The Oxford Critical Guides to particular texts and authors (so far, Iliad, Odyssey and Tacitus) are not handbooks or Companions, nor are they traditional essay collections. They seek to provides their users, primarily students, with interpretative essays for the entire work or corpus, avoiding the hit-or-miss nature of the standard collection, which may or may not address the section of text in which a reader is interested, and they do not seek to serve the variety of readers that a Companion does. In this volume, although such matters as historical background, textual transmission, reception and language are occasionally mentioned as they arise, particularly in the introduction, they are not treated systematically. Fortunately, although the question of ‘real locations’ is raised more than once, it is quickly dropped (pp. 93, 142–3, 165). The emphasis is entirely on interpretation, and the volume seeks to provide an introduction mainly to recent thinking about the poem. All Greek is translated, and the book aims to be accessible for students using a translation, who constitute a much larger market than students of Greek. The bibliography is heavily weighted towards English, and most works in other languages are cited only once, so that non-anglophone work is marginalised more than a glance at the bibliography indicates.
Hence, after the editor’s introduction, a different scholar discusses each book in chapters of nearly identical length. Each chapter begins with a plot summary, followed by a section on ‘Themes’. Each concludes with a paragraph offering internal cross-references for its main topics and some suggestions for further reading. Some include a section on ‘Poetics’, some ‘Special Topics’ or ‘Notable Passages’. Only Spain on the European continent has a contributor, although contributors from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and England keep the project from being too American. Most contributors have published about particular issues or aspects of Homeric epic or the Odyssey specifically, and the chapters are distributed so that their special interests are especially relevant to the Odyssey book that they discuss, though most go beyond their own interests to present other themes of general importance to the poem. So, S. Lye treats Book 11 because she has worked on the Underworld, J. Arft has Book 6 and Arete, D. Beck on Book 16 has the opportunity to discuss similes, and N. Felson on 21 looks at the various story-patterns to which Penelope could belong. As a result, readers who are conversant with recent scholarship will find few of the main points unfamiliar, although almost every chapter will offer a new item of bibliography or a new thought about a particular moment in the narrative. Although I am not persuaded by the suggestion of J. Burgess that Menelaus could be lying about Helen and the Wooden Horse (p. 71), I enjoyed thinking about it. Homerists are not the intended audience, although they will often be responsible for assigning or recommending the book, and they may want to read a chapter as a quick reminder. It seems very sensible to give students such direct glimpses of recent scholarship, even if a few contributors have inclined to self-indulgence and spend more time that the student really needs on a particularly favoured but secondary topic: G. Nagy’s summary of his argument about the cult of Achilles in Best of the Achaeans is not, in this reviewer’s opinion, the best use of the reader’s time.
The contributors differ in how fully they engage with disagreements, and none seems to have substantially changed a previous view. Some traditional questions receive little attention – the introduction endorses Nagy’s evolutionary model for the origins of the epic, and the contributors either share this view or do not address the question. While this is surely the dominant view, at least in the anglophone world, at no point does anyone examine possible objections to the model. In general, the contributors often cite each other’s publications; and although the volume achieves admirable breadth, at times it feels slightly insular. Some interpretations in earlier scholarship that are certainly significant, but controversial, are treated as if their validity can be taken for granted (e.g. D. Frame’s interpretation of nostos in The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic [1978]). Among the Cambridge ‘Green and Yellow Commentaries’ on the poem, D. Steiner’s is cited much more often than the others. Not surprisingly, this volume is very attentive to contemporary concerns – social hierarchy, slavery and gender, for example, are discussed repeatedly.
The introduction briefly (p. 13) dismisses the possibility that the epic represents a Mycenaean society, but the debate about whether and how it represents a later society is mostly ignored. Xenia, poetic and narrative self-consciousness, and the maturation of Telemachus receive their full due. There is no unanimity about some of the central interpretative questions, however. L. Muellner does not want to call Odysseus’ tales ‘lies’, because he sees them as alternate traditions; others, particularly J. Murray and P. Rankine on Books 13 and 14 respectively, do not hesitate. Most notable is the ‘early recognition’ debate – whether Penelope recognises that the beggar is Odysseus in Book 19 or before, so that she sets the bow contest in order to enable the slaughter of the suitors. O. Levaniouk argues strongly for this position on Book 19, while M. Herrero de Jáuregui on Book 20 and L.M. Slatkin on Book 23 argue against it. Similarly, A.C. Loney doubts whether Odysseus’ vengeance is proportionate to the suitors’ crimes, but Herrero de Jáuregui considers how the poem invites the audience to accept it as just. The volume is in these cases exemplary in its foregrounding of thoughtful disagreement among its contributors, but in classroom practice this feature may complicate using the book. It seems to be intended to be read almost as a commentary – students will read the relevant chapter soon after reading the book of the Odyssey. Readers who skip a chapter may therefore miss arguments that are important elsewhere, and one can only hope that students are unusually diligent in using the cross-references, or that instructors cleverly use the opportunities this format provides.
I have a few quibbles. First, sometimes works are listed in the bibliography with the date of a reprint or translation, without the original date of publication. This is misleading to students. Also, the volume is riddled with minor errors and places where a summary of a passage discussed is debatable. More copy-editing would have been beneficial. ‘Dowry’ for ‘bride-price’, ‘host’ for ‘guest’, ‘courtesan’ for ‘concubine’ are annoying, but are unlikely to confuse even undergraduates. Melanthius threatens to sell Eumaeus, but not ‘into slavery’ (p. 218), for he is already enslaved. When Penelope goes to her own room near the end of Book 1 (Od. 1.361–6), it is not clear either that she is crying because Telemachus has taken away her agency – the text implies that she accepts her son’s rebuke – or that the prayers of the suitors for sex with her should be called ‘abusive catcalls’ (p. 38). Although the suitors are noisy, there is no indication that Penelope hears them at this moment. We do not know that it is winter when Odysseus arrives on Ithaca (p. 98); the maids who leave the house at the beginning of Book 19 have not just spent the evening with the suitors, but are going elsewhere to sleep with them (p. 258). A teacher, however, can use some of these to prompt discussion (why do the maids apparently avoid sex with the suitors in Odysseus’ house? Why does the poem not specify the season?).
The book should be very useful for teaching. If a colleague in another field asked me to suggest what to read to learn about recent studies of the Odyssey, I would include it in my list.
