The Odyssey Style

The Odyssey Style

Since it is one of the first works in its genre to have survived, the Odyssey does not so much display the mechanics of epic poetry as help to define them. For at least 500 years after it was written, only minor modifications were made to the epic form as we see it in the Odyssey.

General Technique

In general, the Odyssey is more technically advanced than the Iliad. The flashbacks that seemed so awkward in the earlier poem are handled much more subtly, for example; the action jumps seamlessly from one place to another even in the middle of a book and is itself much more lively than the formalized battle scenes in the Iliad.

Meter

English meter involves patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. Greek meter, on the other hand, involves patterns of long and short syllables where, as a general rule, two short syllables...
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