CC 303/352: Lecture Outline, November 29, 2001

Odysseus

Final exam guidelines and practice test are now on line.

I. The myth

• The trip home

1. Ciconians
2. Lotus-eaters
3. Cyclops
4. Aeolus
5. Laestrygonians
6. Circe
7. Underworld
8. Sirens
9. Scylla and Charybdis
10. Cattle of Sun
11. Calypso
12. Phaeacia: Nausicaa

• Back in Ithaca

1. Penelope's trick
2. Telemachus' journeys (note initiation motif)
3. Disguise
4. Recognitions: Argos, Eumaeus, Telemachus, Eurycleia
5. Death of suitors

II. Perspectives

• history:

1. Ithaca in the Bronze Age: few significant finds
2. Dark Age society: suitors respond to precarious kingship
3. voyages westward in Dark Age (c. 800 BC)?

• Folk-tale motifs

1. Ciconians: not folk-tale--easing in to fantastic
2. Lotus-eaters: eating and not coming back (cf. Snow White, Persephone)
3. Cyclops: man-eating monster tricked (cf. Jack and the Beanstalk)
4. Aeolus: idyllic place, taboos acceptable (incest), winds held in bag: common folk-tale motif; curiosity kills cat (cf. Pandora, Sleeping Beauty)
5. Laestrygonians: ogres again; wife calls husband (cf. Jack and Beanstalk)
6. Circe: enchantress
7. Underworld: extends beyond folk tale to extreme journey of hero
8. Sirens: cf. Lorelei
9. Scylla and Charybdis: impossible task; here becomes tragic; fatality
10. Cattle of the Sun: prohibition
11. Calypso: far-away powerful being promising immortality
12. Phaeacia: idyllic place, marriagable princess
13. Ithaca: hero returns in disguise and avenges wrongs

• Beyond the paradigm of Achilles

1. Achillean ideal: firmness in purpose, self-aggrandizement, glory more important than life
2. Odysseus: flexibility, survival
3. Learns need for self-effacement after Cyclops adventure
4. Learns not to trust anybody
5. Achilles, Ajax, and Agamemnon in underworld
6. Back in Ithaca: uses what he has learned, learns to trust again and how to be reintegrated into community

• The flexible hero: a hero or a villain?

1. Sophocles and Euripides: Odysseus as slimy rhetorician
2. Vergil and Ovid: Odysseus as trickster
3. Dante: Odysseus in hell
4. Tennyson: Odysseus as seeker after new knowledge

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