|
|
|
|
|
|
|
left to infer that psychology.5 Together, Beßlich and Griffin have shown that not everything is externalized in the Homeric epics, either by the characters or by the narrator. Both scholars occasionally mention examples of unspoken thought, but the pervasiveness and thematic significance of this device in the Odyssey have not yet been explored fully. Let us begin by taking a closer look at the phenomenon itself. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Unspoken Thought As a Form of Embedded Focalization |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thought, like speech, can be presented directly, in the form of a monologue, or indirectly. Since monologues in Homer are always spoken aloud, the only form of unspoken thought found is the indirect one. In terms of the narratological theories of Genette and Bal, we are dealing with a form of embedded focalization. Embedded focalization is the narrative situation in which a primary narrator-focalizer represents in the narrator-text the perceptions, thoughts, emotions, or words (indirect speech) of characters, e.g.: |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
(1) Bond Street fascinated her; Bond Street early in the season; its flags flying, its shops, no splash; no glitter; one roll of tweed in the shop where her father had bought his suits for fifty years; a few pearls; salmon on an iceblock.
(Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
and she saw him
being dragged in front of the city, and the running horses
dragged him ruthlessly toward the hollow ships of the Achaians.
(Il. 22.4635)6 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In the first passage we look at Bond Street through Clarissa Dalloway's fascinated eyes, while in the second we share Andromache's horrified perception of Hector being dragged towards the Greek ships. In both passages there are specific indications that we are dealing with the consciousness or focalization of the characters, rather than that of the primary narrator-focalizer (henceforth the narrator): in passage (1) the |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
5 Such reading between the lines is categorically forbidden by Kakridis (1970), advocated by Winkler (1990) 143: ''It would also be methodologically constricted to assume that Homer is an utterly transparent narrator, always telling us all that can be known." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6 All quotations are from the Oxford Classical Text (Monro and Allen, Monro). The translations are R. Lattimore's (The Odyssey of Homer, New York: 1965) with occasional changes. |
|
|
|
|
|
