Odyssean Travels: The Migration of Narrative Form (Homer – Lamb – Joyce)
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Astrid Erll
Abstract
This essay brings cultural and historical narratology into dialogue with classical reception studies. It addresses the reception of Homer’s Odyssey and its narrative forms across time, focusing on Charles Lamb’s children’s version The Adventures of Ulysses (1808) and James Joyce’s modernist novel Ulysses (1922) as two landmarks in the epic’s modern memory. The essay traces how the Odyssey’s in medias res beginning initiated the epic’s elaborate play with temporal order, which enabled an early exploration of narrative perspective. After a discussion of unreliable narration, multiperspectivity, and narrative coping in the Odyssey, the essay shows how these narrative forms and functions travelled and were taken up, reformatted and transformed in Lamb’s and Joyce’s literary remediations of the Homeric text. These examples show that in the process of classical reception, the migration of narrative form emerges not as a steady and straightforward development, but more as a kind of ‘Odyssean travel’ - a complex, and often seemingly errant, temporal and cultural dynamic.
Abstract
This essay brings cultural and historical narratology into dialogue with classical reception studies. It addresses the reception of Homer’s Odyssey and its narrative forms across time, focusing on Charles Lamb’s children’s version The Adventures of Ulysses (1808) and James Joyce’s modernist novel Ulysses (1922) as two landmarks in the epic’s modern memory. The essay traces how the Odyssey’s in medias res beginning initiated the epic’s elaborate play with temporal order, which enabled an early exploration of narrative perspective. After a discussion of unreliable narration, multiperspectivity, and narrative coping in the Odyssey, the essay shows how these narrative forms and functions travelled and were taken up, reformatted and transformed in Lamb’s and Joyce’s literary remediations of the Homeric text. These examples show that in the process of classical reception, the migration of narrative form emerges not as a steady and straightforward development, but more as a kind of ‘Odyssean travel’ - a complex, and often seemingly errant, temporal and cultural dynamic.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter i
- Contents v
- A Tale of Two Concepts: Ansgar Nünning at Sixty 1
- Stories of Dangerous Life in the Post- Trauma Age: Toward a Cultural Narratology of Resilience 15
- Mind the Narratives: Towards a Cultural Narratology of Attention 37
- The End of the World (as We Know It)? – Cultural Ways of Worldmaking in Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Narratives 57
- Plumbing Distant Spatiotemporal Scales: Towards an Econarratology of Planetary Memory in Narratives of the Global South 75
- Narrative Forms in the Age of the Anthropocene: Negotiating Human-Nonhuman Relations in Global South Novels 91
- Fact, Fiction, and Everything in-between: Strategies of Reader Activation in Postcolonial Graphic Narratives 109
- ‘It’s Not Our Opinion, It’s the Opinion of Our Roles’ – Fremdverstehen Revisited or: Where Foreign Language Education and Narratology Can Meet 129
- Narrative and Visual Resources of Culture in Contemporary Indigenous Children’s Books from Australia 149
- Troubling Justice: Narratives of Revenge 165
- Erin Burnett in Mali: Bardic Television and the Genealogy of Cultural Narratology 185
- New Media Narratives: Olivia Sudjic’s Sympathy and Identity in the Digital Age 199
- The ‘Death’ of the Unreliable Narrator: Toward a Functional History of Narrative Unreliability 215
- Odyssean Travels: The Migration of Narrative Form (Homer – Lamb – Joyce) 241
- A European Storyteller? Collective Narration in John Berger’s Into Their Labours 269
- Brexit as Cultural Performance: Towards a Narratology of Social Drama 293
- Contributors 321
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter i
- Contents v
- A Tale of Two Concepts: Ansgar Nünning at Sixty 1
- Stories of Dangerous Life in the Post- Trauma Age: Toward a Cultural Narratology of Resilience 15
- Mind the Narratives: Towards a Cultural Narratology of Attention 37
- The End of the World (as We Know It)? – Cultural Ways of Worldmaking in Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Narratives 57
- Plumbing Distant Spatiotemporal Scales: Towards an Econarratology of Planetary Memory in Narratives of the Global South 75
- Narrative Forms in the Age of the Anthropocene: Negotiating Human-Nonhuman Relations in Global South Novels 91
- Fact, Fiction, and Everything in-between: Strategies of Reader Activation in Postcolonial Graphic Narratives 109
- ‘It’s Not Our Opinion, It’s the Opinion of Our Roles’ – Fremdverstehen Revisited or: Where Foreign Language Education and Narratology Can Meet 129
- Narrative and Visual Resources of Culture in Contemporary Indigenous Children’s Books from Australia 149
- Troubling Justice: Narratives of Revenge 165
- Erin Burnett in Mali: Bardic Television and the Genealogy of Cultural Narratology 185
- New Media Narratives: Olivia Sudjic’s Sympathy and Identity in the Digital Age 199
- The ‘Death’ of the Unreliable Narrator: Toward a Functional History of Narrative Unreliability 215
- Odyssean Travels: The Migration of Narrative Form (Homer – Lamb – Joyce) 241
- A European Storyteller? Collective Narration in John Berger’s Into Their Labours 269
- Brexit as Cultural Performance: Towards a Narratology of Social Drama 293
- Contributors 321
