Odyssey scholars

Question 1

E. Hall (Context)

Answer 1

a distinct rhythm and dialect featuring conventional formulaic phrases

Question 2

Camps (The Gods)

Answer 2

Supernatural powers are at work everywhere and always in the Homeric poems

Question 3

Camp (context)

Answer 3

The version of the Odyssey that we have now has been passed down over 350 years since it was originally composed

Question 4

Camps - Zeus

Answer 4

He is secure and relaxed in his supremacy (…) and benevolent in the exercise of it

Question 5

Jones (Context - Pisistratus)

Answer 5

In the 550s Peisistratus is said to have produced a definitive text of the Homeric epic… this suggests that there were many versions of ‘Homer’ in circulation at the time

Question 6

Morrison (Context - Homer)

Answer 6

‘Homer was a singer who performed his epic songs live

Question 7

Jones (structure)

Answer 7

‘This structure [of books 9-12] means that the excitement is kept.

Question 8

Jones (Calypso)

Answer 8

‘Calypso is an invention to give Telemachus time to grow up - she holds Odysseus for 7 years to allow Telemachus to go from being 11 to 18 - she is just a plot device but essential to the plot’

Question 9

Tracy (Zeus)

Answer 9

‘Moreover, the use of Zeus allows the plot to be arbitrary without seeming to be’

Question 10

Griffin (Free will)

Answer 10

‘Men have free will and are responsible for their own actions’

Question 11

Bowie (Humor)

Answer 11

‘The humor of the Odyssey is of a sophisticated, subtle, and varied kind

Question 12

Mheallaigh (Stories)

Answer 12

the Odyssey is about the telling of stories

Question 13

Kahane’s (Athena)

Answer 13

“One of the main agents driving the Odyssey’s plot is Odysseus’ patron, the Goddess Athena”

Question 14

Lattimore (Athene)

Answer 14

“Athene merely acquiesces on the suffer of Odysseus out of respect for Poseidon”

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Question 15

Morrison’s (Athene)

Answer 15

“Athene is quite intent on helping Odysseus return home”

Question 16

Jones (the introduction to the EV Rieu translation - Iliad)

Answer 16

‘Homer and Hesiod for the first time gave the gods an individual human face and made a community out of them.’

Question 17

B. Graziosi (Gods)

Answer 17

‘Homeric gods are embarrassing.

Question 18

Howard (double standard)

Answer 18

‘There’s a double standard in ancient Greece (…) these men sleep with goddesses without the stigma that a woman would suffer’

Question 19

Howard (lives of woman)

Answer 19

‘their [women’s] place was still firmly in the home to rear children, prepare food, spin and weave.’

Question 20

Morrison (3 definitions of a Hero)

Answer 20

‘In a narrow sense, a hero is a mortal with one human and one Devine parent’
‘In a looser sense, anyone who lived in the Heroic age was a hero’
‘someone may be a hero by his or her actions’

Question 21

Morrison (Calypso)

Answer 21

‘Calypso is the first in a series of what we might call “Surrogate wives”, women who in one way or another try to take the place of penelope’

Question 22

Morrison (Women)

Answer 22

‘in Homer’s patricidal, macho world, woman can more easily mirror the tricky heroism Odysseus demonstrates than the military heroism of the Iliad

Question 23

Morrison (Penelope)

Answer 23

‘Penelope in particular shows how endurance and craftiness lead to success - she is no less heroic than her husband’

Question 24

Silk (killing)

Answer 24

‘Few of Homer’s modern readers would condone revenge killing (…) let alone acclaim it, but the Odyssey does - or does it?’

Question 25

Rosenfelder (nostos / women)

Answer 25

‘In the epic, the sirens form part of a chain of women, nymphs and Goddesses who (…), threaten the hero’s all important homecoming to Ithaca”

Question 26

West (Eumaeus and xenia)

Answer 26

‘We learn a great deal about Eumaeus as he (…) demonstrates that good hospitality does not depend on wealth’

Question 27

Jones (The Gods)

Answer 27

‘The gods play a relatively small role in the Odyssey - much less than the Iliad.’

Question 28

Jones (Context - society of poet)

Answer 28

‘The oral poet reflects his own society to a much greater degree than we had imagined” e.g. dead are cremated (8th c. practice) rather than buried (12th c. practice).’

Question 29

Jones (Xenia and the suitors)

Answer 29

‘Reckless disregard for the bond of Xenia are enough to justify their deaths’

Question 30

Morrison (Homer and Xenia)

Answer 30

recognise appropriate behaviour in accordance with the code of hospitality’

Question 31

Jones (Nausicaa and Xenia)

Answer 31

’ Nausicaa goes into a full xenia sequence (…) to be followed by some beautifully disguised questions’

Question 32

Walcot (Phaeacians)

Answer 32

‘There is something ‘unreal’, too soft, too easy going about the subjects of King Alcinous, and their hospitality has limitations’

Question 33

Murray (Penelope and Nostos)

Answer 33

‘Homer presents the return to Ithaca as a return from fantasy to reality, to the home where Odysseus truly belongs, and this figure s embodied in the figure of Penelope, a Woman who is every but his match’

Question 34

E. Hauser (Xenia - plot)

Answer 34

‘Xenia (…) is an important way of Greek heroic society’
Xenia is an important in the Odyssey as a primary theme

Question 35

E. Hauser (Xenia - Greek ideals)

Answer 35

Agathos = a good man / a rich man
Kakos = a bad man / a poor man
The Agathos (the suitors) do not act as they should, showing awful xenia. But the Kakos Odysseus meets (Eumaeus) is far more moral and shows good xenia.
The audience of the Odyssey is thus challenged by this

Question 36

E. Hall (Xenia)

Answer 36

By the end of the Odyssey, everyone who violated Xenia was punished and if they showed good Xenia, they were rewarded

Question 37

B. Graziosi (odysseus)

Answer 37

“By turns a comic character, a tragic hero, a stoic sage, and a villain, Odysseus could never, and cannot yet, be pinned down.

Question 38

B. Graziosi (penelope)

Answer 38

“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.”

Question 39

Morrison (tricky hero)

Answer 39

Homer offers his audience something of a paradox: a tricky hero

Question 40

Knox (Women in the odyssey)

Answer 40

women, human and divine, have important roles