Folktales in Homer's Odyssey

by Denys L. Page

Genres: Mythology, Criticism

144 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1973

Reviews

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In short, a very entertaining read! Not a full-scale treatment of folktales in the Odyssey - rather a reproduction of a series of 4 lectures delivered by the author at Harvard University - but still an informative and well-researched contribution.
Page sets himself the task of exploring the backgrounds (literary and non-literary) to half a dozen of the stories found in Books 9-12 of the Odyssey - stories narrated by the hero, in which he relates his encounters with an array of man-eating giants, monsters, mysterious folk like the lotus-eaters and enchantresses (delicious!). Page does so partly, he explains, to indulge a desire to linger longer among these curious beings (you've got to love him for saying that!) and partly to make them more interesting for us, but also to show how Homer has adapted/reworked the folktale elements in order to make them harmonise with the epic context.
Lots of fun for anyone with an interest in Homeric epic, folktales, comparative folklore and literary history/technique.

[Liam Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was originally trained in Folklore as an undergraduate student at Penn State University. I read this book while pursuing my Master's in Classics. It is a good book because it takes time to explain the actual Greek words that many of us have accepted as the correct definition of these words.

The part about the challenge with Odysseus' bow takes apart the probability of achieving this feat. Page argues Homer never witnessed such a challenge, so he made up a description that made sense to him.

This book is fun, I recommend reading it alongside reading the Odyssey.

[Anke King · Rating 2 out of 5]

I disagreed with some of the points he made, thinking them as stretches. Also, I found the lapses into French quite annoying, as well as the tendency to spiral into tangents- the first two chapters were by far the most interesting to read

[Nora · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesante

[Samrat · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun enough read, and I am convinced Professor Page must have been a tremendously entertaining presence but the grains of salt I felt compelled to take with it just kept piling up. Initially, I admired Professor Page's immediate avoidance of trying to define what "folktales" are, separate from myth, for its honesty, but that feeling lessened when it became clearer that he was a classicist with no folklore training or previous work that I could find. Not to say that an academic can never pick up something outside their initial focus, but the examples of Graves and Campbell show the danger of literary-trained academics finding myth and folklore easy enough topics to pick up with no real training. That suspicion only grew with the uncritical citation of The Golden Bough, especially since this volume was published in the 70s, which is more than enough time to know better.

All in all an enjoyable read, but I'd hesitate to say I really got anything out of it besides increased curiosity for what a pre-Homeric argonautica might have looked like.

[Thecoweyed · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick, fun read. It lost me a little bit at the end of each chapter when it started drawing parallels to stories from Australia and further reaches, but it definitely offered an interesting reading of some of the Odyssey's odder episodes.