The Judgemental Narrator: Narratorial Nepios-Comments from Homer to Nonnus

Abstract

This is a study of the literary modes and transformations of the narratorial νήπιος-comment in Greek epic from Homer to Nonnus. It explores the narrative settings, the typology, and the literary effects of this narrative device which both reveals the seams of the narrative levels and directs attention to the fragility of the human characters whose fate or ignorance of the actual situation is revealed by means of a narratorial νήπιος-intervention. The focus of the analysis is on the literary interplay and allusive engagement of later with earlier instances of the device as regards the replication or modification of the narrative setting, the constituent elements of the comment and its narrative function.