From AlvaresJ@Mail.Montclair.edu Thu Jul 6 12:27:16 2000 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id MAA51678 for ; Thu, 6 Jul 2000 12:27:14 -0700 Received: from mail.montclair.edu (enterprise1.montclair.edu [130.68.1.251]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id MAA20793 for ; Thu, 6 Jul 2000 12:27:13 -0700 Received: from mail.montclair.edu ([130.68.50.82]) by mail.montclair.edu (Netscape Messaging Server 3.6) with ESMTP id AAAB0A for ; Thu, 6 Jul 2000 15:27:17 -0400 Message-ID: <3964DD6B.AA49D50B@mail.montclair.edu> Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2000 15:26:42 -0400 From: "Jean Alvares" Reply-To: alvaresj@Mail.Montclair.edu X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: [Both] Manners & Religion? References: <3964D69C.9485DBD2@umail.umd.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit When I teach this episode I always tell my class that it largely conforms to the folktale formula of the shipwrecked sailor who woos and wins the beautiful princess, such as seen, for example, in Apollonius of Tyre. Indeed, Odysseus seems to be **acting** like he is wooing her, and Athena (already having sent Nausicaa a dream about marriage) makes Odysseus handsome after his bath. Of course, he's got to do some quick talking to get himself out of the paradigm at the end of book 7, although the contest with the young lords may also be a remnant of this formula. Elizabeth Vandiver wrote: > > > Comparandum, yes, but tongue-in-cheek on the poet's part. > > Yes, I agree. I've always seen a lot of humor in this scene; > particularly when Odysseus--filthy, naked, scraped bruised and > bloody, and covered with sea-salt, *debates* with himself whether > he should go grab Nausikaa's knees in supplication or stand well > off and try blandishing words. He decides that it's probably > better just to use words; yes, one might well think so!! > > And then, of course, the words he uses are the wonderful speech > we've been discussing, in which he begins by likening N. to > Artemis. It's a remarkable passage in all sorts of ways, with > some very delicate changes of register; *some day* I'm going to > get around to writing up my thoughts on it in coherent form, I hope... > > Elizabeth Vandiver -- ================================================= ================================================= Jean Alvares Department of Classics and General Humanities, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043 (O) (973)-655-5292 (H) (973)-778-4065 My homepage http://www.chss.montclair.edu/classics/alvares.shtml MSU Department of Classics and General Humanities Home Page http://www.chss.montclair.edu/classics/classics.html Petronian society ancient novel page http://www.chss.montclair.edu/classics/petron/PSNNOVEL.HTML My main javascript page: http://chss2.montclair.edu/classics/_private/javascript/javascripts.html My javascript Greek exercises http://chss2.montclair.edu/classics/_private/javascript/Greek/greekjava.html ================================================= ================================================= .