Edith Wharton's “Coming Home”: Spinning a Good Yarn with Homeric Intent

Type of content
Journal Article
Thesis discipline
Degree name
Publisher
The Pennsylvania State University Press
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
en
Date
2019
Authors
Montgomery, Maureen
Abstract

This article offers an interpretation of Wharton's first war story in light of classical reception studies. For many First World War writers, the classics offered a way of articulating experiences of war. To date, scholars have not yet acknowledged Wharton's reworking of Homer's Odyssey, the archetypal story of a soldier returning home. I argue Wharton draws on the Odyssey to reinforce her position as an eyewitness to the war in France. She does so to enhance her authority as a noncombatant capable of producing a credible account of the war zone against the prejudices of gender and combat gnosticism. The first allusion to the Odyssey draws attention to the ability of Demodocus, the blind bard, to tell the story of the Trojan War as if (ironically) he had been an eyewitness. Wharton chooses a narrator who prides himself on dealing with factual knowledge, but even he is unable to say what actually happens at key moments of a journey to the war zone. With so many loose threads, Wharton succeeds in giving us a war story that captures the fog of war and the linguistic crisis, which hampers the articulation of experiences far beyond what an individual has heretofore encountered.

Description
Citation
Montgomery ME (2019). Edith Wharton's “Coming Home”: Spinning a Good Yarn with Homeric Intent. Edith Wharton Review. 35(1). 1-21.
Keywords
Homer, nostos, classical reception, eyewitness narrative, indeterminacy
Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
47 - Language, communication and culture::4705 - Literary studies::470523 - North American literature
Rights
All rights reserved unless otherwise stated