The Shipwreck of Odysseus: Strong and Weak Imagery in Late Geometric Art

摘要

The once-popular interpretation of a well-known scene on a Late Geometric oinochoe in Munich as the shipwreck of Odysseus is now regularly dismissed: like other ambigu-ous scenes of late eighth-century art, it has been banished from the ranks of early mythological narratives. I propose that the scene be restored to the ranks of possible mytho-logical images and defend the premise that myth was the subject of some Late Geometric artists. I also suggest that the most important thing we can do with a Late Geometric scene is not to assign it to one of the standard categories of "myth" (Sagenbild), "genre" (Lebensbil d), or "the gener-alized heroic" but to new categories that transcend those distinctions. Images may be defined as "strong" or "weak" depending on their uniqueness, complexity, and especially the concreteness of description, whether they depict scenes of myth, genre, or real (as opposed to universalized) life-a subject that may be more common and significant than is usually thought. This approach emphasizes the exception-alism, variety, and originality of Late Geometric imagery, and the Late Geometric artist's interest in the description of both the heroic and real worlds.