Chap 12 Flashcards
What is the origin of Nostalgia?
“nostalgia” comes from two Greek words: Nostos (return home) and Nostalgia (Home sickness, pain/ suffering after coming home).
how did Greeks observe the Nostalgia?
Achilles is fighting at Troy, he realizes that he will never return home but instead will die there and be remembered in song. He says: “My return home (nostos) has died, but my fame (kleos) will not wither”
what was Nostoi?
The oral songs called Nostoi “ Returns” suggest that the Greeks were as interested in homecomings as they were in adventures.
what is the elements that contain the hero’s successful return?
-One type of folktale called the “Homecoming Husband” offers a succinct overview of a hero’s reunion with his wife, upon which his life and livelihood depends
Homecoming husband?
“Homecoming Husband” is tale-type found in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index. This index classifies folktales by their dominant motifs and characters.
What is Harold Bloom’s opinion about Achilles and Odysseus?
Achilles is “too much contaminated with death,” in the words of literary critic Harold Bloom. Odysseus, however, exhibits what Bloom calls a kind of “completeness” that most other heroes lack.
What distinguishes Odysseus from other heroes?
While his long journey, filled with stormy seas, one-eyed giants, witches, and princesses, has made Odysseus attractive to generations of readers, it is his successful return to his island of Ithaca, and his reunion with his wife, his son, and his father that distinguishes him from other heroes at Troy.
What is the meaning of nostos?
return from Troy to Greece after adventures on the high seas.
what is the Huns-Jorg Uther’s description of homecoming husband’s tale?
a framework for examining and comparing tales of heroes’ returns:
In the absence of her husband (lover) who is far away on a journey (in prison), a woman is forced to choose another husband. The first husband (disguised, as a beggar) returns (with supernatural help, carried during a deep sleep, warned by a dream) on the wedding day and discloses his identity to his wife (by, a ring well known to her), is recognized by her domestic animals (horse, dog), or answers the woman’s questions correctly (concerning features of the house or birthmarks). The revenge on the rival follows.
who stated the tale of homecoming husband’s tale?
It was begun by a Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne in 1910, expanded and revised twice by an American folklorist Stith Thompson (in 1928 and 1961) and by a German folklorist, Hans-Jörg Uther (2004).
What is Achilles’s respond to Odysseus and Agamemnon’s gifts?
Achilles responds, “I hate that man like the gates of Hades’ house who conceals one thing in his heart, but says another”. Achilles implies that Odysseus is deceitful and that his eloquent words do not express his true thoughts and intentions.
Odysseus essentials?
PARENTAGE King Laertes and Anticleia of Ithaca
OFFSPRING Telemachus (with Penelope)
CULT SHRINES Ithaca.
What is the lineage of Odysseus?
Odysseus has a divine lineage which in part explains his character and behaviors. Zeus is a distant ancestor of Odysseus’s father, Laertes, whereas Anticleia, his mother, is the daughter of Autolycus, the son of Hermes.
What is the origin’s of Odysseus’s name?
- Autolycus named Odysseus, a word that comes from the Greek verb odussasthai, “to be angry with” or “to cause suffering.” (In Latin, his name is Ulixes, whereas in English it is Ulysses.)
- Odysseus (the hated one, hated by Poseidon, preventing him from going home, Polumetis “very trickey” )
What is the symbol of Odysseus?
As a young man in a hunting party, Odysseus succeeds in killing a wild boar, but not before the boar attacks him, leaving a scar on his leg. This scar not only identifies Odysseus but also symbolizes the suffering Odysseus causes and endures during his life.
What is the common trait between Athena and Odysseus?
Odysseus’s cleverness or cunning intelligence (metis), the trait for which Athena is known, has earned him the epithets “very clever” (polumetis) and “very tricky” (polutropos) in Homer.
Why Autolycus named his grandson Odysseus?
Autolycus explains that he has suffered at the hands of men and women, and he therefore asks that his grandson’s name commemorate his own life as well as Odysseus’s maternal heritage.
What is Odysseus’s label as a descendant of Hermes?
Trickster hero
what is the common trait of Odysseus, Athena and Hermes?
Like Hermes, he is a shapeshifter, a master of disguise who escapes the detection of nearly everyone he meets. And like his patron goddess, Athena, he is a man of many crafts and talents: a shipbuilder, a farmer, an athlete, and a warrior.
What is the difference between Odysseus and Achilles?
Ø Achilles (choses death for the glory of being hero and Odysseus is opposite (achieve glory is on what he goes through as he tries to go home).
Ø Passive hero. Not direct confrontation of the enemy.
Ø A human hero with the practical intelligence (Metis).
Ø With Athena/ Hermes’s assistance he could win without direct confrontation with the monster.
He goes through suffering but finds way out of it. Polotrupous (having many wise).
Explain the Sophocles’s tragedy Ajax?
begins after Odysseus, speaking more artfully than Ajax, has persuaded the Greeks to give him Achilles’s arms. Whereas Ajax believes that, as the better warrior, he deserves the weapons, Odysseus claims that his clever device of the Trojan Horse has secured the victory of the Greeks over Troy. Odysseus’s persuasive rhetoric leads to his acquisition of Achilles’s arms and to Ajax’s decision to kill himself after failing in an attempt to seek revenge on the Greeks. Odysseus then mediates a dispute about whether Ajax should be buried as a traitor (because of his attack on the Greek encampment) or as a soldier. Odysseus speaks with a skill and compassion that the other characters lack, arguing that Ajax should be buried with honors.
How Odysseus is portrait in the Sophocles’s play Philoctetes?
Odysseus is a self-serving mentor to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles; he counsels Neoptolemus that gaining one’s objective outweighs all other considerations, including ethical ones
How Odysseus is portrait in the is tragedies of Euripides?
Odysseus appears both as a cutthroat politician (Iphigenia at Aulis) and as a man who must balance his moral inclinations against the necessities of the situation in which he finds himself (Hecuba).
how Odysseus responded to his encounter with Sirens?
In his emblematic encounter with the Sirens, Odysseus plans strategically to defend his crew against their enchantments while allowing him to listen to and learn from their songs without succumbing to the dangers they present.
He gives beeswax to his men to plug their ears and has himself tied to his ship’s mast so that he will not abandon both boat and crew while in thrall to the Sirens’ songs. Rather than try to fight and destroy the Sirens, he ensures that he will be physically incapable of taking any action.
Why Odysseus’s wanted to listen to Sirens?
Odysseus contrives to satisfy his desire to acquire knowledge, a desire that is noted in the poem’s opening lines, where Odysseus is described as learning the minds and cities of men.
Ø He was curious of knowing unknown and test his limits and luck.
What is Siren?
Sirens: Half women and half bird (Seal). Sits on the rock and sings
in Nordic mythology (half human+ have fish). Tritans in Greek (Half women and fish).
from who does Odysseus often learn?
Curiously, he often learns from females, not only from the Sirens but also from Circe, Calypso, the ghosts of his mother and of other women, and finally from Penelope, his wife.
How to observe the changes that Odysseus undergo as a result of his learnings from women?
Odysseus’s “education” from women and the consequent changes he undergoes can be traced by comparing his encounter with an especially memorable monster, the giant Polyphemus, to his visit in Underworld, to his time with Calypso, and finally to his reunion with Penelope.
What was Odysseu’s last adventure before returning to Ithaca (home).
adventures to the Phaeacians.
Who was lumbering?
confrontation with the lumbering, one-eyed giant Polyphemus as a case in which his intelligence triumphs over Polyphemus’s brute strength, just as in the biblical narrative David cleverly defeats the massive Goliath with a slingshot.
Who was Polyphemus?
Polyphemus is one of several Cyclopes (the plural of Cyclops) who dwell on one of the islands that Odysseus and his crew visit.
What was Odysseus’s judgment about Cyclopes?
Odysseus judges the Cyclopes to be lawless and arrogant because they do not pursue the activities that, by Greek standards, make a society civilized.
Why Odysseus thought of Cyclopes as lawless and arrogant?
He observes that the island’s harbor is well suited to protect ships and that its verdant and rich land would support agriculture.
-But, the fields are uncultivated, and the harbor has no ships; nor are there public spaces marked for gatherings. Odysseus surmises that the island’s inhabitants do not engage in agricultural work or seafaring.
-In addition, the lack of public gathering spaces suggests that those who live on the islands do not pursue the kind of conversation that leads to self-government or the cultural and social activities that are the hallmarks of Greek civilization.
- Odysseus deduces that each Cyclops establishes rules over his family, while being indifferent to his neighbors. Through these descriptions of the Cyclopes’ society, we see how this encounter with a monster conveys not just an element typical of heroes’ tales but cultural information as well.
How hospitability was reviewed in Greek society?
In Greek society, a high value was placed on hospitability (xenia). Such hospitality involved more than good manners; it was a religious and ethical demand that was overseen by Zeus himself, who was believed to protect both host and guest as they interacted. Hosts were expected to provide food and lodging to guests as well as to help them on their way in exchange for gifts and stories; guests were expected to be courteous and honest. As Odysseus narrates this tale, however, it seems that both he and Polyphemus violate the normative behaviors associated with xenia.
