Learning outcomes:
This course has been designed to enable you to:
- Gain an understanding of the structure of the Odyssey
- Gain an appreciation of the themes running through the Odyssey
- Gain an appreciation of the complexity of 'Odysseus the Poikilometis': the presentation and formation of Odysseus' identity
Course sessions:
1. Odysseus the Storyteller. Odysseus' Stories: societies, ecologies, landscapes
We will start looking at those exciting adventures: mapping the wonderful world and his negotiations and escapes, exploring the way Odysseus offers his experiences to his Phaeacian hosts.
2. Odysseus' Women: Circe, Calypso and Nausicaa
We first meet Odysseus as enthralled by but needing to escape from the beautiful goddess, Calypso. We hear Odysseus’ version of his time with the enchantress Circe, who in ancient epic cycles had a story of her own, with a life with and children by Odysseus. And finally, the lovely princess Nausicaa, who has a prophecy that she will find a heroic husband from outside Phaeacia, and who finds….a battered Odysseus washed up on the shore. He was the hero of the Trojan war, now he has been stripped of everything.
3. Odysseus on Phaeacia; Odysseus and the Bard
Odysseus is welcomed by King Alcinous and Queen Arete as a guest should be: his needs met, feasted and entertained before being asked for his story. It is when Odysseus hears the bard Demodocus that he cries. We will ask, and suggest answers to, the question: why?
4. Odysseus on Ithaca: recognition and narrative identity
Meanwhile, back on Ithaca Odysseus’ wife and son are stuck in a nowhenland: Penelope is neither wife nor widow, Telemachus, on the verge of manhood, neither son and heir nor Lord of the Palace and household. We will move from them to Odysseus on Ithaca, landed on shore and, in disguise as ever, surveying the situation. We will ask questions, not so much about how Odysseus can be recognised by his Ithacans, his son and his wife, but about what he can be recognised as? Who, really, is Odysseus now?
5. Penelope, Telemachus, Odysseus: Return, Revenge, Aftermath
After tracing the story of Odysseus’ return, recognition and reunion from his and Telemachus’ point of view, we will go back to Penelope, taking up her story, asking whether ‘Faithful Penelope’ had another possible story? And we will finish with asking about recommendations from participants about other and others’ Odyssey stories: Calypso reversioned (in the Aeneid); Odysseus in Greek Tragedy (especially in the Philoctetes); Penelope in Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad; Madeline Millar’s Circe and….?
Non-credit bearing
Please note that our Virtual Summer Festival of Learning courses are non-credit bearing.
Certificate of Participation
A certificate of participation will be sent to you electronically within a week of your Summer Festival course(s) finishing.