out these structural suggestions, we designate the organism
of the Book in this manner:--

I. The visit of Telemachus at Sparta in which he beholds and converses
with two chief Returners from Troy, those who came back by way of the
East, Menelaus and Helen. This part embraces the greater portion of the
Book and falls into three divisions.

1. The arrival and recognition of the son of Ulysses by Menelaus and
Helen who are in a mood of reminiscence, speaking of and in the Present
with many a glance back into the Past. The Oriental journey to Cyprus,
Phoenicia, and specially Egypt, plays into their conversation, making
the whole a Domestic Tale of real life with an ideal background lying
beyond Hellas.

2. When the son is duly recognized and received, the father Ulysses
comes in for reminiscence; with him the background shifts from the
Orient to Troy, where he was the hero of so many deeds of cunning and
valor, and where both Menelaus and Helen were chief actors. The
literary form passes out of the Domestic Tale of the Present into the
Heroic Tale of the Past, from sorrowful retrospection to bracing
description of daring deeds. Helen and Menelaus, each in turn, tell
stories of Ulysses at Troy to the son, who thus learns much about his
father. As already said, the background of this portion is the Trojan
war which was the grand Hellenic separation from the Orient. The Iliad,
and specially the Post-Iliad are here presupposed by the Odyssey.

3. The Return of Menelaus is now told to Telemachus, which Return
reaches behind the Trojan war into the East and beyond the limits of
the real Hellas into Egypt. Thus the spatial and temporal bounds of
Greece are transcended, the actual both in the Present and Past goes
over into the purely ideal, and the literary form becomes a Marvelous
Tale--that of Proteus, which suggests not only Present and Past, but
all Time.

II. Such is the grand Return of Menelaus out of struggle and dualism
into peace and reconciliation with himself and the world, barring
certain painful memories. The poet next, in sharp contrast throws the
reader back to Ithaca, the land of strife and wrong, in general of
limits for young Telemachus, who is reaching out for freedom through
intelligence, and is getting a good deal thereof. Two phases:

1. The Suitors' limits, which he has broken through; their wrath and
their plan of murdering him in consequence.

2. The mother's limits, which he has also broken thro