggests a variation on this type. The protagonist is aware of her husband’s identity, but does not disguise herself, or manipulate him. He is under a curse that prevents him from recognizing her.
A second distinction lies in the specific relationship between the protagonist and other family members who take part. Recognition scenes occur between parent and child (mother and son in Euripides’ Ion, father and daughter in Apollonius and Shakespeare’s Pericles), husband and wife (Odysseus and Penelope, Apollonius and his unnamed queen, Dushyanta and Shakuntala in the Shakuntala, Menelaus and Helen in Euripides’ Helen, Leontes and Hermione in The Winter’s Tale), or between siblings (Joseph and his brothers, Iphigenia and Orestes in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris). Of these variations arguably the most dramatic is that between husband and wife, which provides the main climax of The Odyssey, the Shakuntala, and The Winter’s Tale. In the latter Shakespeare was criticized for not dramatizing the recognition scene between Leontes and his daughter Perdita. But he correctly chose, in my view, to concentrate the audience’s response on the recognition between husband and wife because of its deeper resonances.
A third variable is how much time elapses between the protagonist’s first meeting with the family member, and actual disclosure of his identity.
It is Athena who first signals the type of recognition scene that The Odyssey employs. Her first meeting with Odysseus on Ithaka serves as a blueprint for most of the subsequent recognition scenes. In this encounter Athena first approaches him disguised as a young man. Since she knows his identity, while he is unaware of hers, she acts throughout the meeting as Odysseus will in later scenes with family members and trusted servants. She toys with him, implying she knows that he was at Troy (Od. 13.248), deliberately delaying mention of the name Ithaka (Od. 13.248). In playing with his emotions in matters important to him, she plays the same role Odysseus will in subsequent scenes, and which Joseph does with his family members. After she reveals her true identity, and demonstrates to him that he is back on Ithaka, Athena declares that she is there to help him devise schemes (Od. 13.303), and defines Odysseus as a man who tests others, even family members (Od. 13.335–6).
Her assessment is programmatic for the entire second half of the epic. Such testing defines the specific subtype of recognition scenes in The Odyssey and Joseph’s myth. It is interesting to note that, while commentators often criticize Odysseus for this behavior, especially in the scenes with Laertes, Joseph, acting in precisely the same manner, rarely provokes criticism.
All of the recognition scenes in The Odyssey are delayed, except Athena’s and Argos’ immediate recognitions of Odysseus in Books 13 and 17. There are also whole scenes in which Odysseus’ identity is never disclosed while he tests a family member. I call such scenes (in which an unrecognized Odysseus interrogates a family member or servant, and receives proofs of loyalty) postponed recognition scenes. The same type is found in the myth of Joseph. Each protagonist tests his relatives or servants, and only after they have passed the tests does he, in a later meeting, reveal his identity. This type of recognition scene is a hallmark of each character, as Athena declares of Odysseus (Od. 13.296–9), and a tacit form of self-identification for the audience. There is a different context and different rhythm for each family member, a different sense of when is the right moment for the disclosure of identity. The Odyssey thus employs three cadences for disclosure of Odysseus’ identity, immediate, delayed, and postponed. In an immediate recognition the other party recognizes Odysseus as soon as the encounter begins. In delayed recognition the other party learns Odysseus’ identity by the end of the scene. In a postponed recognition the other party only learns Odysseus’ identity in a later scene.
In a fourth variable, two recognition scenes feature Odysseus being tested by the other party, Athena in Book 13, and Penelope in Book 23. I call such episodes reversed recognitions.
A fifth and final distinction in The Odyssey’s recognition scenes is whether they occur before or after Odysseus slays the suitors. If they occur before, they are preparatory to defeating the suitors, and are, to some degree, involved in the conclusion of The Odyssey’s use of theoxeny. These scenes, except that with Argos, involve characters who can in some way assist Odysseus in defeating the suitors. Thus Athena, Telemachos, Philoitios, and Eumaios all take part in the suitors’ destruction, while Eurykleia assists by locking the doors, keeping everyone within (Od. 21.380–7). But if the recognition scenes occur after the suitors’ destruction, such as those with Penelope and Laertes, they conclude The Odyssey’s use of romance.
The Odyssey also employs recognition scenes in conjunction with larger structural concerns. Most recognition scenes have a specific counterpart, a complementary scene constructed in closely parallel fashion. Athena’s scene in Book 13 is paired with Penelope’s in Book 23 in being reversed recognitions, and in having Odysseus bestow a kiss. To a lesser degree Athena’s scene is also paired with Argos’ in being immediate recognitions. The episodes with Eumaios (Books 14–15) are closely connected with the recognition scene with Telemachos (Book 16),42 just as in Book 19 the recognition with Eurykleia is related to the postponed recognition with Penelope. These two pairs of symbiotic recognition scenes frame the scenes of the suitors abusing Odysseus in the two books in between, Books 17 and 18. The final two recognition scenes, with Penelope in Book 23, and the Laertes scene in Book 24, also complement each other, forming a unit after the destruction of the suitors.
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