Nausicaa

Her name, like her countrymen's,
tells her connection to the sea—Nausi, the curl
of an incoming wave; kaa, the gull's hunger
for what is sought and not found.
Joan Aleshire

Robert Graves takes Samuel Butler's nineteenth-century idea that the Odysseywas
written by a woman, and turns it into a historical novel, Homer's Daughter. His
attraction, like Odysseus' and our own, is understandable. The Phaeacian princess exerts
her charm into the present day. Her name, like so many of the characters in the Odyssey,
has meaning in Greek. The naus- in her name ("sea") is etymologically related to English
cognates such as nauticaland nautilus.

Literature

Aleshire, Joan. "Nausikaa." Quarterly Review of Literature.Poetry Series VIII. Vol. 27.
1987. 10.

Asarnow, Herman. "For Nausicaa: On Searching for a Poem by Someone Else to Send to
You." Classical Outlook 77.1 (Fall 1999): 16.

Flecker, James Elroy. "In Phaeacia."TheGolden Journey t o Samarkand. London: Goschen,
1913.

Graves, Robert.Homer's Daughter. Garden City: Doubleday, 1955. 283p. [A woman writes
the autobiographicalOdyssey.AlsoHercules,My Shipmate,I,Claudius, and
Claudius t he God.]

Layton, Irving. "Nausicaa." Erotic Poetry: The Lyrics,Ballads, Idyls and Epics of
Love—Classical to Contemporary.Foreward Stephen Spender. Random House,
1963. 335.

Longley, Michael. "Nausicaä." No Continuing City: Poems 1963-1968.Dublin: Gill and
Macmillan, 1969. 31.

Meakin, Annette. Nausikaa. Versailles, 1926.

Pollack, Dorothy Belle. "Mythical Musings: Nausicaa." Classical Outlook76.2 (Winter
1999): 75.

Porter, Burt. "Odysseus at Ninety Remembers Nausicaa." Classical Outlook76.3 (Spring
1999): 102.