This dissertation offers a new reading of the Homeric Circe episode in books 9-12 of the Odyssey. Scholars have noticed several incongruities in this episode, but have failed to provide convincing text-based explanations. Rather, I demonstrate, based on a close reading of the text, that the study of psychological activity in these books can provide us with a new interpretive key with which we can solve some textual problems and thus gain a deeper understanding of the poem as a whole.

I argue that Circe's magic induces in her victims a forgetfulness that functions as a preventive remedy. Preceding the bodily transformation of men into animals, this forgetfulness appears to be a preliminary remedy to the pain caused by a subsequent metamorphosis. In the case of Odysseus, however, forgetfulness seems to have a different yet equally relevant therapeutic function. With his homecoming having been forgotten, I claim, Odysseus can concentrate on his nous and thus recover from what previously upset it. Subsequent to Odysseus' demonstration of mētis in the Cyclopeia, his nous seems both inadequate and unstable when he loses control over the geography and over himself. I focus on Odysseus' mental disturbance as a consequence of the hybris he displays when he arrogantly confronts Polyphemus. The hero's hybristic behavior provokes the divine wrath that deprives him of the gods' help, while he loses control of his mental faculties.

Circe guides Odysseus towards the recuperation of his mental powers. First she sends him to Hades, where he recovers his self-awareness. Then she offers him practical advice for the last part of his journey. Yet in all of her instructions there is still room for individual decision-making. In the Odyssey the gods may know the inevitable outcome of certain alternatives, but men's fortune is very much determined by their own decisions.