Abstract
This thesis examines the uses to which omens and divination were put within the Iliad and Odyssey, with the specific application of models from the cognitive sciences. The key focus is on the meta-textual use of omens and divination as a means of communication between the composer/performer and the audience of epic in oral performance. Critical to this is the aspect of interpretation and the creation of a Prophetic Space – in which the available information is mapped in order to understand and attribute the associations between the present sign and the future. In this capacity they serve additional roles to the simple communication of proleptic information or as narrative foreshadowing. Namely, as markers of narrative time (where their fixed association with a point in the narrative future creates a self-referential indication of temporal distance between the two events) and as structural features in the composition of the narratives from memory (whereby they function as event boundaries, and section the surrounding information in a way that increases the memorability of the story – for both the audience and the composer/performer who recreates it).