Reading Micronarratives

Additional Content

The ability to expand or compress complex narratives in performance is a fundamental technique of the oral epic singer, who has at his disposal a vast continuum of traditional stories from which to draw his song. Compression and expansion can be witnessed throughout the Iliad in the form of micro- and macronarratives. A single line, such as that found at Iliad 11.227 ("but as soon as he had married, he went away from the bride chamber, looking for glory [kleos] from the Achaeans"), could be potentially expanded to an epic of 15,000 lines like that of the Iliad. Such a line is a reference to another story, potentially another epic. For a traditional audience, those references are meaningful. We may compare the story of Achilles as it is told in the so-called "Catalogue of Ships" of Iliad scroll 2:

The micronarrative of Meleager in Iliad 9

In book 9 of the Iliad Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoinix go to the tent of Achilles on behalf of Agamemnon in order to persuade him to rejoin the war. One way that Phoinix tries to persuade him is by telling him the story of a warrior of his generation, Meleager. In a wartime situation not unlike the one the Greeks are facing in the Iliad Meleager becomes angry and withdraws from battle. His comrades send envoy after envoy to offer him gifts and try to convince him to return to battle. First they send the elders, then the priests, then his father, his sisters, and his mother, but to no avail. Finally his nearest and dearest companions, his philoi, make the attempt to persuade him and fail. Meleager stays home with his wife Cleopatra until finally she sings a special kind of lament for the entire city that is about to be destroyed, and she moves him enough to convince him to return.

Read more about the micronarrative of Meleager
Now however many inhabited Pelasgian Argos,
and governed Alos and Alope and Trachis,
and those who inhabited Phtia and Hellas of the beautiful women,
and were called Myrmidons and Hellenes and Achaeans,
of these Achilles was the leader of fifty ships.
But they did not think of grievous war.
For there was noone to lead the troops.
For swift-footed brilliant Achilles lay among his ships
angered over the fair-haired girl Briseis
whom he took from Lyrnessos with great toil,
when he sacked Lyrnessos and the walls of Thebe. (Iliad 2.683-694)
Click image for video
If the Iliad did not survive and these lines were found in another epic about another warrior at Troy, contemporary readers would find the references to Achilles' anger and the capture of Briseis at Lyrnessos obscure. But for a traditional audience, the mênis (wrath) of Achilles would be called before their eyes, and that compressed narrative would resonate within its context. These micronarratives are potentially much more than just signals to the audience of other epic tales in the singer's repertoire.

For examples of micronarratives in the Odyssey and practice reading them, see the next page on Odysseus' Cloak and Penelope's Dream.

 
Threads of Discussion