Maureen Joan Alden - Para-narratives in the Odyssey : stories in the frame

This book about para-narratives in the Odyssey is intended as a companion volume to Homer Beside Himself. In that volume, I tried to demonstrate how the subsidiary narratives of the Iliad explore and interpret the concerns of the primary narrative. In the Odyssey too, the primary narrative of how Odysseus secures his return home to recover his wife and punish her suitors is explored and illuminated by all the many subsidiary narratives by the poet and his characters. There have been some surprises along the way: I was not expecting the poems deliberate play on versions of myth that it does not use, or so much evocation of ritual in narrator text. The book has taken a long time to complete, against a grim background. I would not have survived to finish it without the medical expertise and prompt action of Dr. Denise Deasy, Dr. Oonagh Cleland, and Dr. Gary Dorman. Linda Ballard, George Huxley, Adrian Kelly, Elizabeth Minchin, William Odling-Smee F.R.C.S., Ruth Scodel, Richard Seaford, and Fred Williams have all been kind enough to discuss ideas and read portions of the manuscript. I am most grateful for their expert advice. It should not be assumed, however, that any of these scholars necessarily agrees with the views here expressed. Michael Longley kindly allowed me to use his poems, which are reproduced here by permission of Penguin Random House UK. I would also like to express my thanks to Hilary OShea, Charlotte Loveridge, Georgina Leighton, and other staff at the Oxford University Press. For the errors remaining in the work, I alone am responsible. My debt to my very brilliant, kind, and patient husband, Michael Allen, is beyond words. He allowed me to try out ideas and portions of the manuscript on him, and supported and encouraged my efforts with unfailing generosity. As a very inadequate token of my love and admiration, this book, too, is dedicated to him.

Belfast

27 September 2016