Abstract
This chapter applies insights from modern cognitive science and psychology concerning the importance of narrative closure to the ending of the Odyssey. By surveying cognitive explanations for human response to closure alongside representations of problematic closure in the epic’s final book, I argue that the poem itself is sensitive to the complex relationship between a cognitive expectation for closure and a need for the story to continue. The exploration demonstrates that the epic depicts the resolution of narratives as dangerously pleasurable while problematic endings present opportunities for narrative agency.
The epic depicts pleasure coming from narratives that resolve and grief issuing from incomplete endings. Collective narratives which developed over time—like those represented by orally derived epic—reflect the ways in which storytelling emerges from and reinforces patterns inscribed in previous narratives and social roles. There are a range of approaches which emphasize the relationship between narrative and cognition in human minds. Storytelling’s effects, then, are at issue early in the poem—indeed, Zeus is responding to one narrative, the story of Aigisthus and Orestes, and expressing frustration over the fact that human beings fail to learn the extent of their own responsibility. From the perspective of performance, we would here understand the instrumental nature of the audience in shaping its own and each other’s perception of and response to the narrative. Except, in this mutual reshaping, the audience itself is remade as well.