ABSTRACT
The chapter explores some linguistic strategies adopted by the Homeric narrator to achieve what Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier (1998) called “compression”—i.e. the compression of relations such as time and identity, which occurs when we blend multiple mental spaces. The textual analyses are preceded by a few examples of compression in nonverbal art, which conveys cognitive complexity more directly than words. To exploit and to process compressed relations corresponds to plucking the forbidden fruit, to quote Turner: “we put together what should be kept distinct.” Yet, in Homeric poetry compression helps to reduce to human scale concepts that are beyond human understanding. The chapter closes by suggesting that the Homeric language allows the forbidden fruit to be plucked. Literary critics delving into multiple realities being evoked ultimately work with cognitive compression.
