ABSTRACT
In the Poetics, Aristotle attempts to establish a genealogical relationship between Homeric epic and the dramatic genres of tragedy and comedy. His remarks on the Odyssey, on the other hand, reveal much more hesitation, contradiction and uncertainty, and he patently struggles to accommodate the poem in the genealogical framework which the Poetics attempts to endorse. Aristotle's suggestion that epic gives birth to dramatic forms seemed to find specific textual confirmation in the form of Euripides' Cyclops. While the Cyclops invited intense critical controversy in Italy, the play's impact in England was more modest. This chapter examines the function of these motifs in Pericles – which has been described by Marrapodi as 'what may be called the most Homeric of Shakespeare's works' – and The Tempest. It argues that they fulfil a strategic function in constructing and describing the complex generic design of the plays.
