I. Background

         

A. Epic: a long poem about the actions of great men or women or about a nation’s history.

 

          B. Hubris: excessive pride or self-confidence  (Odysseus’ tragic flaw)

 

C. G.S. Kirk, “Heroic Age and Heroic Poetry”

 

1. “The main components of (the heroic age), which tends to occur in the development of many different nations, seems to be a penchant for warfare and adventure, a powerful nobility, and a simple but temporarily adequate material culture devoid of much aesthetic refinement.  In such conditions the heroic virtues of honor and martial courage dominate all others, ultimately with depressive effects on the stability and prosperity of the society.  It is usually during the consequent period of decline that the poetical elaboration of glorious deeds, deeds that now lie in the past, reaches its climax; though narrative songs are a favorite recreation of the tired warrior throughout the whole heroic period” (352-53, Cook).

 

                   2. Name - epithet formulas

a. “divine Odysseus,” “Gleaming-helmeted Hector,” “Aegis

     bearing Zeus,” etc.

 

                   3. Verse formulas

                             a. 1/3 of verses recur at least once

                             b. recurrent sense-units

                             c. 824 uses of 55 different formulas in Iliad and Odyssey together

                             d. phrase-units vs. word-units  (memory packages)

 

          D. M. I. Finley, “Wealth and Labor in the Odyssey”

 

                   1. Gifts were of bronze, iron, gold mostly (sometimes silver and cloth)

 

                   2. Symbolize wealth and prestige

                             a. to possess and give away (equal status)

                  

 

3. “The act of giving was... in an essential sense always the first half of a

Reciprocal action, the other half of which was a counter gift” (373).

 

                   4. Today:  “services rendered, desired, or anticipated... fees, rewards,

prizes, bribes... taxes and other dues to lords and kings, amends,

ordinary loans” (374).

 

                   5. “Almost any useful object served, and it is noteworthy that the

measure of value, cattle, did not itself function as a medium of exchange” (375).

 

          E. Martin P. Nilson, “Homeric Anthropomorphism and Rationalism”

 

                   1.  Souls:

a. “... the souls have no consciousness and can acquire this only by drinking the blood of the sacrificial animal, an idea which originates in the blood-offerings poured out upon the grave.  The souls are shades...” (382).

 

                   2.  The stranger:

a. “There was thought to be something mysterious about the stranger, and it was upon occasion believed that a god was concealed under his form” (384-385).

 

                   3.  The Gods and Homer’s narrative:

a. “There is no mention of Athena in Odysseus’ own story of his adventures; in the poet’s account she is the ever-present protectress” (387).

 

                   4.  The universal ‘power’:

                             a. Destinies of human life

i. “We see it in the well-known image of the destinies that the gods or the powers spin and wind for men, as the spun thread is wound upon the distaff, destinies, that is to say, which the gods allow to come upon them” (387).

                            

 

 

b. The Gods vs. ‘power’:

i. “ The [Gods] are therefore in capable of appearing as the causes of all the emotions, all the events in which man feels the working of a higher power.  The Homeric gods were obliged on account of their special character to leave one sphere of activity to ‘power’ and ‘the powers.’” (388).

 

                             c. The ‘Powers’

i. Ate (blind folly), Eris (strife), Deimos or Phobos (fear), Kydoimos (uproar), Ares (the destroyer).

 

                   F. Albert Cook “The Man of Many Turns”

 

                             a. Odysseus as epic hero:

i. “This epic hero substitutes supple intelligence for the courage and prowess of [Achilles in the Iliad].  He follows not a code but the course of his own longing, an inner canon the poem sets out as equally to be trusted.  Consistently, then, he does not gather all he knows in order to face the unknown.  He acts on hunches (Lestrygonians) or social canniness (Phaeacia) or a surfaced feeling (Calypso) or luck (Circe) or improvised plan (Cyclops).  In a sense there is nothing he can rely on as known, because he always copes with a wholly new situation in utter ignorance” (451).

 

                             b. Permanence vs. Transience  (Duality):

i. “Permanence brings joy, transience pain.  The living sustain a subtle balance between permanence and transience, and so between joy and pain.  The sea is sparkling but treacherous; to the solitary Odysseus Ogygia is joyful for its unearthly beauty but painful for its not being home.  Pain coalesces with joy, or else a life is shown to lack the epic wholeness: if pain becomes total, one is to die; if joy fully dominates, one enters the lifeless permanence of the Lotus Eaters and the Phaeacians, whom Odysseus’ long tale of suffering fills not with tears like his own but with a feeling of charm” (452-453).