Homer

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Homers Odyssey
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Goals / Essential Questions

• Goals
• Understand the narrative.
• Window into the age
• See themes, next slide
• How and why - did the epic survive some 2,700
  years?
• Why is this important today?

• What can we learn about the Ancient Greeks?
• What is the role of religion?
• Different from today?
• Boxers or Briefs?
• Others?

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Poetics

• Themes

• Literary Terms

• Hospitality
• Respect for the Gods
• Loyalty
• Pride and Honor
• Self-discipline
• Importance of Leadership
• Justice
• Revenge
• Reconciliation
• Fate

• Epic
• Epic Hero
• Epithets
• Narrative Drift
• Formal Speech
• Imagery
• Personification
• Metaphors
• Symbols

4
Homer

• Blind Poet
• 750-700 BC
• Author of The Illiad and The Odyssey
• Cannot pinpoint his birth.

5
Homers Importance

• The Great Library of Alexandria
• Climate
• Librarians cleaning house
• Christians destroy
• Of the 1,596 scraps and fragments of literary
  works, nearly one-half were either about Homer,
  The Odyssey, or The Illiad.

6
Heroic Poem

• Classified by Oral Poetry
• Composed Illiterate bards
• Recited in chant
• Heroic messages are sent, never written

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Heroic Poem

• Important to remember it is chanted (sung)
• Follows a specific meter
• Bard used epithets to fit meter
• Not memorized, only a skeleton (like a comedian,
  I guess)
• Constant repetition

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The first story

• The Illiad
• Story of the Trojan War
• War lasted ten years
• Helen of Troy
• Trojan Horse
• Achilles / Odysseus are two of the heroes.

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The Odyssey

• Picks up on Odysseuss journey home
• Odysseus and his men have some trouble mainly
  from Poseidon
• Ten years to get home
• Epic journey

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• One interpretation of Odysseys journey

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The Odyssey

• We are unable to pinpoint the wanderings of
  Odysseus
• Presently divided into 24 books
• The Bard (and later Homer) was telling a story of
  his own past.
• The journey happens about 300 years prior to
  Homer (we think).