Source Verification: Nausicaa

Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.

What the Sources Attest

What does Nausicaa do in the Odyssey?

She finds the shipwrecked Odysseus on the shore and helps him. After a dream from Athena, she takes the family's laundry to the river. When Odysseus appears, she stays where she is while her maids flee, gives him clothes, food and oil, and tells him how to reach her parents. She says goodbye to him at the palace in Book 8.

Source: Homer, Odyssey 6.186-210

What is the relationship between Nausicaa and Odysseus?

Homer shows a host and a guest, not a courtship. She calls him a suppliant who must not go without clothing or aid. She wishes aloud that such a man might be called her husband, and her father says the same, but Odysseus goes home to Penelope. Her last words to him ask him to remember her.

Source: Homer, Odyssey 6.211-250

Did Nausicaa want to marry Odysseus?

Homer suggests she was drawn to him but gives her no plan. After his bath she tells her maids she wishes a man like him might be called her husband and stay. Yet she worries about gossip and tells him to enter the city separately. She speaks of marriage to the maids, never to him.

Source: Homer, Odyssey 6.211-250

Did Telemachus marry Nausicaa?

Not in the Odyssey, which ends before Telemachus marries. Eustathius, a twelfth-century commentator, says Aristotle and Hellanicus made Nausicaa the wife of Telemachus and mother of Perseptolis. The same writer also cites a Hesiodic line naming Polycaste instead. The original texts of Aristotle and Hellanicus on this are lost, so the claim rests on Eustathius.

Source: Homer, Odyssey 8.457-468

Where Accounts Differ

whether Nausicaa married Telemachus
what Nausicaa told Odysseus to do
whether Nausicaa wanted Odysseus as a husband
whether Nausicaa wrote the Odyssey

Telemachus's marriage is told two ways. Eustathius reports that Aristotle (Constitution of the Ithacans) and Hellanicus made Telemachus marry Nausicaa and father Perseptolis, and that a Hesiodic line names Polycaste, daughter of Nestor, as Perseptolis's mother. The Odyssey names no wife. The Aristotle and Hellanicus texts are not available here, so the Nausicaa marriage is read only through Eustathius, whose line reference was not checked against the Greek.
What Nausicaa told Odysseus differs between books. In Odyssey 6.255-288 she tells him to follow behind the wagon and wait in the grove. In 7.303-305 Odysseus tells Alcinous she bade him follow with her maids and he refused for fear. Homer does not comment.
Whether she wished to marry him is not stated by her to him. She says only to her maids that she would like such a man for a husband (6.244-245). Alcinous says he wishes it aloud (7.311-316).
Butler's claim that Nausicaa is the poem's authoress is his own argument in The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897). It has no ancient support and is not accepted by scholars.
The Odyssey passages were read in the Murray translation on Perseus. Apollodorus's Epitome was read in Frazer's translation on Perseus. The Miyazaki link rests on a Wikipedia summary of his own essay, which was not seen directly.

Sources

Primary sources

Homer, Odyssey 6.1-20
Homer, Odyssey 6.49-70
Homer, Odyssey 6.85-109
Homer, Odyssey 6.127-141
Homer, Odyssey 6.186-210
Homer, Odyssey 6.211-250
Homer, Odyssey 6.251-288
Homer, Odyssey 6.289-315
Homer, Odyssey 7.299-316
Homer, Odyssey 7.56-63
Homer, Odyssey 8.457-468
Apollodorus, Epitome 7.25