Deep Chronotopes Maps - Fagles and Butler

The deep chronotopes map for both texts reveal the range of chronotopes across all the different narrative strands. In both, the relative lack of text given to the chronotope of the 'road' is both surprising and telling. It registers how The Odyssey is a text concerned with the state of being away, the condition of exile, rather than the journey itself, as well as with the lack of goal-directedness created by the underlying spatial conditions of power: the hero’s fate is held in the hands of the gods. The chronotopic variety of both maps registers how the text explores a variety of worlds and perspectives. The dominance of the 'parlour' chronotope in the deep chronotopes map for Samuel Butler (left) again highlights Butler’s own emphasis of this aspect in his translation of the text. In the map generated from Fagles (right), the appearance of the metanarrative chronotope indicates the presence of another voice, and draws attention to the multiplicity of tales that make up The Odyssey. Here, 'encounter' emerges as the largest node, highlighting how the poem is constituted of a series of episodes.