CCS Research Seminar 5

The 4E approach to cognition—according to which our cognitive processes are thought to be embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive--allows classicists to investigate from an empirical standpoint the experientiality and the impact of narrative texts, as we follow action and reaction amongst individuals within the narrative and as we, the external audience, document our own responses to those actions and to the telling itself. In this paper I bring this embodied approach to cognition to bear on a reading of three key moments in the resolution of the nostos-tale recounted in the Homeric Odyssey: the first discovery, by Eurykleia, of the beggar’s identity through the physical presence of the scar on his leg (Od. 19.386-490); the hero’s re-acquaintance with and assertion of his identity through his bow (21. 275-284, 388-430); and, later, at 23. 107-230, Penelope’s appeal to the hero’s mind—his knowledge of the special feature (the mega sēma, 23.188) of the bed they had shared. Within that story-world, the hero’s scar, his bow, and his bed trigger individual cognitive responses of recognition; this is the activity of the extended mind. For the external audience, Eurykleia’s discovery of the scar, Odysseus’s re-acquaintance with his bow, and, in the third case, the contrast of the couple’s quiet negotiation and testing and the eventual explosion of emotion are, in their different ways, vivid enactive experiences. The combination of the participants’ and the audiences' embodied experiences creates a series of moments that are both vivid and memorable.

Speaker:
Elizabeth Minchin OAM FAHA is Emeritus Professor of Classics at The Australian National University. She has published extensively on the Homeric epics and related topics. She is best known for her application of research in cognitive studies to the epics, thereby illuminating aspects of Homeric composition and exploring the ways in which the poet's choices guide the experience of the poet's audiences.