scholarship

Odysseus

Edith hall -

• a charismatic all-round superhero

• a very versatile hero

• no form of speech of which he is not absolute master

• the mythical explorer

Kelly - Odysseus’ journey from Ogygia to Ithaca to his kingdom, his house, his bedroom, I s also a journey from isolation towards and even closer community.

Griffin -

• use of deception is the only way to win (disguise)

• Odysseus is forced to learn the powers of self control.

The gods

Kelly - enforces of judgment

griffin - the gods have supreme power, but they are not omnipotent… men have free will and are responsible for their actions.

graziozi - Homeric Gods are embarrassing.

xenia

west - hospitality offers the opportunity for a demonstration of standing and for extending one’s reputation

Hall - ‘every book of the Odyssey, someone is either a model for xenia or an anti-model’

storytelling

Taplin - tragedy could never have come into existence without homer

Murray - homer presents the return to Ithaca as a return from fantasy to reality.

heroism

miller - Odysseus can be seen as both admirable hero and despicable villain at the same time

Hauser - 'Odysseus is very much a man of the people’

Hall - he is a very intellectual hero (Homeric hero)

women

Kelly - Odysseus’ girlfriends seem designed to portray a range of different female types and female styles of affection. Nausicaa’s maidenly tendresse is in contrast to calypso, the type of passionate women, who contrasts again with Circe, a sort of divinised good-time girl’

Griffiths - her control is benign but complete (arete)

Jenkins - homer shows us that, in a sense, girlishness can be divine

Hauser -

• ‘women are silenced by male characters’

• Penelope is a condition of Odysseus’ nostos.

Penelope

Murray - at last Odysseus has found his match, for the only character in the entire poem who can outwit him in wisdom and cunning is his wife.

griffin - the fidelity of Odysseus’ wife is crucial to the story, and the contrast between her and the disloyal wife of Agamemnon is repeatedly emphasised’

nostos

Edith Hall -

• ‘Nostos is what Odysseus craves’

• ‘home doesn’t just mean Ithaca or his family it is also the Greek way of life’

Hauser - ‘Nostos is the full restoration of Odysseus’