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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity
Epic Heroism For The Ordinary: Tolkien’S Reworking Of Odyssean Heroism In The Hobbit, Jon Billsberry
Epic Heroism For The Ordinary: Tolkien’S Reworking Of Odyssean Heroism In The Hobbit, Jon Billsberry
Journal of Tolkien Research
This article explores The Hobbit as a narrative of two Odyssean homecomings: Thorin’s return to Erebor and Bilbo’s return to Bag End. Thorin undertakes the more direct nostos: as a displaced royal heir, he returns to recover his ancestral household, inheritance, authority, and public identity. Bilbo, by contrast, leaves a secure home and gradually acquires the cunning, adaptability, judgement, and independence that make Thorin’s return possible. Tolkien thus separates heroic position from heroic conduct. This separation produces conflict at Erebor, where Thorin’s defence of royal possession threatens violence and Bilbo uses the Arkenstone to challenge the king he helped …
A Reconstruction Of The Homeric Tradition In Early Greece, Aidan F. Hoey
A Reconstruction Of The Homeric Tradition In Early Greece, Aidan F. Hoey
Student Theses
This thesis discusses the centuries-long historiographical debate that is known to us as the Homeric Question. The identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the dating from when the Homeric epic poems were composed, the Homeric diction, and the historicity of the Trojan War has puzzled scholars since Antiquity. Only by the twentieth century, scholars Milman Parry and Albert Lord proved that the Iliad and Odyssey were orally composed. How the written form of the Homeric epic poems came about has become even more of a historiographic puzzle than it has been previously. Building off the …
Feminist Retellings Of Homer's The Odyssey, 2005-2022, Brenna R. Bretzinger
Feminist Retellings Of Homer's The Odyssey, 2005-2022, Brenna R. Bretzinger
Honors Capstones
Over the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of feminist retellings of Greek mythology. These retellings serve to give voice to the marginalized female characters from ancient stories whose characterizations were deprioritized over their male counterparts. Furthermore, these stories connect the plights of ancient women with modern feminists to champion issues that women continue facing today. This study focuses on retellings of Homer’s The Odyssey, but these ideas and arguments are still largely applicable to other retellings of Greek mythology. Along with discussing The Odyssey, this project also analyzes three feminist retellings: …
Desire In The Iliad: The Force That Moves The Epic And Its Audience, Rachel H. Lesser
Desire In The Iliad: The Force That Moves The Epic And Its Audience, Rachel H. Lesser
Gettysburg College Faculty Books
This book is the first study to examine desire in the Iliad in a comprehensive way and to explain its relationship to the epic’s narrative structure and audience reception. It offers a new reading of the poem that shows how the characters’ desires, especially those of the mortal hero Achilleus and the divine king Zeus, motivate plot and keep the audience engaged with the epic until and even beyond its end. The author argues that the characters’ desires are primarily organized in narrative triangles that feature two parties in conflict over a third. A variety of desires animate these triangles, …
Feminist Retellings Of Homer's The Odyssey, 2005-2022, Brenna R. Bretzinger
Feminist Retellings Of Homer's The Odyssey, 2005-2022, Brenna R. Bretzinger
CURE Proceedings
Over the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of feminist retellings of Greek mythology. These retellings serve to give voice to the marginalized female characters from ancient stories whose characterizations were deprioritized over their male counterparts. Furthermore, these stories connect the plights of ancient women with modern feminists to champion issues that women continue facing today. This study focuses on retellings of Homer’s The Odyssey, but these ideas and arguments are still largely applicable to other retellings of Greek mythology. Along with discussing The Odyssey, this project also analyzes three feminist retellings: …
Landscape And Lore: River Acheron And The Oracle Of The Dead, Lashante St. Fleur
Landscape And Lore: River Acheron And The Oracle Of The Dead, Lashante St. Fleur
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
In order to explore the cultural relationships between people, landscape, memory and ritual, this master’s thesis focuses on the Acheron River in Epirus, Greece, long believed to harbor an entrance into Hades, the Greek underworld. Various entrances into the chthonic, or subterranean land of the dead, are peppered throughout Greece, with each tied to their own local myths, legends, folklore and cults. According to those traditions, Hades could be accessed from several terrestrial rivers thought to be connected to Oceanus, the primordial world-encompassing river surrounding all of creation. Flowing forth from River Ocean were all above- and underground rivers and …
Homeric Studies, Feminism, And Queer Theory: Interpreting Helen And Penelope, Rachel H. Lesser
Homeric Studies, Feminism, And Queer Theory: Interpreting Helen And Penelope, Rachel H. Lesser
Ancient Greek and Roman Studies Faculty Publications
Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin’s Feminist Theory and the Classics (1993) and Barbara F. McManus’ Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics (1997) provided ground-breaking surveys of the feminist revolution in classical studies, and their work leads us to the question of the feminist impact on the study of Homer. In this essay, I review the contributions of feminist scholarship on Homer and explore queer theory as a new heuristic avenue for advancing the feminist interpretation of the Homeric epics. With this approach, I follow upon and revise McManus’ use of the concept of “dual-gendering” (a term that I employ …
Immortality In Literature: The Goddesses Of Ancient Greece, Rebecca Lozier
Immortality In Literature: The Goddesses Of Ancient Greece, Rebecca Lozier
Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects
The following text explores the connections between the mythology of ancient Greece and the society from which it arose. Women are often at the heart of classical myth despite being oppressed members of society. Understanding the role of women in mythology provides insight into women's treatment in ancient Greece. It follows the lasting influence of ancient Greece and its mythology through to the Romantic Period. Understanding how poets used myth, provides understanding into the culture's beliefs about women.
Review Of "Homer's Iliad: The Basel Commentary, Book Xix", Rachel H. Lesser
Review Of "Homer's Iliad: The Basel Commentary, Book Xix", Rachel H. Lesser
Ancient Greek and Roman Studies Faculty Publications
Marina Coray’s commentary on Iliad 19, originally published in German in 2009, is part of the ongoing Basel commentary series on Homer’s Iliad, edited by Anton Bierl and Joachim Latacz. So far thirteen volumes of the series have been published in German, and five in English translation. Coray’s commentary is a work of great erudition and will be an indispensable resource for scholars of Homer. Here I focus on the utility of this slightly revised new English edition for anglophone readers at various levels, and consider how this commentary relates to and supplements Mark W. Edwards’ outstanding commentary on …
The Natures Of Monsters And Heroes, Vanessa Nikolovska
The Natures Of Monsters And Heroes, Vanessa Nikolovska
The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research
Around the late eighth or early seventh century B.C., a poet, known to later ages as Homer, composed two epic poems that tell the tales of the Trojan War, The Iliad and The Odyssey. The Iliad tells the story of the rage of Achilles, the great Greek warrior, while The Odyssey tells the story of the coming home of Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, from the Trojan War. A study of both epics reveals that constructs portraying various values, such as the characteristics of heroes, have remained the same from the times of ancient Greece to the present day. …
Vergil's Aeneid: A Homeric Dichotomy?, David Dysert
Vergil's Aeneid: A Homeric Dichotomy?, David Dysert
Anthós Journal (1990-1996)
This paper investigates the question of why scholars have traditionally labeled Vergil's Aeneid a "Homeric dichotomy." The Aeneid is often seen as a combination of the two great Homeric epics, the Odyssey and the Illiad, and is of criticized for its lack of transitions between the two. This paper argues that while the Aeneid certainly should be seen as a dichotomous work, its allusions stretch further than only to Homer’s epics. The paper traces a number of these allusions and suggests that the Aeneid should be viewed as a synthesis of Homer with other Greek traditions and epics rather than …
Xenophanes' Skepticism, James H. Lesher
Xenophanes' Skepticism, James H. Lesher
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
The character of Xenophanes’ skepticism was the subject of dispute as early as the 4th century BC and the central statement of his position, fragment 34, has been variously interpreted ever since. In this paper I argue that Xenophanes’ remarks about knowledge are best understood in connection with his distinctive, austere conception of the divine (B 23-26) and related rejection of the claims of seers and diviners to gain access to divine matters (A 52). When Xenophanes denies that there ever was or will be anyone who “knows about the gods and such things as I say about all things,” …