World of the Hero scholarship Flashcards
(17 cards)
Emily Wilson - Odysseus’ character
Odysseus ‘has many choices, many identities, many places to go and people to see’
Odysseys is free - Telemachus and Penelope are trapped - Odysseus yearns to get home
Richard Jenkyns - Odysseus 2 strands
Two strands to the Odyssey in poem:
- FOLKTALE FIGURE, wanderer among magic and monsters
- NOBLE ODYSSEUS (of the Iliad) hero of epic song and prowess in close combat
Peter Jones - Odysseus three strands
- LOYAL HUSBAND
- ETERNAL WANDERED
- ANTI-HERO
Peter Jones - characteristics
Odysseus is a mean, selfish time-server who employs disguise and deceit often to gain the most disreputable ends
C M Bowra - Odysseus actions
Odysseus has to act alone (reaching Phaeacia and Ithaca alone)
Morrison - Odysseus qualities
Odysseus succeeds where others may have given up (it is that ‘much enduring’ quality which) adds o his heroism, fame and likability.
Griffin - Odysseus (and his men)?
Odysseys must show himself as a survivor, prepared to beg, to use guile, to accept humiliations and to conceal his feelings
(Odysseys men would never have been able to deal with what Odysseus does)
Mandzuka - Odysseus responsibilities to his men
Homer frees Odysseus of any responsibility over the deaths of his comrades and the execution [of the suitors] because they all had to die for reasons of fate and ethics
Emily Wilson - Penelope’s character
she’s strong-willed, she has a vivid imagination, she’s loyal. she’s competent, mostly single mother who shows deep love for her difficult, moody son, and she keeps a big and complex household running.
(for the situation she is put in she holds up well)
Seth Schein - Reverse Simile
the ‘reverse simile’ in which Penelope’s gladness at seeing her husband is like the gladness of the survivors of a ship wrecked - Odysseus is a survivor of this in book 5, 12
reverse normal male and females roles and experiences
- thematic importance in the poem - values others viewpoints
- analogies between heroism of Odysseus and that of Penelope and the powerful role of her + women generally
Griffin - Penelope and the marriage bed
the marriage bed is an unmissable symbol of their relationship
- demonstrated Penelope’s Metis
Edith Hall - Culture of odyssey
[Odysseus] speaks with the discerning eye of the colonist.
Odysseus the mythical explorer similar to real-life Greeks who in the archaic age sailed into the unknow waters of the black sea and the Mediterranean.
Barbara Graziosi - Homer
The odyssey draws from folk-tale tradition recorded in art.
By turns a comic character, a tragic hero, a stoic sage, and a villain, Odysseus could never and cannot yet be pinned down
Michael Silk - Odyssey and it Explorations
Odysseus is a returned husband, long-missing and plausible presumed dead; many desire his wife.
Modern readers wouldn’t condone revenge killing such a context, let alone acclaim it, but the Odyssey does - or does it?
Deryck Williams - Virgil and Aeneas
“Vigil’s sympathy for the defeated that it often seems to conflict with the triumph of Rome’s achievement”
“Virgil is trying to depict a character upon whom Romans of his day could model themselves.”
Jasper Griffin - Virgil and the divine
The participation of the divine marks the event as truly significant not only in themselves but as example of the whole relationship of men with gods and so with the limits and definition of human life.”
K W Gransden - Aeneas as a hero
Virgil created in Aeneas a new type of Stoic hero, willing and ready to subordinate his individual will to that of destiny, the commonwealth and the future, reluctant to fight and not really interested in victory”
