The Unity of the ""Odyssey

"Dimock proceeds Book by Homeric Book. At times he retells the epic tale. At others he dwells on this or that thematic highlight or difficulty. He draws on etymology, especially with reference to the names of the characters. It is the 'pain' which he hears out of the many-minded and much test Odysseus which gives the twenty-four Books their axis. But each angle of comprehension, each phiological and critical move is meant to demonstrate the unwavering coherence of the epic, the perfect appositeness of every episode, detail, seeming digression to the underlying design of the homecoming and of the restoration to Ithaea of justice, of a justice precisely tempered, ripened by pain". - George Steiner. (London). Time Literary Supplement. "There are excellent remarks...on the psychology of the characters, the role of the gods, the structure of the poem, and the significance of names, especially of Odysseus as "The Man of Pain'. Often passages of the Odyssey are translated, no knowledge of Greek is needed to follow Dimock's discussions of the effect of the poetry. One feels oneself in the presence of a first-rate reader...recommended for readers at all levels". - Choice. "A major work, the fruit of a lifetime of study, whcih all future interpreters must reckon with. The author's comprehensive learning, his deft grasp of poetic language and form, his acute and emphatic insight into human nature, will delight and instruct both fellow scholars and the general reader...His achievement is 'sui generis'. Reading this work of scrupulously argued scholarly criticism, the reader experiences the kind of suspense culminating in wonder and satisfaction that we expect from a work of fiction". - Helen H. Bacon, Barnard Colllege.