Sunday 7 February 2016

Where does Book X of Homer's The Odyssey take place?

When Odysseus narrates the events of Book X in the story's present, he is in Phaeacia, at the court of King Alcinous and Queen Arete (recall that it was their daughter, Nausicaa, who led him back to their home after he survived Poseidon's terrible storm).  However, the events that he narrates -- landing in Aeolia and receiving the bag of winds that almost gets him home, getting blown all the way back to Aeolia when...

When Odysseus narrates the events of Book X in the story's present, he is in Phaeacia, at the court of King Alcinous and Queen Arete (recall that it was their daughter, Nausicaa, who led him back to their home after he survived Poseidon's terrible storm).  However, the events that he narrates -- landing in Aeolia and receiving the bag of winds that almost gets him home, getting blown all the way back to Aeolia when his crew betrays him and opens the bag, sailing to Laestrygonia and losing all of his ships but one to the giant cannibals who live there, and reaching Aeaea, where he and the crew spend a year in Circe's palace -- happened some nine years ago.  Remember that, in the meantime -- since his time at Circe's -- Odysseus has been to the underworld, has survived the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis, has lost all of his men after they ate the cattle belonging to the sun god, Helios, and finally became the prisoner of Calypso for seven years.  Phaeacia, where Odysseus narrates Book X, is the first locale Odysseus finds after he has sailed away from Calypso's island.

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