Nausicaa is a character in Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

's Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

(Odýsseia). She is the daughter of King Alcinous

Alcinous

Alcinous or Alkínoös was, in Greek mythology, a son of Nausithous, or of Phaeax , and father of Nausicaa, Halius, Clytoneus and Laodamas with Arete. His name literally means "mighty mind"...

 (Alkínoös) and Queen Arete of Phaeacia

Scheria

Scheria –also known as Scherie or Phaeacia– was a geographical region in Greek mythology, first mentioned in Homer's Odyssey as the home of the Phaiakians and the last destination of Odysseus before returning home to Ithaca.-Odysseus meets Nausikaa:In the Odyssey, after Odysseus sails...

. Her name, in Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

, means "burner of ships".

Role in the Odyssey

In Book Six of the Odyssey, Odysseus

Odysseus

Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....

 is shipwrecked on the coast of the island of Scheria. Nausicaa and her handmaidens go to the sea-shore to wash clothes. Odysseus emerges, after being awoken by their games, from the forest completely naked, scaring the servants away, and begs Nausicaa for aid. Nausicaa gives Odysseus some of the laundry to wear, and takes him to the edge of the town. Realizing that Odysseus being seen with her might cause rumors, she and the servants go ahead into town. But first she advises Odysseus to go directly to Alcinous' house and make his case to Nausicaa's mother, Arete. Arete is known as wiser even than Alcinous, and Alcinous trusts her judgments. Odysseus approaches Arete, wins her approval, and is received as a guest by Alcinous.

During his stay, Odysseus recounts his adventures to Alcinous and his court. This recounting forms a substantial portion of the Odyssey. Alcinous then generously provides Odysseus with the ships that finally bring him home to Ithaca

Homer's Ithaca

The location of Homer's Ithaca, i.e. Ithaca as featured in Homer's Odyssey, is a matter for debate.The central characters of the epic such as Odysseus, Achilles, Agamemnon and Hector are generally believed to be fictional characters. Yet there are many claims that some Homeric hero long ago had...

.

Nausicaa is young and very pretty; Odysseus says that she resembled a goddess, particularly Artemis

Artemis

Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...

. Nausicaa is known to have several brothers. According to Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

 and Dictys of Crete, Nausicaa later married Telemachus

Telemachus

Telemachus is a figure in Greek mythology, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, and a central character in Homer's Odyssey. The first four books in particular focus on Telemachus' journeys in search of news about his father, who has been away at war...

, the son of Odysseus, and had a son named Perseptolis or Ptoliporthus.

Homer gives a literary account of love never expressed: while she is presented as a potential love interest to Odysseus – she says to her friend that she would like her husband to be like him, and her father tells Odysseus he would let him marry her – nothing really results between the pair. Nausicaa is also a mother figure for Odysseus; she ensures Odysseus' return home, and thus says "Never forget me, for I gave you life," indicating her status as a "new mother" in Odysseus' rebirth.

Later influence

The 2nd century BC grammarian Agallis

Agallis

Agallis of Corcyra was a female grammarian who wrote about Homer, according to Athenaeus. Some scholars believe her to have belonged to the hetaerae class. She attributed the invention of ball games to Nausicaa, one of her countrywomen, and most later writers took her bias in this matter as...

 attributed the invention of ball games to Nausicaa, most likely because Nausicaa was the first person in literature to be described playing with a ball.

Nausicaa has been occasionally referenced in literature and art. The manga and anime film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki

is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli,...

, was indirectly inspired by the character in the Odyssey. Miyazaki read a description of Nausicaa in a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese translation of Bernard Evslin

Bernard Evslin

Bernard Evslin is an author best known for his adaptations of Greek mythology. With over seventy titles, which include both novel-length retellings and short stories, Evslin is one of the most widely published authors of classical mythology in the world...

's anthology of Greek mythology, which portrayed her as a lover of nature. Miyazaki added other embellishments to fill in the gaps from Homer.

In "The Humor of Homer" in his Selected Essays Samuel Butler concludes that Nausicaa was the real author of the Odyssey, since the laundry scene is more realistic and plausible than many other scenes in the epic. His theory that the Odyssey was written by a woman was further developed in his book "The Authoress of the Odyssey".

Chapter 13 in James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

's Ulysses

Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

is entitled "Nausicaa" and echoes the story to a degree: the character Gerty McDowell (Nausicaa's analogue) tempts Bloom.

William Faulkner named the cruise ship Nausikaa in his 1927 novel "Mosquitoes."

Robert Graves' 1955 novel Homer's Daughter presents Nausicaa as the author of the Odyssey, which draws on experiences and influences of her own life.

An asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

 discovered in 1879, 192 Nausikaa

192 Nausikaa

192 Nausikaa is a large main-belt asteroid. It is an S-type asteroid.It was discovered by Johann Palisa on February 17, 1879 at Pula, then in Austria, now in Croatia. The name derives from Nausicaä, a princess in Homer's Odyssey....

, is named after her.

The Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks

Peggy Glanville-Hicks

Peggy Glanville-Hicks was an Australian composer.- Biography :Peggy Glanville-Hicks was born Melbourne in 1912. At age 15 she began studying composition with Fritz Hart in Melbourne...

  wrote an opera entitled Nausicaa (libretto by Robert Graves

Robert Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...

) first performed 1961 at the Athens Festival.

In 2010, the band Glass Wave

Glass Wave

Glass Wave is a Bay Area cerebral rock band formed in 2008 by Robert Pogue Harrison and Dan Edelstein, both professors of literature at Stanford University. The band was conceived originally as a literary musical collaboration for their team-taught Introduction to the Humanities course entitled...

 recorded a song entitled "Nausicaa," sung in the voice of the Phaeacian maiden.

Nausicaans are a race of tall, strong, aggressive humanoids in the Star Trek

Star Trek

Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

 universe.

Sources

• Portions of this material originated as excerpts from the public-domain 1848 edition of the Classical Dictionary
  Lemprière's Bibliotheca Classica
  The Bibliotheca Classica , or Classical Dictionary containing a full Account of all the Proper Names mentioned in Ancient Authors is the best-known work of John Lemprière, an English classical scholar. Edited by various later scholars, the dictionary long remained a readable if not absolutely...
  
   by John Lemprière
  John Lemprière
  John Lemprière , English classical scholar, lexicographer, theologian, teacher and headmaster...
  
  .