The Odyssey - Scholarship (OCR A-Level Classical Civilisations) (copy)

Mheallaigh - storytelling in relation to xenia and civilised society

"Storytelling is a hallmark of good society and the gracious host"

Peter Jones - Suitors in relation to xenia and revenge

the suitor’s deaths are completely justified by their disrespect of odysseus’ house

Peter Jones - Odysseus' defeat of Polyphemus in relation to leadership

"Odysseus is able to beat the Cyclops through thought and clever action."

Mheallaigh - virtuosity and weaving

the ideal virtuous woman - weaving

Peter Jones - Penelope / conflict

"Penelope is a woman in conflict with herself."

Charlotte Higgins - nostos beyond literal

"Homecoming is more than a physical arrival."

Edith Hall - xenia / justice revenge

"All the characters of 'The Odyssey' are punished and rewarded according to their attitudes towards xenia."

Peter Jones - disguise / heroism

"His disguises and deceptions are all means to a justifiable and suitably heroic end."

Peter Jones - Telemachus' presentation

"Homer makes the growing up of Telemachus an issue of the epic”

peter jones - odyssean characteristics

“restraint and endurance, deception and disguise, these are odyssean characteristics” (shared by penelope and athene)

jasper griffin - odysseus concerns

“odysseus is keenly concerned with possessions”

jasper griffin - odysseus and trust

“the habit of distrust bites so deep”

morris bowra - odysseus’ oponents

“odysseus is faced not be his equals but by his inferiors or by monsters”

morris bowra - odysseus’ cunning

“his need for cunning is enforced by his own recklessness”

graziosi - odysseus and animals

“odysseus is compared to a wider range of animals than any other epic hero”

graziosi - odysseus’ loneliness

“odysseus’ loneliness is a crucial part of his story”

graziosi - penelope

“for all the dangerous girls, women, goddesses and monsters odysseus meets on his way home, it is penelope herself who constitutes the greatest peril for him”

graziosi - penelope and nostos

“homer portrays her domestic ordeal as a form of heroic nostos”

jasper griffin - penelope

“by her self-command and guile, penelope shows herself to be the true wife for the hero of the odyssey”

graziosi - female characters

“in a poem so interested in pleasure and family, survival and return, it is perhaps unsurprising that female characters should be prominent”

graziosi - nausicaa

“nausicaa is dangerous precisely because she seems so suitable”

emily wilson - female power

“the odyssey traces deep male fears about female power”

peter jones - the gods

“in homer, the gods help only those who are worthy of it”

grenke - the suitors

“the result of a generation of young greek men who have come up, without the benefit of the guidance of the previous generation”

jasper griffin - justice

“the whole poem is pervaded and held together by a very explicit theory of justice and of divine behaviour”

jasper griffin - the phaeacians

“they serve as a transition between the fantasy world of the tales and the human world of ithaca”

scott richardson - the narrator

the unreliable and inconsistent narration gives the odyssey’s audience a sense of “uncertainty and mistrust that pervades the world of the poem”

morrison on odysseus’ relationship with the gods

“Odysseus is no puppet.”

gartland on narrative voice

“this switch from omnipotent poet to one man’s interpretation of events makes the most fantastic section of the poem the most intimate”

jones - eumaeus’ values

“eumaeus is the ideal of order”

jenkyns - the role of slaves

“the odyssey gives prominence even to slaves and beggars”