The Authoress of the Odyssey

by Samuel Butler, Henry Festing Jones

Overview

Butler was a product, or perhaps the term should be "user," of his classical education. His provocative novels bulge with classical references, his essays confront the Church, the intellectual establishment, and the Darwinians in full Latin regalia, and whether or not one regards him as a true gentlemanly Victorian eccentric or a hopeless crank, one must admit he knew his Homer. Near the end of his life, he wrote what was either a groundbreaking work of reasoned logic or one of the purest of pranks: a monograph asserting the author of the Odyssey was a woman bold enough to use herself as one of the characters. Tim Whitmarsh (Greek literature, U. of Exeter) describes the possible motivations of Butler to produce this methodical work, the reaction that followed in the intellectual community, and the dual possibilities that Butler knew he was right in his theories, or knew he was right in setting off dynamite in the stiff and patriarchal world of his fellow gentleman intellectuals. This is a reprint of the original 1897 edition published by A. C. Fifield, London with a new introduction. Distributed in the US by the David Brown Book Company. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781023406925
Publisher:	Anson Street Press
Publication date:	03/29/2025
Pages:	226
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Samuel Butler, scholar, painter, pioneer photographer and novelist (including 'Erewhon' and 'The Way of All Flesh'), was one of the less orthodox of Victorian intellectual provocateurs, who confronted powerful orthodoxies such as the Church, the academic establishment, and scientific Darwinism. Tim Whitmarsh (like Butler himself, a former Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge) is Reader in Greek Literature at the University of Exeter. He is author of 'Greek Literature and the Roman Empire' (Oxford University Press, 2001), 'A Cultural History of Greek Literature' (Polity Press, 2004) and 'Reading the Self in the Ancient Greek Novel' (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

Table of Contents

Chapter I	Importance of the Enquiry-the Steps Whereby I was Led to My Conclusions-the Multitude of Early Greek Poetesses Removes any a priori Difficulty-the Muses and Minerva As Heads of Literature-Man, Rather Than Woman, the Imterloper	1
Chapter II	The Story of the Odyssey	14
Book i	The council of the gods-Telemachus and the suitors in the house of Ulysses	18
Book ii	Assembly of the people of Ithaca-Telemachus starts for Pylos	21
Book iii	Telemachus at the house of Nestor	23
Book iv	Telemachus at the house of Menelaus-The suitors resolve to lie in wait for him as he returns, and murder him	24
Book v	Ulysses in the island of Calypso-He leaves the island on a raft, and after great suffering reaches the land of the Phaeacians	28
Book vi	The meeting between Ulysses and Nausicaa	30
Book vii	The splendours of the house of King Alcinous-Queen Arete wants to know how Ulysses got his shirt and cloak, for she knows them as her own work. Ulysses explains	34
Book viii	The Phaeacian games and banquet in honour of Ulysses	37
Book ix	The voyages of Ulysses-The Cicons, Lotus-eaters, and the Cyclops Polyphemus	41
Book x	AEolus-The Laestrygonians-Circe	46
Book xi	Ulysses in the house of Hades	49
Book xii	The Sirens-Scylla and Charybdis-The cattle of the Sun	53
Book xiii	Ulysses is taken back to Ithaca by the Phaeacians	57
Book viv	Ulysses in the hut of Eumaeus	60
Book xv	Telemachus returns from Pylos, and on landing goes to the hut of Eumaeus	63
Book xvi	Ulysses and Telemachus become known to one another	66
Book xvii	Telemachus goes to the town, and is followed by Eumaeus and Ulysses, who is maltreated by the suitors	70
Book xviii	The fight between Ulysses and Irus-The suitors make presents to Penelope-and ill-treat Ulysses	75
Book xix	Ulysses converses with Penelope, and is recognised by Euryclea	78
Book xx	Ulysses converses with Eumaeus, and with his herdsman Philoetius-The suitors again maltreat him-Theoclymenus foretells their doom and leaves the house	83
Book xxi	The trial of the bow and of the axes	87
Book xxii	The killing of the suitors	90
Book xxiii	Penelope comes down to see Ulysses, and being at last convinced that he is her husband, retires with him to their own old room-In the morning Ulysses, Telemachus, Philoetius, and Eumaeus go to the house of Laertes	96
Book xxiv	The Ghosts of the suitors in Hades-Ulysses sees his father-is attacked by the friends of the suitors-Laertes kills Eupeithes-Peace is made between him and the people of Ithaca	99
Chapter III	The Preponderance of Woman in the Odyssey	105
Chapter IV	Jealousy for the Honour and Dignity of Woman-Severity Against Those Who Have Disgraced Their Sex-Love of Small Religious Observances-of Preaching-of White Lies and Small Playacting-of Having Things Both Ways-and of Money	115
Chapter V	On the Question Whether or No Penelope is Being Whitewashed	125
Chapter VI	Further Considerations Regarding the Character of Penelope-the Journey of Telemachus to Lacedaemon	134
Chapter VII	Further Indications That the Writer is a Woman-Young-Head-Strong-And Unmarried	142
Chapter VIII	That Ithaca and Scheria are Both of Them Drawn from Trapani and Its Immediate Neighbourhood	158
Chapter IX	The Ionian and the Aegadean Islands-the Voyages of Ulysses Shown to be Practically a Sail Round Sicily From Trapani to Trapani	174
Chapter X	Further Details Regarding the Voyages of Ulysses, to Confirm the View That They Were a Sail Round Sicily, Beginning and Ending with Mt. Eryx and Trapani	188
Chapter XI	Who was the Writer?	200
Chapter XII	The Date of the Poem, and a Comparison of the State of the North Western Part of Sicily as Revealed to Us in the Odyssey, with the Account Given by Thucydides of the Same Territory in the Earliest Known Times	210
Chapter XIII	Further Evidence in Support of an Early Ionian Settlement at or Close to Trapani	225
Chapter XIV	That the Iliad Which the Writer of the Odyssey Knew was the Same as What We Now Have	232
Chapter XV	The Odyssey in its Relation to the Other Poems of the Trojan Cycle, and its Development in the Hands of the Authoress	249
Chapter XVL	Conclusion	262