Not Every Woman is an Island: Some Notes about Isles of Women and Colonisation in the Odyssey
Keywords:
Homer, Odyssey, women, island, colonisation
Abstract
Comparing some characteristics of Archaic Greek colonisation and modern colonialism, the paper reads the Odyssean motif of the isle of women, the woman/island pair, and the related erotic imagery as the results of an interaction between historical events and literary imagination. Indeed, besides being commonly found in ancient mythologies, isles of women are generally considered as the mythic precursors of the vision that sees settlement of a new land as the conquest of a woman. Since the binarism and strong sense of a superior centre common to the colonisation of the New World and colonialism do not seem appropriate to Archaic Greece, the peculiarities of the ancient and modern erotic imageries related to the arrival of a seafarer in a new land and the woman/island pair can be understood by considering the differences between modern Western colonialism and the Archaic Greek decentred attitude to place, religion, and ethnicity.
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References
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Aguirre de Castro, Mercedes (1996), ‘Ambigüedad y otros caracteres en las divinidades remotas de la épica arcaica’, Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios griegos e indoeuropeos 6, 143-157.
Aguirre de Castro, Mercedes (1999), ‘Presencia femenina en la travesía de Odiseo: estudio iconográfico’, Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Historia antigua 12, 87-105.
Aguirre de Castro, Mercedes (2015), ‘Landscape and Females in the Odyssey: Calypso, Circe and Nausicaa’, in Käppel, Lutz; Pothou, Vassiliki (eds.), Human Development in Sacred Landscapes, Goettingen, V&R unipress GmbH, 135-145.
Alden, Maureen J. (1985), ‘The Role of Calypso in the Odyssey’, Antike und Abendland 31, 97-107.
Anderson, William A. (1958), ‘Calypso and Elysium’, The Classical Journal 54 (1), 2-11.
Arthur, Marylin Β. (1973), ‘Early Greece: The Origins of the Western Attitude toward Women’, Arethusa 6 (1), 7-58.
Bergren, Ann L.T. (2008), Weaving Truth: Essays on Language and the Female in Greek Thought, Washington D.C.-Cambridge MA, Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University.
Bettini, Maurizio; Spina, Luigi (2007), Il mito delle Sirene. Immagini e racconti dalla Grecia a oggi, Torino, Einaudi.
Bolmarcich, Sarah (2001), ‘ΟΜΟΦΡΟΣΥΝΗ in the Odyssey’, Classical Philology 96 (3), 205-213.
Burgess, Jonathan S. (2015), ‘Traveling to Ithaca’, in Cabanas, Miguel A.; Dubino, Jeanne; Salles Reese, Veronica; Totten, Gary (eds.), Politics, Identity, and Mobility in Travel Writing, New York-London, Routledge, 143-154.
Burzacchini, Gabriele (2002), ‘La rapsodia di Nausicaa: osservazioni su un idillio mancato’, in De Finis, Lia; Citti, Vittorio; Belloni, Luigi (eds.), Odisseo dal Mediterraneo all’Europa, Amsterdam, Hakkert, 167-188.
Byre, Calvin S. (1994), ‘The Rhetoric of Description in Odyssey 9.116-41: Odysseus and Goat Island’, The Classical Journal 89 (4), 357-367.
Cairns, Douglas L. (1990), ‘Mixing with Men and Nausicaa’s Nemesis’, The Classical Quarterly 40 (1), 263-266.
Clay, Diskin (2007), ‘The Islands of the Odyssey’, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, 141-161.
Crane, Gregory (1987), ‘The Odyssey and Conventions of the Heroic Quest’, Classical Antiquity 6 (1), 11-37.
Crane, Gregory (1988), Calypso: Background and Conventions of the Odyssey, Frankfurt am Main, Athenaum.
De Angelis, Franco (2009), ‘Colonies and Colonization’, in Graziosi, Barbara; Vasunia, Phiroze; Boys-Stones, George (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 48-64.
de Jong, Irene (2001), A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Di Benedetto, Vincenzo (2010), Omero. Odissea, Milano, Mondadori.
Delebecque, Edouard (1980), Construction de l’Odyssée, Paris, Les Belles Lettres.
Doherty, Lillian E. (1995a), ‘Sirens, Muses, and Female Narrators in the Odyssey’, in Cohen, Beth (ed.), The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey, New York-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 81-92.
Doherty, Lillian E. (1995b), Sirens Songs: Gender, Audience, and Narrators in the Odyssey, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press.
Dougherty, Carol (1993), The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece, New York-Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Dougherty, Carol (2001), The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’s Odyssey, Oxford-New York, Oxford University Press.
du Bois, Page (1982), Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-history of the Great Chain of Being, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press.
Elliger, Winfried (1975), Die Darstellung der Landschaft in der griechischen Dichtung, Berlin-New York, de Gruyter.
Ferrari, Franco (2004), ‘Nello specchio del passato: dalle Sirene a Demodoco’, Paideia 59, 147-167.
Finley, John H. (1978), Homer’s Odyssey, Cambridge MA-London, Harvard University Press. Fornaro, Sotera (1995), ‘“Quasi in Campo di Marte” (Odissea ζ 119-315)’, Hermes 123, 129-138.
García Fuentes, María Cruz (1973), ‘Algunas precisiones sobre las sirenas’, Cuadernos de Filología Clásica 5, 107-116.
Glenn, Justin (1998), ‘Odysseus Confronts Nausicaa: The Lion Simile of Odyssey 6.130-36’, The Classical World 92 (2), 107-116.
Graham, Alexander J. (1995), ‘The Odyssey, History, and Women’, in Cohen, Beth (ed.), The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey, New York-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 3-16.
Gresseth, Gerald K. (1970), ‘The Homeric Sirens’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 101, 203-218.
Gross, Nicolas P. (1976), ‘Nausicaa: A Feminine Threat’, The Classical World 69 (5), 311-317.
Hainsworth, John B. (1982), Omero. Odissea V-VIII, Milano, Mondadori.
Hall, Edith (1989), Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-definition through Tragedy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Hall, Edith (2008), The Return of Ulysses. A cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hartog, François (1980), Le Miroir d’Hérodote: Essai sur la représentation de l’autre, Paris, Editions Gallimard.
Heubeck, Afred (1983), Omero. Odissea IX-XII, Milano, Mondadori.
Holtsmark, Erling B. (1966), ‘Spiritual Rebirth of the Hero: Odyssey 5’, The Classical Journal 61 (5), 206-210.
Iannucci, Alessandro (2012), ‘L’Odissea e il racconto fantastico’, Lexis 30, 87-104.
Iriarte, Ana (1993), ‘Le chant-miroir des Sirènes’, Mètis 8, 147-159.
Létoublon, Françoise (1988), ‘Le soleil et la lune, l’eau et le feu selon Meillet: de la grammaire comparée à l’anthropologie’, Histoire Épistémologie Langage 10 (2), 127-139.
Létoublon, Françoise; Ceccarelli, Paola; Sgard, Jean (1996), ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une île?’, in Létoublon, Françoise (éd.), Impressions d’îles, Toulouse, Presses universitaires du Mirail, 10-27.
Loscalzo, Donato (2017), ‘Il canto delle Muse e il canto delle Sirene’, Nuovo Meridionalismo Studi 3, 191-197.
Malkin, Irad (1998), The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity, Berkeley-Los Angeles London, University of California Press.
Malkin, Irad (2001), ‘The Odyssey and the Nymphs’, Gaia 5, 11-27.
Malkin, Irad (2004), ‘Postcolonial Concepts and Ancient Greek Colonization’, Modern Language Quarterly 65, 341-364.
Mastromarco, Giuseppe (2003), ‘L’incontro di Odisseo e Nausicaa tra epos ed eros’, in Nicosia, Salvatore (ed.), Ulisse nel tempo, Venezia, Marsilio, 107-126.
Murray, Augustus T. (trans.) (1919), Homer. The Odyssey, London-New York, The Loeb Classical Library.
Nagler, Michael N. (1996), ‘Dread Goddess Revisited’, in Schein, Seth L. (ed.), Reading the Odyssey. Selected interpretive essays, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 141-161.
Niles, John D. (1978), ‘Patterning in the Wanderings of Odysseus’, Ramus 7 (1), 48-60.
Nobili, Cecilia (2006), Motivi della poesia nuziale in Odissea VI 149-185, Rendiconti dell’Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere 140, 57-72.
Nortwick, Thomas van (1979), ‘Penelope and Nausicaa’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 109, 269-276.
Ortner, Sherry B. (1974), ‘Is female to male as nature is to culture?’, in Rosaldo, Michelle Z.; Lamphere, Louise (eds.), Woman, culture, and society, Stanford, Stanford University Press 68-87.
Perosa, Sergio (20132) [1996], L’isola la donna il ritratto, Milano, Bompiani.
Pollard, John R.T. (1952), ‘Muses and Sirens’, The Classical Review 2 (2), 60-63.
Pontani, Filippomaria (2013), ‘Speaking and concealing – Calypso in the eyes of some (ancient) interpreters’, Symbolae Osloenses 87, 30-60.
Privitera, G. Aurelio (2005), Il ritorno del guerriero. Lettura dell’Odissea, Torino, Einaudi.
Pucci, Giuseppe (2014), ‘Le Sirene tra canto e silenzio: da Omero a John Cage’, ClassicoContemporaneo 1, 80-97.
Pucci, Pietro (1987), Odysseus polytropos. Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad, Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
Pucci, Pietro (1996), ‘The Song of the Sirens’, in Schein, Seth L. (ed.), Reading the Odyssey. Selected interpretive essays, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 191-199.
Rossi, Paul (1970), ‘Sirènes antiques. Poésie, Philosophie, Iconographie’, Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé 29, 463-481.
Schur, David (2014), ‘The Silence of the Homeric Sirens’, Arethusa 47, 1-17.
Segal, Charles P. (1962), ‘The Phaeacians and the Symbolism of Odysseus’ Return’, Arion 1, 17-64.
Stanford, William B. (1963), ‘Personal Relationships’, in Taylor, Charles H. (ed.), Essays on the Odyssey: Selected Modern Criticism, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 11-35.
Tamburello, Adolfo (1995), Le isole delle donne, Torino, Magnanelli.
Vallillee, Gerald (1955), ‘The Nausicaa Episode’, Phoenix 9 (4), 175-179.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre; Doueihi, Anne (1986), ‘Feminine figures of Death’, Diacritics 16 (2), 54-64.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (1970), ‘Valeurs religieuses et mythiques de la terre et du sacrifice dans l’Odyssée’, Annales 25 (5), 1278-1297.
Vilatte, Sylvie (1991), L’insularité dans la pensée grecque, Besançon, Université de Franche-Comté.
Weaver-Hightower, Rebecca (2007), Castaways, Cannibals, and Fantasies of Conquest, Minneapolis-London, University of Minnesota Press.
West, Stephanie (1981), Omero. Odissea I-IV, Milano, Mondadori.
Williamson, Judith (1986), ‘Woman is an Island’, in Modleski, Tania (ed.), Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture, Bloomington-Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 99-118.
Wilson, Emily (trans.) (2018), Homer. The Odyssey, New York-London, W. W. Norton & Company.
Wohl, Victoria J. (1993), ‘Standing by the Stathmos: The Creation of Sexual Ideology in the Odyssey’, Arethusa 26, 19-50.
Aguirre de Castro, Mercedes (1996), ‘Ambigüedad y otros caracteres en las divinidades remotas de la épica arcaica’, Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios griegos e indoeuropeos 6, 143-157.
Aguirre de Castro, Mercedes (1999), ‘Presencia femenina en la travesía de Odiseo: estudio iconográfico’, Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Historia antigua 12, 87-105.
Aguirre de Castro, Mercedes (2015), ‘Landscape and Females in the Odyssey: Calypso, Circe and Nausicaa’, in Käppel, Lutz; Pothou, Vassiliki (eds.), Human Development in Sacred Landscapes, Goettingen, V&R unipress GmbH, 135-145.
Alden, Maureen J. (1985), ‘The Role of Calypso in the Odyssey’, Antike und Abendland 31, 97-107.
Anderson, William A. (1958), ‘Calypso and Elysium’, The Classical Journal 54 (1), 2-11.
Arthur, Marylin Β. (1973), ‘Early Greece: The Origins of the Western Attitude toward Women’, Arethusa 6 (1), 7-58.
Bergren, Ann L.T. (2008), Weaving Truth: Essays on Language and the Female in Greek Thought, Washington D.C.-Cambridge MA, Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University.
Bettini, Maurizio; Spina, Luigi (2007), Il mito delle Sirene. Immagini e racconti dalla Grecia a oggi, Torino, Einaudi.
Bolmarcich, Sarah (2001), ‘ΟΜΟΦΡΟΣΥΝΗ in the Odyssey’, Classical Philology 96 (3), 205-213.
Burgess, Jonathan S. (2015), ‘Traveling to Ithaca’, in Cabanas, Miguel A.; Dubino, Jeanne; Salles Reese, Veronica; Totten, Gary (eds.), Politics, Identity, and Mobility in Travel Writing, New York-London, Routledge, 143-154.
Burzacchini, Gabriele (2002), ‘La rapsodia di Nausicaa: osservazioni su un idillio mancato’, in De Finis, Lia; Citti, Vittorio; Belloni, Luigi (eds.), Odisseo dal Mediterraneo all’Europa, Amsterdam, Hakkert, 167-188.
Byre, Calvin S. (1994), ‘The Rhetoric of Description in Odyssey 9.116-41: Odysseus and Goat Island’, The Classical Journal 89 (4), 357-367.
Cairns, Douglas L. (1990), ‘Mixing with Men and Nausicaa’s Nemesis’, The Classical Quarterly 40 (1), 263-266.
Clay, Diskin (2007), ‘The Islands of the Odyssey’, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, 141-161.
Crane, Gregory (1987), ‘The Odyssey and Conventions of the Heroic Quest’, Classical Antiquity 6 (1), 11-37.
Crane, Gregory (1988), Calypso: Background and Conventions of the Odyssey, Frankfurt am Main, Athenaum.
De Angelis, Franco (2009), ‘Colonies and Colonization’, in Graziosi, Barbara; Vasunia, Phiroze; Boys-Stones, George (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 48-64.
de Jong, Irene (2001), A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Di Benedetto, Vincenzo (2010), Omero. Odissea, Milano, Mondadori.
Delebecque, Edouard (1980), Construction de l’Odyssée, Paris, Les Belles Lettres.
Doherty, Lillian E. (1995a), ‘Sirens, Muses, and Female Narrators in the Odyssey’, in Cohen, Beth (ed.), The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey, New York-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 81-92.
Doherty, Lillian E. (1995b), Sirens Songs: Gender, Audience, and Narrators in the Odyssey, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press.
Dougherty, Carol (1993), The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece, New York-Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Dougherty, Carol (2001), The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’s Odyssey, Oxford-New York, Oxford University Press.
du Bois, Page (1982), Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-history of the Great Chain of Being, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press.
Elliger, Winfried (1975), Die Darstellung der Landschaft in der griechischen Dichtung, Berlin-New York, de Gruyter.
Ferrari, Franco (2004), ‘Nello specchio del passato: dalle Sirene a Demodoco’, Paideia 59, 147-167.
Finley, John H. (1978), Homer’s Odyssey, Cambridge MA-London, Harvard University Press. Fornaro, Sotera (1995), ‘“Quasi in Campo di Marte” (Odissea ζ 119-315)’, Hermes 123, 129-138.
García Fuentes, María Cruz (1973), ‘Algunas precisiones sobre las sirenas’, Cuadernos de Filología Clásica 5, 107-116.
Glenn, Justin (1998), ‘Odysseus Confronts Nausicaa: The Lion Simile of Odyssey 6.130-36’, The Classical World 92 (2), 107-116.
Graham, Alexander J. (1995), ‘The Odyssey, History, and Women’, in Cohen, Beth (ed.), The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey, New York-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 3-16.
Gresseth, Gerald K. (1970), ‘The Homeric Sirens’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 101, 203-218.
Gross, Nicolas P. (1976), ‘Nausicaa: A Feminine Threat’, The Classical World 69 (5), 311-317.
Hainsworth, John B. (1982), Omero. Odissea V-VIII, Milano, Mondadori.
Hall, Edith (1989), Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-definition through Tragedy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Hall, Edith (2008), The Return of Ulysses. A cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hartog, François (1980), Le Miroir d’Hérodote: Essai sur la représentation de l’autre, Paris, Editions Gallimard.
Heubeck, Afred (1983), Omero. Odissea IX-XII, Milano, Mondadori.
Holtsmark, Erling B. (1966), ‘Spiritual Rebirth of the Hero: Odyssey 5’, The Classical Journal 61 (5), 206-210.
Iannucci, Alessandro (2012), ‘L’Odissea e il racconto fantastico’, Lexis 30, 87-104.
Iriarte, Ana (1993), ‘Le chant-miroir des Sirènes’, Mètis 8, 147-159.
Létoublon, Françoise (1988), ‘Le soleil et la lune, l’eau et le feu selon Meillet: de la grammaire comparée à l’anthropologie’, Histoire Épistémologie Langage 10 (2), 127-139.
Létoublon, Françoise; Ceccarelli, Paola; Sgard, Jean (1996), ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une île?’, in Létoublon, Françoise (éd.), Impressions d’îles, Toulouse, Presses universitaires du Mirail, 10-27.
Loscalzo, Donato (2017), ‘Il canto delle Muse e il canto delle Sirene’, Nuovo Meridionalismo Studi 3, 191-197.
Malkin, Irad (1998), The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity, Berkeley-Los Angeles London, University of California Press.
Malkin, Irad (2001), ‘The Odyssey and the Nymphs’, Gaia 5, 11-27.
Malkin, Irad (2004), ‘Postcolonial Concepts and Ancient Greek Colonization’, Modern Language Quarterly 65, 341-364.
Mastromarco, Giuseppe (2003), ‘L’incontro di Odisseo e Nausicaa tra epos ed eros’, in Nicosia, Salvatore (ed.), Ulisse nel tempo, Venezia, Marsilio, 107-126.
Murray, Augustus T. (trans.) (1919), Homer. The Odyssey, London-New York, The Loeb Classical Library.
Nagler, Michael N. (1996), ‘Dread Goddess Revisited’, in Schein, Seth L. (ed.), Reading the Odyssey. Selected interpretive essays, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 141-161.
Niles, John D. (1978), ‘Patterning in the Wanderings of Odysseus’, Ramus 7 (1), 48-60.
Nobili, Cecilia (2006), Motivi della poesia nuziale in Odissea VI 149-185, Rendiconti dell’Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere 140, 57-72.
Nortwick, Thomas van (1979), ‘Penelope and Nausicaa’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 109, 269-276.
Ortner, Sherry B. (1974), ‘Is female to male as nature is to culture?’, in Rosaldo, Michelle Z.; Lamphere, Louise (eds.), Woman, culture, and society, Stanford, Stanford University Press 68-87.
Perosa, Sergio (20132) [1996], L’isola la donna il ritratto, Milano, Bompiani.
Pollard, John R.T. (1952), ‘Muses and Sirens’, The Classical Review 2 (2), 60-63.
Pontani, Filippomaria (2013), ‘Speaking and concealing – Calypso in the eyes of some (ancient) interpreters’, Symbolae Osloenses 87, 30-60.
Privitera, G. Aurelio (2005), Il ritorno del guerriero. Lettura dell’Odissea, Torino, Einaudi.
Pucci, Giuseppe (2014), ‘Le Sirene tra canto e silenzio: da Omero a John Cage’, ClassicoContemporaneo 1, 80-97.
Pucci, Pietro (1987), Odysseus polytropos. Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad, Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
Pucci, Pietro (1996), ‘The Song of the Sirens’, in Schein, Seth L. (ed.), Reading the Odyssey. Selected interpretive essays, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 191-199.
Rossi, Paul (1970), ‘Sirènes antiques. Poésie, Philosophie, Iconographie’, Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé 29, 463-481.
Schur, David (2014), ‘The Silence of the Homeric Sirens’, Arethusa 47, 1-17.
Segal, Charles P. (1962), ‘The Phaeacians and the Symbolism of Odysseus’ Return’, Arion 1, 17-64.
Stanford, William B. (1963), ‘Personal Relationships’, in Taylor, Charles H. (ed.), Essays on the Odyssey: Selected Modern Criticism, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 11-35.
Tamburello, Adolfo (1995), Le isole delle donne, Torino, Magnanelli.
Vallillee, Gerald (1955), ‘The Nausicaa Episode’, Phoenix 9 (4), 175-179.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre; Doueihi, Anne (1986), ‘Feminine figures of Death’, Diacritics 16 (2), 54-64.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (1970), ‘Valeurs religieuses et mythiques de la terre et du sacrifice dans l’Odyssée’, Annales 25 (5), 1278-1297.
Vilatte, Sylvie (1991), L’insularité dans la pensée grecque, Besançon, Université de Franche-Comté.
Weaver-Hightower, Rebecca (2007), Castaways, Cannibals, and Fantasies of Conquest, Minneapolis-London, University of Minnesota Press.
West, Stephanie (1981), Omero. Odissea I-IV, Milano, Mondadori.
Williamson, Judith (1986), ‘Woman is an Island’, in Modleski, Tania (ed.), Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture, Bloomington-Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 99-118.
Wilson, Emily (trans.) (2018), Homer. The Odyssey, New York-London, W. W. Norton & Company.
Wohl, Victoria J. (1993), ‘Standing by the Stathmos: The Creation of Sexual Ideology in the Odyssey’, Arethusa 26, 19-50.
Published
2019-12-31
How to Cite
Deriu, M. (2019). Not Every Woman is an Island: Some Notes about Isles of Women and Colonisation in the Odyssey. Rhesis. International Journal of Linguistics, Philology and Literature, 10(2), 19-32. https://doi.org/10.13125/rhesis/5684
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Articoli
