Topoi Maps - Fagles and Butler

In the topoi map created from the Fagles translation (left) there are clear spatial clusters, around ‘the wine-dark sea’, ‘Odysseus’ halls’ and, to a lesser extent, ‘Pylos’. Odysseus’ halls are the most dominant topos – demonstrating the relative domesticity of the poem.  It also shows how it is Penelope’s story too. But while her setting is domestic, it is complicated by its chronotopic value of encounter, giving a sense of the home invaded, a public rather than a private space. So Penelope’s world – centred on 'Odysseus’ palace' at the bottom of the map – is small and claustrophobic: her chambers figure as a 'castle'. The 'road' of ‘the wine-dark sea’ is a fulcrum from which various topoi loop out as Odysseus is interrupted on his journey home. In both maps, Olympus is situated as a midway point between the two spatial dimensions of home (the real) and away (the mythic), mediating between the two worlds but also controlling and directing– as Athena does in the text. This is a culture in which time, space, weather, and the path of the individual are all subject to higher forces.

The map generated from the Butler translation (right) displays a similar distribution of spaces, but the sea – figured here as ‘Ulysses’ ship’ – play a less key role. Here frame-names (locations) are more plot-based (e.g. ‘meeting Mercury’, ‘Ulysses meets his mother’, ‘Penelope’s tapestry’) so that the sense of the chronotope is captured in name as well as value. Here, the ‘House of Ulysses’ and its related spaces dominate the right-hand side of the map, confirming the epic’s homely aspects. This sense is bolstered by its chronotopic value: the 'parlour'. In both maps, the merging of people and place in topoi names emphasises how the poem is concerned with identity: places are defined by the characters that inhabit them.