Homer`s Odyssey: Nostoi: The Returns - Stjohns

Homer’s Odyssey:
The Wanderings of
Odysseus
Nostoi: The Returns
n  Menelaus:
Helen back in Sparta
(Odyssey 4)
n  Agamemnon (Aeschylus, Oresteia;
Sophocles and Euripides, Electra)
n  Odysseus (Homer, Odyssey)
n  Aeneas (Vergil, Aeneid): “return” to a
new home; the founding of Rome
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Odysseus Polytropos (πολύτροπος):
Man of Many Turns
n  intelligence,
resourcefulness
n  Homer’s Odyssey :
poem of experience
n  survivor of many
adventures
n  reclaims his home
Mapping Odysseus’ Wanderings
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The Wanderings:
Odyssey 9-12
n  Odysseus
tells his own tale
n  the anger of Poseidon
n  10 years wandering on the sea
n  last stop: Phaeacea
n  threats at sea:
n  Cicones: piracy
n  Lotus-Eaters: forgetfulness
Blinding of Polyphemus, Statue Group from Sperlonga
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The Grotto in the Villa of
Tiberius at Sperlonga
n 
Theocritus: Idyll 11, lines 30-40
(3rd century BC)
“I know, my dearest [Galatea],
why you run from me. It's my
great wide hairy brow across my
entire forehead in a single line
from ear to ear, with only one eye
below it. And there is my wide flat
nose above my lip. That's the way
I look, but even so, I have a
thousand head of sheep, and I get
the finest milk from them and I
never lack for cheese in summer
or fall. Even in the depth of
winter my larder is full of cheese.
I play the pipes better than any
other Cyclops when I sing of you
and me together from dusk to
dawn…”
Bust of Polyphemus, from Sperlonga
(translated by Pierre A. MacKay)
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Escape from the Cyclops
of xenia
n  drunkenness/
primitivism
n  trickery: moving
the stone
n  Odysseus’ boast
n  Cyclops’ curse
n  violation
Aeolus, Laestrygonians
n  The
god of the
winds: human
greed
n  cannibals
5
Circe, Daughter of the Sun
n  men
to animals
n  the goddess’
lover
n  help from the
goddess
Odysseus overcomes Circe
6
Odysseus in the Underworld
The Sirens
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Scylla, Charybdis
Cattle of the Sun
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Calypso
n  captive
consort:
7 year on Ogygia
n  divine release:
Athena
n  Calypso helps
Odysseus to
return
Return to Ithaca
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