The Odyssey

The Odyssey

The story of the journey of Odysseus / Ulysses and his men trying to get home after the 10-year long Trojan War.

Odysseus’ journey home takes an additional 10 years.

an epic about humans on the journey of life overcoming temptations along the way.

What is an Epic?

A long narrative poem about the adventures of a legendary hero.

The BIG Idea:Odysseus’s story is every person’s story.

The adversities that Odysseus must pass through are archetypal trials of type and pattern that every person will experience in some form or fashion in his or her life.

The Odyssey is not just a story of a man’s journey home.It is the story of how he meets a series of tests and trials.

The Odysseus who arrives home from the Trojan War is a different man than the one who left.

The war is one kind of test or trial.

The more significant and deeply personal trials occurin his ten-year voyage home.

Metaphor: “Life Is a Voyage.”

•YOU are on your own personal Odyssey or voyage through life.• Read Odysseus’ story as ifit is your own because it IS.

Oral Epic Features

•Epithets

•Homeric or Epic Similes

•Dramatic monologues

epithet (plural epithets)1. A term used to characterize a person or thing.

o the Terrible in Ivan the Terrible

2. A term used as a descriptive substitute for the name or title of a person.

o The Young Pretender for Charles Edward Stuart

3. An abusive or contemptuous word or phrase.o Jerk!

EPIC SIMILE or HOMERIC SIMILE:

•A comparison between two things developed at great length and detail, going on for several lines;•An elaborate, more involved version of a regular simile.•In addition to using the customary comparative word “like” or “as,” epic simile may employ other specifically comparative terms, such as “so” or “just so.”•Homer uses epic similes for emphasis and to describe the magnitude of a situation or a character’s thoughts and feelings.

BOOK ONE: INVOCATION, pg. 895

•Narrative voice in this book: the blind poet, Homer•Introduces the tale that Odysseus (and others) will narrate in subsequent books of the epic.

Homer prays to the Muse, Calliope: “Inspire me, that I may tell the tale of Odysseus, the hero who was ‘skilled in all ways of contending.”Help me tell of Odysseus, who was a great warrior and the cleverest of all men, in a way that does justice to the man and the myth. He was the cause of the downfall of Troy, the richest and most formidable of cities; then he was harassed by trials for years on end as he sailed from Troy to Ithaka, his home. While he was at sea, he became learned of the peoples and customs of many distant lands. He suffered most cruelly from bitter nights and days as he fought to save his own life and the lives of his shipmates. He wanted only to go home and to bring all of his men home safely. . . .

. . . But, alas, nothing he did could save his men, for his soldiers’own recklessness destroyed them all. Childishly and foolishly,Odysseus’ men killed and feasted on the cattle of the sun god, Helios. And he who has power over the day prevented those men from ever seeing their home, Ithaca, again.

Muse, daughter of Zeus, help me to tell this great tale once more,that the adventures of the great Odysseus may live again in ourtime.”

The Lesser Gods of Olympus

•The Nine Muses: sources of inspiration

Clio historyUrania astronomyMelpomene tragedyThalia comedy

The Nine Muses: sources of inspiration

Terpsicore danceCalliope epic poetryErato love poetryPolyhymnia songs to godsEuterpe lyric poetry