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Question 1

hauser women

Answer 1

• Hauser: Calypso and circe defy ideas of women as they are divine. They are able to have affairs as they exist divinely and are therefore not bound by social norms

Question 2

graziosi women

Answer 2

• Graziosi: Essentially, all the women and female monsters that Odysseus encounters on the way are trying to delay or prevent his return home whether that Nausicaa or Charybdis

Question 3

jenkyns women

Answer 3

• Jenkyns: Women take on a larger role in the Odyssey rather than in the Iliad where women take on subordinate roles such as wife or concubine or mother

Question 4

walcot xenia

Answer 4

• Walcot: Phaecians weren’t actually great hosts.

Question 5

west xenia

Answer 5

• West: Describes xenia as an obligation. The impact of xenia is felt through generations (example Iliad Diomedes and Glaucus won’t fight because on their grandfathers had welcomed the other as a guest). There is a set structure

Question 6

hall xenia

Answer 6

• Hall: Breaking Xenia is the suitor’s fundamental crime

Question 7

graziosi nostos

Answer 7

• Graziosi: Homer wants us to realise above all interests Odysseus’ desire is to get home to Ithaca

Question 8

hauser nostos

Answer 8

• Hauser: Odysseus is driven not by kleos but by his desire to return home

Question 9

kahane nostos

Answer 9

• Kahane: the most important part of Odysseus’ nostos is his reunion with Penelope

Question 10

munaghan on disguise

Answer 10

• Munaghan: Your identity is more than your appearance its your heritage and actions

Question 11

hauser on recognition

Answer 11

• Hauser: Moments of tension rising -> disguise used as a feature of suspense and anticipation

Question 12

clayton on homeric hero

Answer 12

• Clayton: Odysseus compensates for his lack of physical impressiveness by means of verbal skills

Question 13

graziosi on structure

Answer 13

• Graziosi: The end is not very satisfactory as it is not realistic and Zeus recommends forgetting the slaughter which contradicts the point of epic poem being focused on memory

Question 14

jenkyns on structure 1

Answer 14

• Jenkyns: the Odyssey is complex due to the flashback narrative with narration in first person which is absent in many epics

Question 15

jenkyns literary technique 2

Answer 15

• Jenkyns: Homer enjoys combining the real world with ‘fairyland’ places where humans don’t behave like mainland Greeks. This would be enjoyable for an audience as escapism.

Question 16

walsh justice and revenge

Answer 16

• Jenkyns: Homer enjoys combining the real world with ‘fairyland’ places where humans don’t behave like mainland Greeks. This would be enjoyable for an audience as escapism.

Question 17

graziosi 1 justice and revenge

Answer 17

• Graziosi: Justice is not delivered fairly throughout the Odyssey. Odysseus achieves nostos due to an alignment of fate and his own character/determination.

Question 18

graziosi 2 justice and revenge

Answer 18

• Graziosi - The Odyssey draws from folk-tale traditions recorded primarily in art, but also offers a more disenchanted, epic exploration of power and its consequences.

Question 19

mcdonald and mckendrick family

Answer 19

• McDonald & McKendrick - “In Homer’s poem, the family is always and everywhere aristocratic. No ordinary men, in our sense of the word, are of any consequence in the work; even the slaves are noblemen who have come on hard times, and their stories are told with reference both to their own familial origins and to the families they are now connected with.”

Question 20

franklin family 1

Answer 20

• Franklin - In the Odyssey, Homer is “urgently concerned with preserving the stability of the family unit, and working out the frightening social and political consequence of familial breakdown.”

Question 21

franklin family 2

Answer 21

• Franklin - “Although we tend to think of Homer’s Odyssey as a story of homecoming, it has just as much to say about the terrible cost of homewrecking. It will take all of the hero’s wits and brawn to make it back alive… but if the hero dies or gets stranded on his way home, his house will fall (as the suitors will kill Telemachus and marry Penelope, breaking up his family). Furthermore, since Odysseus reigns as king over the island of Ithaca, the failure of his house will also have serious repercussions for his people as well. By the end of the poem, the disorder of the house of Odysseus leads to incredible violence and almost ends in war.”

Question 22

thalmann role of slaves 1

Answer 22

• Thalmann - The Odyssey at first seems to present us with a “society polarized between high and low… above the line were the aristoi, literally the ‘best people, the hereditary nobles who held most of the wealth and all the power, in peace as in war. Below were all the others.” But this can hardly be taken as historical truth, “but rather as a sign of a simplified representation whereby society is viewed from the perspective of the elite.”

Question 23

thalmann role of slaves 2

Answer 23

• Thalmann - “Slaves in the Odyssey represent the labour on which the more leisured aristocratic style of living is based. It is their work and its products that support the way of life and the activities of the families at the head of the various oikoi (e.g. feasts, sacrifices, hospitality etc). Consequently, slaves are portrayed in the narrative selectively and from a particular perspective.” This means that the slaves in the poem are “viewed from above and categorized, and their representation is simplified accordingly.”

Question 24

thalmann role of slaves 3

Answer 24

• Thalmann - This means that slaves are sharply opposed into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ slaves. Thus the slave is viewed either as “lacking autonomy, and so corruptible, a dangerous element lurking in the very foundation of the oikos, or as capable, because of an innate nobility (inner strength of character) which is impervious to changes in fortune, deciding to remain loyal to an absent master.”

Question 25

segal other

Answer 25

• Segal - Phaeacia is like a fantasy realm. The people there are mortal, but they are also magical.