SOURCE: "Odysseus' Scar," in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, translated by Willard R. Trask, Princeton University Press, 1953, pp. 3-23.

Auerbach was a German-born American philologist and critic. He is best known for his Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der Abendländischen Literature (1946; Mimesis, The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953), a landmark study in which the critic explores the interpretation of reality through literary representation. In the following excerpt from that work, Auerbach compares the discourse, perspective, detail, and historical development of the Odyssey with that of several Old Testament stories.

Readers of the Odyssey will remember the well-prepared and touching scene in book 19, when Odysseus has at last come home, the scene in which the old housekeeper Euryclea, who had been his nurse, recognizes him by a scar on his thigh. The stranger has won Penelope's good will; at his request she tells the housekeeper...