CLST 272-001: Heroes and Classical Epics

Fall Semester 2007
Dr. Jacqueline Long

Study Questions

file in progress - perennially

The study questions in this file will be updated through the course of the semester from study questions used when this course was taught before. They may make slightly different emphases or reflext a slightly different arrangement of material. If the days are off, it's because the questions haven't yet been checked against the current progress and interests of our class. Not that the older questions aren't still worth thinking about (most of them will probably continue to appear), just that you should double-check again later.

Monday 27 August

• How do stories and ideas become "traditional" within a given cultural group? What do such stories do for the members of the groups that continue to make use of them? Think of specific examples.
• How did the solo singer of epic poetry relate to the communities that made up his audience, in the world of Dark Age Greece? What sort of an experience was the performance of epic poetry, as far as we can tell, for its original audiences?
• Besides the world of his audience, what worlds did a Dark-Age epic singer refer to in his singing? What associations might these worlds have had for his audience?
• Keep thinking about these questions as we work through our material. They are going to remain important.

For tonight's reading:

• Take notes on basic plot details and major characters throughout all your reading, so that you will always be able to locate things easily. Particularly note events and interactions that strike you as being thematically important, and think about what they demonstrate.
• What events occasioned the Trojan War? What information does Homer directly tell his audience about this back-story? How does he integrate the back-story into the present action of his epic?
• Who are the most important Greek leaders, to judge from their actions in the first two books of the Iliad? (N.b. Homer calls the Greeks variously Achaeans, Argives, or Danaans - it's still the same group.) What makes these individuals important to the basic enterprise of the Trojan War? What specific new action does Homer show them engaged in to kick off his epic? How do other characters react?
• Who are the most important Trojans, both fighters and non-fighters? What do they do? How do other characters react?
• What gods appear particularly concerned with the war between the Greeks and Trojans? Which favors which side? What do the gods do to pursue their interest in the conflict?
• Don't bog down in the details of the marshalling of forces, first on the Greek side, then on the Trojan side, in the second half of Book 2; but consider, what does it do for the poem that Homer goes over this information at this point?

Wednesday 29 August

• What do characteristic devices of oral epic song, such as standard epithets, type-scenes, and repeated speeches, do for the way the Iliad is told? Look out, as you read our material all through this semester, for how the wealth of detail functions to carry the poet's story.
• What is at stake in the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles? How does the epic show us? Compare and contrast to the conflict between the Trojans and Greeks that has caused the Trojan War - what does Homer suggest about human motivations and values?
• How does the Iliad accommodate audiences who have not just been hearing everything about the previous nine years of war? What aspects of the war and its participants does Homer especially call to our attention, as we are getting oriented in the story?
• Compare and contrast the traditional myth of Thetis's marriage, which the Iliad seems to refer to obliquely, with the myth of her stopping a rebellion against Zeus, which Achilles recalls explicitly. What points about Thetis and her relationship to Zeus's sovereignty do both myths suggest? How do they differ? How does the Iliad point at the one while telling the other? Similar sorts of indirect reference to mythological background will be another thing to stay alert for in our material.

• How does Helen characterize the Greek leaders she describes for Priam? (As with the Catalogue of Ships in Book 2, the scene seems to be a way to re-introduce specifics for the benefit of an audience that's just starting with this poem, rather than something that makes entirely reasonable sense to envisage as happening in the 9th year of a continuous siege of Troy by the Greeks.)
• How does Helen behave with Priam? with Aphrodite? with Paris? What attitude towards her do the Trojan elders express? What does Homer suggest is at stake in Helen's contribution to the back-history of the siege of Troy?
• How do the Greek leaders relate to one another on the field of battle? Compare and contrast to what is said about them in the scene between Priam and Helen and the elders.

Friday 31 August

• Continue assessing how Homer carves out the particular story he is telling in the Iliad from the whole background of traditional stories connected to the Trojan War. What does he do to orient his audience within the overall context of the war? How does he relate particular concerns of his present story to other, farther-flung mythological stories and concerns? How does the broad context he recalls to his listeners' minds add significance to his tale?
• What considerations does Homer introduce towards evaluating Helen and her role in generating the Trojan War: how does she evaluate herself, within the action of the Iliad? How do other characters evaluate her? How do these evaluations suggest to an audience she might be evaluated, on a broader perspective? How do the emotions Helen displays relate to these various judgments about her actions?

• Review what we've seen of Diomedes before Book 5, and compare and contrast his behavior there. What sort of character is he, as a warrior? How does he conduct his relationships with other warriors, Greek and Trojan? What criteria determine how he treats each other person? How does he conduct his relationships with the gods?
• What principles seem to govern how the gods involve themselves with humans fighting? Trace who does what, on what basis. What consequences do the gods experience for their actions?
• Compare and contrast Hector's exchanges inside Troy with Hecuba, with Paris and Helen, and with Andromache. How does each dialogue help to portray his character in relationship to Troy as a whole?

Wednesday 5 September

• Extend your assessment of Helen, as Homer treats her in the Iliad, by comparing and contrasting Helen with other women's roles in the Iliad, especially in connection with war, and by comparing and contrasting women's and men's capacities for action in the context of war:
  • How does what women can do make their perspective on war different from men's perspective? How do Helen's words and actions, and women's fate in war generally (exemplified especially by Andromache), relate to human mortality generally?
  • Compare and contrast what Priam and the other Trojan elders say about Helen with the judgment implicit in how Priam and Hector treat her. To what extent do they blame her for the war? To what extent does it matter? Why? Explain how your answer relates to Iliadic attitudes to human mortality generally.
• What is at stake when Diomedes and Glaucus meet one another on the field of battle? What ideas about Iliadic society and its "rules", about material goods, and about mythological "history" in epic, does this episode illustrate? Why do they matter? Where else do you see similar ideas working in the Iliad?

• Compare and contrast the face-off between Ajax and Hector in Book 7 with that between Menelaus and Paris in Book 3. How are the pairs matched up? What is at stake when they meet? What do they do when they fight?
• Compare and contrast how the gods involve themselves with the fighting in Books 7 and 8 with their previous engagement. How do they take sides? What forces limit their capacity for direct action? What other capacities for intervention do they use?

Friday 7 September

• How does Homer modulate the way he handles repeating events, such as deaths in battle or type-scenes like duels? Be ready to analyze specific examples and show how repetition and variation both help characterize individual episodes.
• Trace the array of ways gods intervene in human action, especially but not exclusively on the battlefield, and be able to identify and explain good examples of each. To what extent do the gods truly change things within human experience? When do they seem rather to be giving Homer a way to make traits and tendencies of his human characters more narratable? What does the gods' involvement imply about the world-view of Homeric epic?
• Trace how Zeus's will articulates the "Unfinished Battle" of Book 8. How do his intentions play out structurally in Homer's narrative? How does his will work within the "politics" of divine relationships: what other wills, powers, prestige are at stake? Who overcomes, and how?

• Compare and contrast what Agamamenon tells the Greek leaders he will offer, while they are deciding to send an "embassy" to Achilles, with what Odysseus, Phoenix, and Ajax actually say when they go. How do they each elaborate or modify Agamemnon's message? How do they build on one another's speeches? How does Achilles respond?
• What does food matter in the world of the Iliad? What besides food seems to be at stake when food is eaten? Start collecting patterns surrounding food and eating as you read, and look for how they build significance.
• Book 10 is thought by many scholars not to fit completely with the rest of the Iliad, because it connects with the surrounding narrative differently from other episodes of night-action and because it treats the Greeks and Trojans with a somewhat different tone. Nevertheless, it has an ancient tradition, and opportunistic raiding was something the Iliad says its warriors did in off-hours from besieging Troy: even if it was added to an "original" Homeric narrative, it was composed with epic traditions in mind, and Homer particularly. What opportunities do the night and this expedition afford for this book to vary epic narration? How does the book extend the combatants' repertoire of exploits?

Monday 10 September

• How does Homer use similes? How do they relate to his main narrative? What other ideas do they activate for his audience, and how? Identify specific passages that illustrate your observations, and explain how they operate.
• In what ways does Agamemnon's offer to return Briseis, together with additional compensation for having taken her away, answer the concerns Achilles expressed when he withdrew from fighting? What does Agamemnon fail to address? In what ways do Odysseus, Phoenix, and Ajax follow leads set by Agamemnon's charge to them as ambassadors to Achilles: how do they each develop themes Agamemnon introduced when he set up the mission? How do Odysseus, Phoenix, and Ajax try to make up for defects in Agamemnon's offer? What concerns remain unanswered? Note how repetition and variation in their speeches help build answers to these questions.
• Thetis has told Achilles he will either die young but gloriously at Troy, or live long but without glory at home: assess this conditional fate in light of Thetis's lifespan, in comparison with Achilles', on either hypothesis, attitudes to death and glory expressed elsewhere in the Iliad, and Achilles' grievance against Agamemnon. What does this conditional fate mean to Achilles?

• How does Agamemnon's fighting style, highlighted in Book 11, contribute to characterizing him as an individual? How does his personal style, in encounters with fellow Greek warriors, carry over into his confrontations with enemies?
• Compare and contrast Nestor's various reminiscences with the Greeks' current fortunes in battle in Book 11; what is Nestor doing to Patroclus by telling him these things? What effect do Nestor's words have on Patroclus?
• How do the Trojans advance and break into the Greek camp in Book 12? What forces operate in their success?
• Compare and contrast what Sarpedon remarks to Glaucus about wealth and power, mortality, and glory, with attitudes expressed elsewhere in the Iliad.

Wednesday 12 September

• How does the prowess of individual heroes relate to the fortunes of the group, as the third day of military action in the Iliad gets under way? Compare and contrast to Fighting-Days 1 (Books 2-7) and 2 (Book 8): How does the overall atmosphere of the fighting change: what trends do changes follow, and what events produce changes? Identify good examples and be able to demonstrate how they operate.
• How does Nestor's personal history construct his authority for the other Greek warriors? How do the particular circumstances in which he reminisces relate to the memory he revives? How do Nestor's memories contribute to the experience of the audience for whom the Iliad unfolds?
• How does Book 12's prospective narrative of the future destruction of the Greek wall (after the whole Greek war against Troy will have ended, well after the Iliad will have concluded its tale) relate to the events the book goes on to relate? What does this leap forward into time contribute to the sequential narrative?

• How does Poseidon intervene in the action of the fighting? Compare and contrast to other manifestations gods make to humans in the Iliad. How does Poseidon alter the current of the fighting?
• How does Hera intervene with Zeus in Book 14? How does she prepare, what does she do, and how does he respond? Compare and contrast to other moments when the Iliad touches on their relationship.

Friday 14 September

• Trace what trends develop in the fighting on Battle-Day 3 of the Iliad: look for overall patterns, and identify a few specific instances that help illustrate your points. Be able to discuss them in detail in order to show how they support your arguments. What does Homer do at the human level of his narrative to suggest that the war is approaching a crisis?
• How does Poseidon's intervention in Books 13 and 14 build on the trends then developing within human participation in the Trojan War: in what ways do his actions raise the stakes - at human and at divine levels?
• How does Hera's intervention in the "Deception of Zeus" contribute to the war?
  • What does she make possible at the human level?
  • What dangers do her actions create at the divine level? How are these risks underscored in the narrative?
  • Compare and contrast how Hera's seduction of Zeus plays with the power of sexual desire, the bonds of marriage, adultery, and sexual longing, and the uses of deception in sex and of sex in reconciliation. Compare and contrast how these themes figure at the human level of the Trojan War, especially in the relationship between Helen and Paris. How does Homer use gods to highlight ideas he handles more circumspectly at the human level?

• How does Zeus react when he wakes up after having sex with Hera, and sees what has been happening on the battlefield? What does he demand from the other gods, and how do they react? What is this conflict coming to mean within their world?
• How is Hector able to bring the fighting to the Greek ships? What support does he receive? How does Homer use imagery to portray how Hector uses his opportunity?
• Compare and contrast how Achilles and Patroclus react to the Greek crisis: what interests do they each support? How far?
• How does Patroclus fare in the fighting? What support does he receive? How does he use it?
• How does Zeus react to the death of Sarpedon? Why? What considerations temper his gut reaction?

Monday 17 September

• How does Homer use interactions among gods to suggest ideas that also apply to the interactions of human beings? Identify, and compare and contrast, specific individual scenes where gods and humans have comparable concerns. What do gods and humans have in common, in their motivations and operations? How do gods and humans differ? Why?
• What is at stake in the gods' dissent over the Trojan War, beyond individual partisanship for favorite mortals? How do the gods' wills and prerogatives relate to overarching fate? How far can gods go to enforce their wills - with what consequences? How do we know?
• What does the conversation between Patroclus and Achilles at the beginning of Book 16 show about each of their concern for the Greeks, for one another, and for Achilles' honor? How? Analyze what is implied by specific things they each say. How does the poet emphasize the ultimate result of this conversation - and how does knowledge of the ultimate result affect the way an audience perceives the conversation? How do the conversation and the relationship affect the way an audience perceives the subsequent events as they develop towards the ultimate result?

• What is the object of the fighting in Book 17? Compare and contrast to similar scenes in earlier books: what more is at stake now? How do the fighters relate to one another (as opponents; as comrades)? How does this fight relate to the overall plot of the Iliad, the "rage of Achilles"?
• Why does Antilochus weep?
• How does Thetis react to Achilles' distress? What does his fate mean for her?
• What is depicted on Achilles' new shield?

Wednesday 19 September

• How do the leaders of the Greek army and of the Trojans and their allies- respond to Patroclus's death? What does the death of Patroclus mean?
  • Trace the reasons why it is important what happens to the armor Patroclus wears: what do the warriors on both sides, within the time of the Iliad's narrative, think they are contending for as they try to claim or to retain it? What larger significance does it bear - both as it will contribute to further events, and as it connects to important images or themes?
  • Trace the reasons why it is important what happens to Patroclus's body: what do the warriors on both sides, within the time of the Iliad's narrative, think they are contending for trying to claim or to retain it? What larger significance does it bear - both as it will contribute to further events, and as it connects to important images or themes?
• What does the death of Patroclus mean to Achilles? How much does he recognize of its importance? How can you tell?
• What does the death of Patroclus mean to Thetis? What events does it set her to anticipating, and how?

• How do Achilles and Agamemnon resolve their quarrel? To what extent do they each address the concerns that initially motivated them? To what extent do they each remain concerned about the same things? Why or why not?
• Why does food matter? Who wants it? Who doesn't? Why?
• How do Briseis and Achilles each mourn for Patroclus? What do they each show about Patroclus? What do they each show about themselves?
• What is at stake when Achilles talks to his horses?
• Compare and contrast Aeneas and Achilles as they confront one another. What do they have in common? How do their fates differ? Do either similarities or differences affect the way they treat one another, by comparison with the way they each treat other fighters?

Friday 21 September

• How do the personal relationships and the deaths of Hector, Patroclus, and Achilles relate to one another? Consider both the links of plot-driving cause and effect and looser associative links such as imagery and partially-parallel situations. Be able to identify what makes one scene resonate with another, and to explain how the connection enriches the significance of both individual scenes.
• How do gods' emotions and relationships illuminate forces at work in human situations? Think of specific examples, identify the links between them, and explore the significance developed in individual scenes and across the connections between them.
• How does fate operate in human and divine lives, according to the Iliad? What principles operate? Identify key passages and explain how they guide your insights. What does fate make gods do? How do gods' wishes and impulses relate to fate? How does fate affect human lives?
• How does normal human ignorance of fate (by comparison with gods) affect the way Homer's audiences can appreciate what his mortal heroes do? How does Homer emphasize this aspect of the human condition? Compare and contrast (especially) Achilles and Patroclus.

• What opponents does Achilles face in battle, before his final fight with Hector? What does each encounter illustrate about his state of mind?
• In what ways are gods (including the river Scamander) involved in the climactic fighting of the Iliad? Compare and contrast the gods' involvement in Books 21 and 22 to the actions gods take in connection with human fighting in the earlier parts of the epic.
• Trace the stages of Achilles' final fight with Hector.
• What consequences will follow from Hector's death? How do Achilles, Priam, Hecuba, and Andromache each react?

Monday 24 September

• In what ways does Achilles' grief over Patroclus modify the conception of glory on which he operates? Compare and contrast how Achilles identifies honor and glory before Book 16 (and in Book 16) with what he says about them after he learns Patroclus has died. How does Achilles' fighting, in Books 20-22, compare with what he says?
• In what ways does Achilles pass beyond the ordinary limits of humanity, in the aftermath of Patroclus's death? How does the epic mark Achilles' transgressions of human limits?
• What do the gods' fights in Book 22 do to advance the tale of Achilles' heroism? What principles help settle conflicts among the gods over the Trojan War?

• With what ritual actions is Patroclus's funeral conducted?
• What competitions are held as funeral-games honoring Patroclus's death? Who competes? How does Achilles relate to the competitions?
• How do the gods involve themselves in the final action of the Iliad, now that Zeus has fulfilled his promise to Thetis?
• How does Priam get to speak with Achilles? How do Priam and Achilles treat one another? What other relationships does their contact make them, or us, think about?
• How do Andromache, Hecuba, and Helen each mourn for Hector? With what other scenes and speeches should we connect their laments?

Wednesday 26 September

• In what ways does Homer put the characters of Hector and Achilles on parallel tracks, so that the experiences and relationships of each of them not only motivate the other, as an opponent, but also deepen the epic's portraits of them both?
  • What does the Iliad mark as the most important experiences and relationships in which Hector and Achilles complement one another in this way? How does it mark them?
  • What does the Iliad do with Hector's and Achilles' correspondences? How do their individual characters generalize to human experience?
• How does Achilles bring closure to his bereavement from Patroclus?
  • What concerns do Achilles' ritualized actions address? How do they acknowledge his loss? What do they do to repair or mitigate it?
  • What concerns do Achilles' social activities with the other Greek warriors address? What do they do to repair or mitigate past damage in his relations with them? How do they relate to his grief for Patroclus?
  • What concerns does Achilles' response to Priam address? What losses does he acknowledge? What does he do to repair or mitigate them, and how does it help?

Review your reading, your notes, your quizzes, your presentation-papers, the Study Questions in this file, the Study Guide for Exam 1, and in short all material assigned to date, for Exam 1 on Friday.

• What are major concerns we have been focusing on? What are important ideas in the Iliad? What passages especially well illustrate important concepts, patterns of understanding and interpretation, or kinds of expression? These key passages will be good things to refer to as evidence for proving points on your exam.
• What types of analysis have we brought to bear on our texts? You can apply techniques of analysis we have used on one passage, to another, and get still more out of it. On the exam, you should explain clearly how the evidence you are citing helps to support your insights.
• Study Questions in this e-file flag important issues within the material we are studying. Typically they are fairly open-ended: they encourage you to think through the implications of our material, and explore the connections you find. Exam questions will suggest a tighter focus, in the interests of being possible to answer within the confines of an in-class exercise. But if you have been thinking about the issues raised by class discussions and the study questions, and noting passages of our texts that provide important evidence, you will be well prepared to write concrete, specific, persuasive essays on the exam.
• Assessment on the exam relates to your familiarity with the material to the extent that you need to know what you're talking about in order to say meaningful things about it. And you do have to make clear what you're referring to, in order to get your argument across. But the main emphasis of the assessment will be on the skills of critical thinking in the realm of literary analysis and of effective argumentation and verbal communication. Be sure to distinguish clearly between what the text actually, literally, says, and what the text means - then explain how reasoning takes you from one to the other.

Friday 28 September

• CONGRATULATIONS! You have completed the first examination.
• Keep thinking about the exam questions: in an even-more-perfect world, what more could you say about these topics?

• How does the opening of the Odyssey situate itself in mythological tradition? On whom does it focus attention first, so as to orient the audience? What familiar figures are concerned? What information is supplied?
• Who is Telemachus? How does he welcome his guest? How much control does he have over his household? Why?
• Who is Penelope? How much control does she have over her household? Who challenges her? Why? How does she respond?
• Over what matter does the assembly of Ithacans meet? Who takes which sides in the controversy?
• What plan does Telemachus form? What prompting and what help does he receive?

Monday 1 October

• Compare and contrast the opening of the Odyssey to the opening of the Iliad.
  • How does Homer portray his own role as a story-teller in the two epics? What does he identify as the "source" of the stories he is telling? What does his image suggest about the role of story-tellers? Hold these points in mind, to compare and contrast with other ideas about stories and story-telling that appear within the Odyssey.
  • How does Homer identify his subject in the two epics? What connections between them are suggested by the introductory hints? What differences of setting and emphasis are suggested?
• How do the gods involve themselves in the Odyssey, at least as the epic is beginning? Will this story involve their relationships and power differently from the Iliad?
• What possibilities does the story of Agamemnon and Orestes raise for the Odyssey: why is this story so important that various characters keep referring to it?
• Why can't Penelope just tell the suitors to go away? What considerations constrain her behavior? How does she work within these constraints?

• How is Telemachus received at Nestor's court in Pylos? at Menelaus's court in Sparta? What takes place in connection with his departure?
  • What acts seem to form a routine of hospitable reception? In what sequence do they proceed? How about send-off?
  • What special account is taken of who Telemachus is, in particular?
• What information about Odysseus do Nestor, Menelaus, and Helen each provide for Telemachus?
• How do the suitors respond to Telemachus's absence?
• How does Penelope respond to Telemachus's absence?

Wednesday 3 October

• What does Telemachus achieve by calling the people of Ithaca to assembly, in accordance with Athene's first purpose for him?
  • What does the assembly actually manage to do?
  • What might the assembly have been expected to do, that it does not manage to do? What hints does the text give about why this voice of the community is not able to be more effective?
  • Short of concrete action in the matter for which Telemachus summons the assembly, what less tangible things are accomplished by the assembly's being called and by what is said there? How do these things help serve Athene's purposes for Telemachus?
• What does Telemachus achieve by traveling to Pylos and Sparta, and interviewing Nestor and Menelaus and Helen? Think of both concrete and immaterial-but-significant results. How do they help serve Athene's purposes for Telemachus?
• What does Telemachus learn about Odysseus?
• What does Telemachus learn about Agamemnon, Aegisthus, and Orestes?
• What does Telemachus learn about the other Greeks who fought at Troy?

• What has Odysseus's relationship with Calypso entailed? What has she done for him, what has she wanted to do, and what will she do now? How does he respond to her?
• What superhuman forces are involved in Odysseus's getting away from Calypso's island, Ogygia? What are they able to do? How does he perceive them?
• Why does Nausicaa come to the washing-pools near the sea? Why does she think she's coming there? How does what she finds there -unexpectedly- relate to these considerations?

Reflections on Exam 1: Homer, Iliad

• As a group, the exams were strong: congratulations! Attentive reading pays off.
• A good way to strengthen identifications is to back them up by mentioning a specific moment in the Iliad that illustrated your point. On passage-essays and topic-essays also, identifying supporting text concretely solidifies your interpretations, especially when you explain text how you reason from the text to your understanding of it.
• In both passage-essays and topic-essays, be sure to address the question, "So what?" More formally, "What does it mean?" and "Why does it matter?" Show how the text works to support your insights. Analyzing complex situations and seeing how they operate and why they operate that way, is a skill literature courses aim to develop by working in the world of verbal descriptions. The same type of skills operate in every other part of life too.
• Explain your reasoning clearly, logical step by logical step. Take your reader with you, in order to persuade.
• With passage-essays, you've got text right there in which you can anchor your discussion very specifically. Take advantage of this resource for concreteness and detail.
• Connect the dots: when you want to add a passage to your discussion, in support of your interpretations or for comparison, show what makes it relevant - then when you explain what's going on in it, it will also help support your central argument.
• Building on discussions we've had in class and taking understanding of the Iliad and Classical epic even further, makes exam papers truly exciting. Education aims above all to develop the knowledge, skills, confidence, and interest to claim an inquiry for yourself. Go for it!
• Please read all comments on your paper, and come talk to me if you have any questions about them.
• When you're talking about the Classical world where the term originated, it's good to remember that an "epic" is a long poem in a specific metrical form (dactylic hexameter, for what that's worth). The term is often used specifically for long narrative poems about heroic mythology, like the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid. (Long poems in the same meter, on other types of subject, get adjectives, such as "didactic epic" for Hesiod's Works and Days or Lucretius's On the Nature of Things: they are not principally about telling a story, but giving instructions on how to be wise.) A "novel" is a totally different literary form: a long work of prose fiction. Modern critical discourse sometimes applies "epic" as an adjective to other literary forms, when they deal with heroic and quasi-mythological subjects (The Lord of the Rings, for example, could be described as a trilogy of epic novels). But our three epics in this course are not novels: they're poems.

Friday 5 October

• What does the Odyssey do for itself by starting at Ithaca in Odysseus's absence, rather than with Odysseus himself? What it do for itself by starting Odysseus's own story on Ogygia? What considerations does these points of departure, and the actions that ensue from them, raise about Odysseus's traveling and return home? What ideas about human capacity does Odysseus embody in the story?
• Compare and contrast Odysseus's existence on Calypso's island Ogygia to Telemachus's existence on Ithaca in Odysseus's absence. What freedom of action do they each have? What forces or considerations constrain them? How do they each obtain greater freedom of movement? What does it mean to them?
• What does Calypso offer Odysseus? What would it mean, compared to the terms of human life? What does he choose, and why?
• How are the conditions of human life demonstrated in Odysseus's journey from Ogygia to Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians? What resources are made available to him? How does he use them: how deeply does he draw on his own resources, what courses of action does he prefer, and what does he ultimately need?

• What sort of a place is the court of Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians? How is Odysseus received there? What does Alcinous agree to give Odysseus? What more is Alcinous willing to give Odysseus?
• In what sports do the Phaeacians compete? How does Odysseus become involved in the competition?
• What songs does the bard Demodocus sing? In what ways do they relate to Odysseus's experiences?
• What request does Nausicaa make of Odysseus? How does he respond?
• What prophecy does Alcinous recall about the Phaeacian's transport services?

Wednesday 10 October

From today's class:

• How do Odysseus's experiences at the court of Alcinous serve to delineate important conceptions about hospitality? Compare and contrast to other episodes of hospitality (if you haven't already, start keeping a log of this theme throughout the epic).
• Why do Nausicaa's virginity and marriageability matter - to her, to her parents, to Odysseus, and to Odysseus's story as a whole? What opportunities and what principles is Nausicaa in position to represent to Odysseus?
• In what ways does Arete occupy a special status? What aspects of her position result specifically from being Alcinous's wife, and what aspects result from other qualities or capacities in Arete herself? What principles is she in position to represent to Odysseus?
• Identify the connections between Demodocus's songs and Odysseus's story, and compare and contrast Demodocus and Odysseus as story-tellers. What do they, jointly, suggest about the role of story-telling and memory in the world the Odyssey represents, and in the Odyssey as a work of story-telling representation?

• Pattern-hunt: Make a comprehensive list of the landfalls Odysseus makes while traveling from Troy, and his adventures at each stop. What types of events keep recurring in these incidents? What thematic concerns function within them? Compare and contrast how individual incidents re-process related themes.
• Who is Circe? How does she align herself with respect to Odysseus and his purposes - both when he encounters her at first, and as their relationship changes? What does he do, and what does she do, with the result that they reconfigure their relationship?
• Why does Odysseus have to go to the Land of the Dead? Where is it located? How does he get there? What does he find when he gets there?
  • What encounters relate most closely to Odysseus's experiences at Troy? What light do they cast on his character and achievements?
  • What encounters relate most closely to Ithaca and Odysseus's return? What expectations do they create?
  • What encounters don't seem to relate especially closely to Odysseus's experiences at all? What are they doing there?
• How does Odysseus deal with his men, over the course of his Wanderings? Compare and contrast to the hints about relationships between contingents and their leaders at Troy in the Iliad. How does Homeric epic understand the issue of leadership?

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Friday 12 October

From today's class:
• How does Odysseus frame his account of his journey from Troy to Ogygia? To what concerns in his own mind does his preface draw attention? To what additional themes that Homer is emphasizing (if not necessarily Odysseus himself within the narrative) does Odysseus's preamble relate?
• In what terms does Odysseus announce his own identity, formally, to Alcinous's court? How does his declaration relate to his experiences on Scheria? How does it relate to the identity Odysseus demonstrates in first-person narrative of his Wanderings? How will it relate to his return to Ithaca?
• How do the Mediterranean of Homer's and his audience's real-life experience and understanding of the world relate to the sea about which Odysseus experiences his Wanderings? What connections are made? When Mediterranean blends into Otherworld, what sort of encounters does Odysseus experience? How do they compare with his experiences on Scheria? How do they compare with his real-world experiences at Troy and on Ithaca?
For tonight's reading:
• Why does Odysseus have to go to the Land of the Dead? Where is it located? How does he get there? What does he find when he gets there?
  • What encounters relate most closely to Odysseus's experiences at Troy? What light do they cast on his character and achievements?
  • What encounters relate most closely to Ithaca and Odysseus's return? What expectations do they create?
  • What encounters don't seem to relate especially closely to Odysseus's experiences at all? What are they doing there?
• Continue listing Odysseus's landfalls and adventures. What types of events keep recurring in these incidents? How do different episodes replay and vary similar elements? What themes emerge as important focuses of Odysseus's story?
• How does Odysseus deal with his men, over the course of his Wanderings? Compare and contrast to the hints about relationships between contingents and their leaders at Troy in the Iliad. How does Homeric epic understand the issue of leadership?

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This file last updated 11 October 2007 by jlong1@orion.it.luc.edu.
http://www.luc.edu/depts/classics/