The Odyssey Intro Notes

  • Homer- lived around 850-750 BCE
  • Legend has it he was blind
  • Homer did not write The Odyssey- it was handed down orally during the preliterate Greek era
  • TO was sung and was composed in verse
  • Each time TO was recited, the poet was expected to change it to show his skill
  • Homer’s version is the one written down
  • Iliad and Odyssey- first epics
  • Originally, an epic was just a poem written in dactylic hexameter
  • Later, it meant narrative poems dealing with gods, heroes, war, or adventure
  • Handed down culture from generation to generation
  • One of the most influential works besides the Bible and Shakespeare
  • Its survival is no accident. For instance, Sophocles wrote 120 works, only seven of which survive. Only the greatest texts were copied by hand and preserved.
  • Though TO is as much about what makes us all human, their culture is very foreign to ours
  • It is patriarchal, slave-holding, monarchical, polytheistic

Considered one of the first epics

1hero has imposing stature and is of national and historical importance

2setting is vast

3deeds of great valor and courage

4supernatural forces intervene

5begins in medias res (in the middle of the action)

Be aware of the following motifs

Both main characters go on odysseys

Rite of passage defines odyssey

Necessity of deception and disguise

Homecoming

Chronological variety/flashbacks

Hospitality code

Fate vs. free will

Be aware of epithets and formulas (wine-dark sea, dark prowed ship, etc.)

Background- Trojan War (12th century BCE)

1Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world and the wife of Greek king Menelaus, was abducted by the Trojan prince Paris.

2Greeks, led by king’s brother Agamemnon, go to Troy.

3Evenly matched war lasted 10 years.

4Greatest Trojan warrior, Hector was killed by the greatest Greek warrior, Achilles, who was later killed by Paris.

5Greeks win warwith Odysseus’ great idea, the Trojan Horse, to infiltrate Troy’s walls.

6Greeks committed many atrocities: killing King Priam at his household altar, the murder of Hector’s baby son by throwing him from the city’s walls, and the rape of Priam’s daughter in the temple of the virgin goddess Athena.

7This angered the gods leading to many Greek hardships, including the murder of Agamemnon by his wife when he returned home.

  • Odyssey- nostos epic (homecoming)
  • Variant of nostos appears three times in first 21 lines.
  • Begins ten years after the end of the Trojan War
  • Odysseus does not appear until book 5
  • We see how much his family and his society need him NOW!

Structure is very complex

Books 1-2: Telemachus at home

Books 3-4: Telemachus visiting Nestor and Menelaus

Books 5-8: Odysseus leaves Calypso’s island on his way home

Books 9-12: Flashback to Odysseus’ adventures from time he left Troy to arrival at Calypso’s island.

Books 13-24: Chronological