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Two Paradigmatic Catalogues

Benjamin Sammons

in The Art and Rhetoric of the Homeric Catalogue

This chapter examines the two places where Homeric speakers string together several paradigmatic tales or exempla in the format of a catalogue (Iliad 5.382–405, Odyssey 5.118–36). It is argued that ... More

This chapter examines the two places where Homeric speakers string together several paradigmatic tales or exempla in the format of a catalogue (Iliad 5.382–405, Odyssey 5.118–36). It is argued that the striking similarities between the two examples are not coincidental, e.g. that a goddess (Dione or Calypso) speaks to another god about a situation pertaining to a major hero (Diomedes or Odysseus). The choice of divine speakers reinforces the authoritative tone of the catalogue form and suggests its ability to communicate a privileged perspective on history and historical patterns. Yet in each case the speaker’s rhetorical aims, and the catenulate or fragmented structure of the catalogue form itself, distort the overall picture. While speakers may attempt, through paradigmatic catalogues, to impose a pattern or interpretation on the events of the narrative, Homer in each case preserves crucial differences between the catalogue and his own story.Less

Odysseus Nympholeptos

Corinne Ondine Pache

in A Moment’s Ornament: The Poetics of Nympholepsy in Ancient Greece

It is a commonplace to say that the heroes of Homeric epic have close bonds with gods and goddesses. Yet the degree to which goddesses are preoccupied with heroes is striking, and this concern is ... More

It is a commonplace to say that the heroes of Homeric epic have close bonds with gods and goddesses. Yet the degree to which goddesses are preoccupied with heroes is striking, and this concern is consistently expressed in terms of erotic love. Chapter 4 focuses on the motif of the goddess in love in the Odyssey, a poem structured around a series of encounters between Odysseus and several goddesses. The poem offers three Odyssean versions of the goddess-in-love motif. Odysseus’s rejection of Calypso’s love and offer of immortality is unique: Odysseus is the only Greek hero who rejects a goddess’s advances and survives the experience, a choice and outcome that are central to his status of epic hero. The hero’s relationship with Athene includes nympholeptic aspects and comes close to the ideal marriage described by Odysseus to Nausicaa in Odyssey 6. Finally, the Ithacan sanctuary of the nymphs inspires reminiscences of the cultic and folklore versions of nympholepsy. Each Odyssean version thus highlights different features of the nympholeptic pattern, which in turn help define Odysseus’s distinct form of heroism.Less

Dirty Jim/Mighty Bomber

Jan Brokken

in The Music of the Netherlands Antilles: Why Eleven Antilleans Knelt before Chopin's Heart

A chapter that discusses the similarities between Trinidad and Curacao and an Interview with calypsonian Mighty Bomber. It compares the music and social history.

From Calypso Queen to Calypso Monarch

Hope Munro

in What She Go Do: Women in Afro-Trinidadian Music

This chapter focuses on the careers and performance strategies of the three most successful female calypsonians in contemporary Trinidad: Calypso Rose, Singing Sandra, and Denyse Plummer. Each woman ... More

This chapter focuses on the careers and performance strategies of the three most successful female calypsonians in contemporary Trinidad: Calypso Rose, Singing Sandra, and Denyse Plummer. Each woman has had to overcome the sexism inherent in the Caribbean music scene, as well as the critiques of the media and audiences, in their pursuit of a musical career. They have come to serve as role models for their contemporaries and as cultural ambassadors for the women of Trinidad and Tobago. The chapter examines the career trajectories of Calypso Rose, Singing Sandra, and Denyse Plummer as well as their participation in musical competitions in Trinidad and Tobago, particularly the Calypso Monarch and the Calypso Queen competitions. It also considers the various competitions for calypsonians of all ages in contemporary Trinidad, designed to find the next generation of calypsonians.Less

Secrets, Narratology, and Implicature: A Virgin Reading of “Calypso”

Margot Norris

in Bloomsday 100: Essays on Ulysses

Fritz Senn, one of the most incisive readers ever to tackle Ulysses, calls “Calypso” “probably the easiest chapter in the novel.” This is certainly true for veteran readers of the novel, who can ... More

Fritz Senn, one of the most incisive readers ever to tackle Ulysses, calls “Calypso” “probably the easiest chapter in the novel.” This is certainly true for veteran readers of the novel, who can bring the knowledge of the whole work to bear on figuring out nearly everything that goes on in this episode. But how would “Calypso” strike a first-time or virgin reader, as we might call such a hypothetical figure? This chapter advocates a return to first principles in its endeavor to track the heuristic dilemmas faced by a “virgin” reader of “Calypso.” Adopting Paul Grice's notion of implicature, the role of the unspoken and the implied in discourse, this chapter charts the path the reader must steer through the false leads, explanatory gaps, perplexing conjunctions, semiotic lapses, and insinuated points of view of this episode. It shows that all interpretations of Ulysses must necessarily be incomplete and imperfect and that, moreover, James Joyce forces us to collude in the guilty secrets at which the text playfully gestures only often to reveal as figments.Less

”Mkgnao! Mrkgnao! Mrkgrnao!”: The Pussens Perplex

John Gordon

in Bloomsday 100: Essays on Ulysses

This chapter is concerned with how James Joyce renders reality or, more specifically, how he captures our slow-motion sensory apprehension of the world. In a reading itself characterized by its fine ... More

This chapter is concerned with how James Joyce renders reality or, more specifically, how he captures our slow-motion sensory apprehension of the world. In a reading itself characterized by its fine attunement to the text, the chapter notes how the onomatopoeic notation of the mewing of Bloom's cat in “Calypso,” if carefully deciphered, captures the ways in which sounds gradually become more audible as we begin to discern and interpret them. It also argues, in delineating the semantic games enacted with the figure of the Porter in Finnegans Wake, that the process of reading this text spurs readers to refine and sharpen their powers of perception. In similar manner, the recurrence of details and the differing versions of events to which we are often treated in Ulysses mimic the time-release effect of sense perception while encouraging readers to hone their observational powers.Less

“Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse”: The Trinidadian Calypso to 1940

Njoroge Njoroge

in Chocolate Surrealism: Music, Movement, Memory, and History in the Circum-Caribbean

This chapter examines the rise and development of calypso in Trinidad. Trinidad is a rich site to explore issues of diaspora and historical development in the Caribbean since the island has the ... More

This chapter examines the rise and development of calypso in Trinidad. Trinidad is a rich site to explore issues of diaspora and historical development in the Caribbean since the island has the dubious distinction of being subject to all the major imperial powers in the region. Calypso is quintessentially urban, developed in the late 19th century through the intermingling of the largely once-rural proletariat, unemployed and under-employed ex-slaves, and formerly indentured Africans and other Creoles in the burgeoning city of Port-of-Spain. The music emerged from and was developed in the barrack yards, stick-fights, carnival tents, and city streets, and became a national music and symbol. This period is also one in which the economic penetration of the British into the island was transformed into formal political and ideological control, thus illuminating inter-imperialist rivalries and transformations, and the complications of political transition in a “plural society.”Less

Odysseus and the Day of Return

Barbara Cassin

in Nostalgia

The author gives the history of the term nostalgia, starting with its Swiss-German origin, and then turns to The Odyssey as the very poem of nostalgia. As she recalls: “The symbolic sign that ... More

The author gives the history of the term nostalgia, starting with its Swiss-German origin, and then turns to The Odyssey as the very poem of nostalgia. As she recalls: “The symbolic sign that Odysseus is finally ‘at home,’ is his bed, rooted, carved out with his own hands from an olive tree around which he built his house. Rootedness and uprootedness: that is nostalgia.” However, when Odysseus is finally home after some twenty long years of wandering, his odyssey is far from being over: He must travel the day after his homecoming to a land inhabited by people who know nothing about the sea and the Greeks’ victories, as far as possible from the sea, walking inland and carrying the oar of a ship. Until a man crosses his path and asks him: “What winnowing fan is that upon your shoulder?”Thus even when Odysseus has returned home he is not really home, forced to travel far away from home once again. Cassin thus concludes that: “It is rather the ‘not yet,’ and perhaps also the mistake, that constitutes the relationship between the proper and the foreign—this oar that must be mistaken for a winnowing fan—that characterizes nostalgia.”Less

The Forecast is Hurricane: Circe’s Powers and Circe’s Desires in Modern Women’s Poetry

Sheila Murnaghan and Deborah H. Roberts

in Homer's Daughters: Women's Responses to Homer in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

Along with its heroine Penelope, the Odyssey presents an array of ‘other women’, female figures such as the Sirens, Calypso, and Circe, who impede Odysseus’ progress and stand as rivals to Penelope, ... More

Along with its heroine Penelope, the Odyssey presents an array of ‘other women’, female figures such as the Sirens, Calypso, and Circe, who impede Odysseus’ progress and stand as rivals to Penelope, but who cannot prevent Odysseus’ return to his much-prized wife. In this chapter, we consider the legacy of these figures, and especially of Circe, in poems by modern and contemporary female writers, including Margaret Atwood, H.D., Carol Ann Duffy, Louise Glück, Linda Pastan, and Augusta Davies Webster. While these authors may differ in their stances towards feminist politics and efforts to define a feminist poetics, their choice to speak through mythical figures who have considerable powers but are ultimately sidelined and abandoned yields searching, often sharply critical accounts of ancient and modern gender arrangements.Less

The Poem in the Making

M. L. West

in The Making of the Odyssey

The poet’s treatment of his material is here analysed. He filled out the picture of Odysseus’ family and environment; invented the journey of Telemachos as a means of sketching in the returns of ... More

The poet’s treatment of his material is here analysed. He filled out the picture of Odysseus’ family and environment; invented the journey of Telemachos as a means of sketching in the returns of other heroes from Troy as a background to Odysseus’; inflated the number of Penelope’s suitors and the duration of Odysseus’ wanderings, which he augmented from the Argonaut saga. The visit to Hades, Calypso, the Phaeacian episode, Odysseus’ homecoming and strategy against the suitors, and the events of Book 24 each receive separate discussion. Many passages are identified as expansions made by the poet in earlier drafts of his narrative.Less

Homer in Love

Barbara Weiden Boyd

in Ovid's Homer: Authority, Repetition, Reception

Chapter 7 considers a second central theme in Ovid’s Homeric reception, desire, and its evocation through repetition. The erotic tradition of Homeric reception that Ovid inherited can be seen in the ... More

Chapter 7 considers a second central theme in Ovid’s Homeric reception, desire, and its evocation through repetition. The erotic tradition of Homeric reception that Ovid inherited can be seen in the longest extant fragment of the elegiac poem Leontion, in which the Hellenistic poet Hermesianax offers a catalogue of ancient poets and the women they loved. In Tristia 1.6, Ovid expands upon the central trope of this catalogue, in which poetry is personified as the beloved object of a poet’s desire. The love-poet, suggests Ovid, strives continually to renew his love by recreating the great loves of past poetry, aspiring always to surpass them. Discussions of Ovid’s treatment of Penelope in Heroides 1, Calypso in Ars amatoria Book 2, and Circe in the Remedia amoris explore Ovid’s continuing interest in figuring himself as a second Homer by imagining Homer as an elegiac poet.Less

The Brooklyn Soca Connection

Ray Allen

in Jump Up!: Caribbean Carnival Music in New York

Chapter 6 focuses on the rise of Brooklyn soca (soul/calypso), beginning with the story of the early Bronx-based independent record company Camille Records, before shifting to the three most ... More

Chapter 6 focuses on the rise of Brooklyn soca (soul/calypso), beginning with the story of the early Bronx-based independent record company Camille Records, before shifting to the three most important Brooklyn-based labels: Straker’s Records, Charlie’s Records, and B’s Records. These Caribbean-owned businesses, along with a cadre of influential calypso/soca singers and the music arrangers with whom they collaborated, played a crucial role in the evolution of modern calypso and soca music during the 1970s and 1980s. Brooklyn’s Labor Day celebration had been dominated by calypso from its inception. Indeed, calypso and the new variant soca (soul/calypso) were essential hallmarks of the festivities. Equally important, and concurrent with the rise of Brooklyn Carnival in the 1970s, was the borough’s emergence as a vital transnational center for the recording and production of calypso and soca music.Less

Moralists and Aggregators: The Case of Muir and Pinchot

Bryan G. Norton

in Toward Unity among Environmentalists

Gifford Pinchot first met John Muir in 1896, while on a trip through the West to study possible sites for new forest preserves. Pinchot was much impressed by Muir, twenty-seven years his senior, ... More

Gifford Pinchot first met John Muir in 1896, while on a trip through the West to study possible sites for new forest preserves. Pinchot was much impressed by Muir, twenty-seven years his senior, and recalled the meeting fifty years later in his autobiography. He described Muir as “cordial, and a most fascinating talker, I took to him at once.” Muir, in his writings of this period, was explicitly complimentary of Pinchot’s efforts at sustainable forestry. At the Grand Canyon, Muir and Pinchot struck off on their own and “spent an unforgettable day on the rim of the prodigious chasm, letting it soak in.” They came across a tarantula and Muir wouldn’t let Pinchot kill it: “He said it had as much right there as we did.” Within a year, however, Muir had complained bitterly and publicly about Pinchot’s decision to allow grazing in the national forest reserves. This rift between the Moralist (Muir) and the Aggregator (Pinchot) shaped the two wings of the environmental movement, and its original configuration owes much to attitudes developed in the early life and work of each man. Muir entered the University of Wisconsin in 1861, the year the Civil War broke out. Although he was almost twenty-three, his last formal schooling had been interrupted at the age of eleven, when his family emigrated from Scotland. His father, Daniel, a religious zealot, had no use for any book but the Bible. The elder Muir, who joined ever more extreme sects in search of one sufficiently pure and exacting, chose eighty acres of virgin land and put his eldest son John to work clearing it. Days were spent cutting trees and grubbing out roots, and nights were given over to memorizing Scripture. Daniel Muir planted only corn and wheat for cash crops, and the farmland was worn out in only eight years. Choosing a new and larger plot, the family moved and repeated the process. Again, the hardest work fell to John as his father spent all of his time studying the Bible and preaching to anyone who would listen. Less

Epic Transposed: The Real and the Hyperreal during the Revolutionary Period in France

Fiona Macintosh

in Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century

The vexed problem of epic, equally detectable in the British and French theatrical traditions from the eighteenth century onwards, explains why epic had no place on the ‘tragic’ stage of the ... More

The vexed problem of epic, equally detectable in the British and French theatrical traditions from the eighteenth century onwards, explains why epic had no place on the ‘tragic’ stage of the Comédie-Française during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Epic, it seems, could either be ‘low’ (so confined to the Théâtre Italien) or transported to the hyperreality of the operatic/ballet stages. This chapter examines one danced version, Gardel’s revolutionary ballet pantomime Télémaque dans l’île de Calypso (1790) in order to probe the fate of epic on the eighteenth-century stage. In the wake of the institutional divisions of the theatrical arts at the end of the seventeenth century, serious ‘spoken’ drama was restricted to a narrowly conceived ‘reality’ that precluded the ‘hyperreality’ of epic; and yet, paradoxically and chillingly, it was this ‘hyperreality’ that was increasingly providing a better reflection of the revolutionary actualities that were unfolding outside the theatre.Less

Taking the Queen to the Streets: The Jaycees Carnival Queen Competition and the Pretty Mas’ Aesthetic

Samantha Noel

in Carnival Is Woman: Feminism and Performance in Caribbean Mas

In this chapter, examines how the Jaycees Carnival Queen competition upheld upper and middle class mores in opposition to a largely black and working class aesthetic, thereby creating a national ... More

In this chapter, examines how the Jaycees Carnival Queen competition upheld upper and middle class mores in opposition to a largely black and working class aesthetic, thereby creating a national tradition. By the 1940s, the competition became the focus of the annual festival. It eclipsed the Calypso King competition, the hub of creative, social and political expression for the black masses.Less

Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier (1918)

Kathleen Riley

in Imagining Ithaca: Nostos and Nostalgia Since the Great War

This is the first of four chapters that deal with the theme of impossible nostos in the context of war and its aftermath. Rebecca West’s Return of the Soldier was one of the first literary responses ... More

This is the first of four chapters that deal with the theme of impossible nostos in the context of war and its aftermath. Rebecca West’s Return of the Soldier was one of the first literary responses to the Great War and to the invisible wound of shell shock. The chapter argues that West also anticipated Joyce’s Ulysses by opening a dialogue between her own generation and Homer’s Odyssey. Less explicitly than Joyce, she has appropriated key elements of Odysseus’ nostos and either rearranged or inverted them. Although the novel announces itself in its title as a story of male nostos, what immediately strikes the reader is that it is told not from the perspective of the returning soldier, or Odysseus figure, but from that of a latter-day Penelope. The chapter also argues that West’s purpose is to highlight her society’s destabilized notions of home and homecoming, and challenge the prelapsarian reading of the last summer before the war and the Ithacan images of England used to recruit fighting men and mythologize the home front.Less