The Cartography of Power in Greek Epic : Homer's Odyssey & The Reception of Homeric Geographies in the Hellenistic and Imperial Periods
- Author:
- Skoutelas, Charissa Martha
- Published:
- [University Park, Pennsylvania] : Pennsylvania State University, 2020.
- Physical Description:
- 1 electronic document
- Additional Creators:
- Peterson, Anna, 1982- and Schreyer Honors College
Access Online
- honors.libraries.psu.edu , Connect to this object online.
- Restrictions on Access:
- Open Access.
- Summary:
- As modern scholarship has transitioned from analyzing literature in terms of its temporal components towards a focus on narrative spaces, scholars like Alex Purves and Donald Lateiner have applied this framework also to ancient Greek literature. Homers Odyssey provides a critical recipient for such inquiry, and Purves has explored the construction of space in the poem with relation to its implications on Greek epic as a genre. This paper seeks to expand upon the spatial discourse on Homers Odyssey by pinpointing the modern geographic concept of power, tracing a term inspired by Michael Foucault, or a cartography of power, in the poem. In Chapter 2 I employ a narratological approach to examine power dynamics played out over specific spaces of Odysseus wanderings, and then on Ithaca, analyzing the intersection of space, power, knowledge, and deception. The second half of this chapter discusses the threshold of Odysseus palace and flows of power across spheres of gender and class. In Chapter 3, following the model put forth in the previous chapter, I address the question of Hellenistic reception of Homeric geographies through an analysis of Apollonius Argonautica. Finally, in Chapter 4, I reflect on Dionysius of Alexandrias Periegesis of the Known World from the Imperial period as a response to Homers and Apollonius epic geographies. In this chapter I first address Homeric reception in the imperial period and within the Second Sophistic and then transition to an analysis of references to locations of the Odyssey in Dionysiuss descriptive poem.
- Subject(s):
- Other Subject(s):
- Genre(s):
- Dissertation Note:
- B.A. Pennsylvania State University 2020.
- Technical Details:
- The full text of the dissertation is available as an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file ; Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view the file.
View MARC record | catkey: 30585811