Chapter 7 - Temporality and the Homeric Not Yet

Summary

Confronts the synchronic model of time which underpins Quintus’ whole interval poetics and approach to Homer. Analyses the key narrative features of time in the poem: pacing, counterfactuals, anachronies and motifs of closure. Proposes that Quintus draws on the two different narrative forms offered by the Iliad and Odyssey and radically recombines them into one. Given the political dimensions attached to these forms, the chapter ultimately suggests the ideological implications of this technique. By merging teleological and open narratives, Quintus creates a positive reading of the ‘inevitability’ and ‘continuity’ associated with the advance of empire, celebrating for imperial Greece the open-ended potential of the closed Homeric text.