The Odyssey: Background

Genre

The Odyssey is an epic poem: long, narrative, and written in an elevated style. Epic poems deal with the trials and achievements of a great hero or heroes. The epic celebrates virtues of national, military, religious, political, or historical significance. The word “epic” itself comes from the Greek épos, originally meaning “word.” Later, however, the Greek word went on to mean “oration” or “song.” An epic typically emphasizes heroic action as well as the struggle between the hero’s ethos and his human failings or mortality.

The Odyssey is a primary epic. Primary epics usually evolve from the mores, legends, or folk tales of a people and are developed in an oral tradition of storytelling. Odysseus embodies the virtues of ancient Greek civilization. However, he is not without flaws.

Epics usually open with a statement of the subject and an invocation to the Muse or Muses. The Odyssey also employs most of the literary and poetic devices typically associated with epics: catalogs, digressions, long speeches, journeys or quests, various trials or tests of the hero, similes, metaphors, and divine intervention.

Historical and Philosophical Background

Although it is believed that the Odyssey was composed between 750 and 650 BCE, it is set in Mycenaean Greece around the twelfth century BCE, during the Bronze Age. This period, according to the Greeks, was glorious and sublime; gods still frequented the earth and heroic mortals populated Greece.

The Odyssey takes the fall of the city of Troy as its starting point, and focuses on the struggles of Odysseus, a Greek warrior. It tells the story of his nostos, or journey, home to northwest Greece, during the ten-year period following Greece’s victory over the Trojans. A tale of wandering, it takes place on fantastic islands and foreign lands. It was composed primarily in the Ionic dialect of Ancient Greek, which was spoken on the Aegean islands and in the coastal settlements of Asia Minor.