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*I know we are finishing reading up the English translation (books 23-24) this week, so if you haven’t finished it yet, I guess my post is a spoiler and you might want to skip over it!*
I finished reading the end of the english translation of the Odyssey prior to the last mid-term and wanted to comment […]
This weekend as I was finishing the Odyssey I noticed another parrallel between Odysseus and Penelope. When Penelope is told that Odysseus has returned, she is described as ‘her heart pondering much, whether [to do this] or [to do that], much as Odysseus is continually considering two options in his heart and choosing the one […]
In reading book 18 about the confrontation between Iros and (disguised) Odysseus, I found that this passage was ironically amusing:
‘May Zeus, stranger, and all the other immortals give you what you want most of all and what is dear to your spirit, for having stopped the wandering of this greedy creature in our neighborhood. Soon […]
Line 331, when Odysseus finishes his long speach about the land of the dead, he askes to go to sleep and to join his ”companions”. I tought that, at this point, he had already lost all of them… Am I missing anything?
Since BBCnews is my homepage, I saw that they did a follow up article in reference to the question of Paliki being ancient Ithica, only connected to another island by fill from volcanoes.
In case any of you are interested, here is the link: Drill Hole Begins Homeric Quest.
Earlier, I think, Pietro wrote about the repetition and formulaic phrases in Homer and whether those indicate oral tradition as the source for the texts. I ran into some theories about Homer and oral vs. written while writing another paper (which involved medieval literacy / oral culture) because I was told to look at the work of A. Lord to […]
A very talented Instructional Technology Specialist has been hard at work trying to figure out a way to use Greek characters (including accents and breathing marks) in a blog post. He’s figured out a way to use a WYSWYG (”What you see is what you get”) apparatus which allows you to click on the letters […]
Derek Walcott spent most of his life reading and rewriting Homer. He grew up next to the sea and, like Odysseus, has a strong feeling towards is country-island. I met him in Italy this summer and I definitely fall in love with his poetry. Here is an example, the beginning of his “Odyssey”.
Derek Walcott, Act One, […]
Our discussion of Odysseus and Nausicaa reminded me of this poem by Derek Walcott. It’s about the only thing of his I’ve read, but I am told he often deals with classical themes from his perspective, growing up and living in the (colonized-by-Europeans) Caribbean.
I thought the use of Nausicaa to represent the lure of Odysseus’s […]
So far, having translated not even hundred lines, we have already met so many repetitions: some verses show up exactly in the same way they appeared just a while before (for example everytime Circes calls Odysseus “seed of Zeus, son of Laertes” etc.). I’m wondering if this has something to do with the oral tradition […]
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