Classical Literature and Philology Commons^™

Heroic (Im)Maturity: Domestic Rupture And The Myth Of Telemachus' Coming Of Age, Mary Whitney

College Honors Program

As one of the most enduring narratives discussed in the field of Classics, extensive research has been written about Homer’s Odyssey. The universal and flexible maxims of the desire for homecoming (νόστος) make the events of this epic so compelling. One central aspect of Odysseus’ νόστος is the return of his son Telemachus to a specific role as the obedient prince. This implies that before the resolution of Odysseus’ νόστος, there exists the rupture of the domestic sphere that allows for freedom and chaos, both of which are removed and checked when Odysseus returns to Ithaca. For as long …

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, …

Ἔπος: A Musical Concept Album Adaptation Of Homer’S Iliad, Blaike Cheramie

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis project is a musical concept album adaptation of Homer’s classical epic the Iliad. Inspired by musicals like Hadestown, Les Miserables, and Hamilton as well as movies like O Brother Where Art Thou and musicians like Bob Dylan, this album seeks to enter the genre of Classical Reception Studies. The album consists of seven tracks all referencing moments within the poem, written from the perspective of the characters to inspire empathy within the audience. The content of this thesis includes detailed chord charts and audio demos of each song, as well as analyses of the lyrical, musical, and thematic …

Fan Fiction And The Trojan War: Contemporary Euripidean Perspective On The Treatment Of Enslaved Women In The Silence Of The Girls, A Thousand Ships, And For The Most Beautiful, Richard K. Sheldon

LSU Master's Theses

This study examines three contemporary novels of fan fiction, authored by women, that retell the Trojan War: Emily Hauser’s For the Most Beautiful (2016), Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls (2018), and Nathalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships (2019). This study offers a reading of contemporary Homeric reception by analyzing the conversations that the novels initiate between each other, Homer’s Iliad, and Euripides’ tragedies, Hecuba (424 BCE) and Trojan Women (415 BCE). The study establishes a connection between the three authors and Euripides by treating the novels as works of fan fiction. In so doing, the study identifies …

"The Greek Gods Don't Exactly Show Up For Their Kids' Basketball Games": Adapting Epic Convention Through Family Dramas In Rick Riordan's The Last Olympian, Hannah Mcginnis

Capstone Showcase

Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians saga bridges the gap between ancient myth and modern coming-of-age. In this article, the assertion that The Last Olympian is essentially an epic for the new generation invites an examination of the Homeric-heroic tropes and characteristics which are attributed to Riordan's characters. This analysis explains that through the combined motifs of time, age, and family, Riordan actively adapts and subverts these Classical conventions into a modern mythography for young readers.

Homer’S Thebes: Epic Rivalries And The Appropriation Of Mythical Pasts, Elton T. E. Barker, Joel P. Christensen

Publications and Research

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are the only early Greek heroic epics to have survived the transition to writing, even though extant evidence indicates that they emerged from a thriving oral culture. Among the missing are the songs of Boeotian Thebes.

Homer’s Thebes examines moments in the Iliad and Odyssey where Theban characters and thematic engagements come to the fore. Rather than sifting through these appearances to reconstruct lost poems, Elton Barker and Joel Christensen argue that the Homeric poems borrow heroes from Thebes to address key ideas—about politics, time, and genre—that set out the unique superiority of these texts in …

Emblematic Eating: Reading The Feasts Of The Iliad As Models For Social Order, Erin Welty

Senior Theses

This paper analyzes the Iliad’s feast scenes as sites that amplify the sociopolitical and economic tensions that permeate the wider plot of the epic. Through a literary analysis of the major feasting scenes of the Iliad, I show how the epic’s presentation of the dais collectively displays particular emblematic values of social equity and fair distribution of resources that manifests in the formulaic language that repeats in each feast scene and produces a sense of stable social organization. At the same time, however, I display how the narrative contexts of the feasts and the narrative presentation internal to …

Zero To Hero: Elite Burials And Hero Cults In Early Iron Age Greece And Cyprus, Alina M. Karapandzich

Senior Independent Study Theses

Adulation of heroes, including the flawed, militaristic, authoritative men of Homeric epic, was an important feature of ancient Hellenic culture. This phenomenon is reflected in cults and shrines built in the Archaic period. How did these so-called “hero cults” form, and can Early Iron Age (EIA) elite burials form a connection between the tomb cults of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) and the hero cults of the Archaic and later Classical periods? The purpose of this study is to examine EIA burials whose elite goods and archaeologically visible tombs reflect the burial of a “heroic” person. In doing so, I …

Dignity In Homer And Classical Greece, Patrice Rankine

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

Woven into the distress of Homeric epic, which often laments the terrors of war, the violence of passion, and the desperation of life, are records of ancient customs that hint at a deep respect for culture and human worth. To take but one example, recall Hector's refusal to take wine from his mother when he is bloody from battle. This moment is apt to strike modern readers as trivial. In fact, it reifies important ancient distinctions between war and peace, home and battlefield, and the equally ancient sentiment that to everything, there is a season. In this case, no matter …

Poor, Pitiful Monsters From Homer To Borges, Robin Mcallister

English Faculty Publications

This article reviews famous monsters in Western literature that reveal a hidden humanity or affinity with the hero that elicits compassion or emphasizes their bestiality in surprising ways. Their monstrosity is often a distorted mirror image of the hero’s humanity. Shakespeare’s Caliban is a famous example of the affinity between monster and protagonist. Homer’s Polyphemus, the first monster in Western tradition establishes certain traits that persist through later literature: lawless, barbarian, cannibal, and giant. Polyphemus hates men, but loves his old ram. Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon in Beowulf are giants, lawless, cannibals. The dragon Beowulf dies fighting anticipates …

Insight Into The Community: Bee Similes In The Iliad And The Aeneid, Sara Heist

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

This paper offers a comparative analysis of the bee similes in Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid to demonstrate that there are significant thematic connections between the similes in the two epics. In both works, bee similes illustrate the structure of the ideal society, as a close reading of each simile reveals. This paper demonstrates that both Homeric and Virgilian bee similes focus on the concept of community. In the Iliad, Homer’s first extended simile compares the Greek forces to a colony of bees. This prominent placement foreshadows the significance of bee similes in the Homeric epic. As a Greek poet, …

The Treatment Of Women By Achilles And Agamemnon, Erica M. Cosgrove

Student Research

No abstract provided.

All Shall Fade: Homer's Foreshadowing Of The End Of The Heroic Age In The Iliad, Sabrina Hardy

The Kabod

Homer's epic poems are filled with demi-gods and great heroes. However, in The Iliad, Homer undermines the triumph of these heroes by foreshadowing the end of their age and the forthcoming time of mortals. This essay examines how Achilleus' shield, Nestor's longevity, Paris' effeminate nature, and Odysseus' reliance on craftiness rather than physical prowess all indicate the rapid advance of the age of mortal men.

Review Of Homer In Print: A Catalogue Of The Bibliotheca Homerica Langiana At The University Of Chicago Library, Edited By Glenn W. Most And Alice Schreyer, Fred W. Jenkins

Roesch Library Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Grief In The Iliad, Patrick R. Stickley

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper addresses the causes and effects of grief within Homer's Iliad. In addition, this paper argues that error, both committed and suffered, is the primary cause of grief, and that grief is particularly transformative in regard to Achilles, both in his motivations and his physicality.

Canonical Heroes Redefined For Postmodern Readership, Catey Bayse

Senior Theses

"The 'hero' has figured as an important archetypal construction throughout literary history that has evolved over centuries. Instead of tracing the evolution of the hero chronologically, this essay will present a postmodern reading of the hero in John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Homer’s Iliad by rereading those texts through James Joyce’s Ulysses. Through this retrospective reading, heroic construction comes to mean something different than it does to classicists or Romanticists. In his construction of Leopold Bloom as the everyman, modern hero, Joyce is unconcerned with physical strength, youth, honor, virtue, lineage, or glory. Rather, Joyce constructs Bloom as a hero …

Review Of The Iliad In A Nutshell: Visualizing Epic On The Tabulae Iliacae, By Michael Squire, Fred W. Jenkins

Roesch Library Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

On Nietzsche’S Judgment Of Style And Hume’S Quixotic Taste: On The Science Of Aesthetics And ‘Playing’ The Satyr, Babette Babich

Working Papers

No abstract provided.

The Archaeology And Translation Of Greek Tragedy : Tragedy And The Emotions, Daniel Edward Gremmler

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The history of interpreting Greek tragedy and the emotions is a history of logos. Tragedy, however, is poiēsis and speaks the language of muthos. This project approaches popular interpretations of tragedy and the emotions as problems of translation between various discourses: between Greek and English, past and present, historical and transhistorical, logos and muthos. After identifying the ways in which logos clashes with logos from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel and modern classicists, we suggest a new framework through which the emotional effect of tragedy, the tragic pleasure, can be understood: the thaumon and the deinon (wondrous and terrible).

Frazier Polymetis: Cold Mountain And The Odyssey, Emily A. Mcdermott

Classics & Religious Studies Faculty Publication Series

Ever since its appearance in 1997, Charles Frazier’s novel, Cold Mountain, has been billed as a latter-day Odyssey. Separate unattributed book notes on the world wide web speak of its protagonist’s “dangerous odyssey” and his “odyssey through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South.” One reviewer styles the novel "a Confederate deserter's homeward odyssey"; another characterizes it as having “reset much of the 'Odyssey' in 19th-century America.” While such assertion of parallelism between the novel and Homer’s epic is widespread, it also tends to remain general and relatively unadorned. It evidently rests on such typically odyssean plot elements …

Every Man's An Odysseus: An Analysis Of The Nostos-Theme In Corelli's Mandolin, Emily A. Mcdermott

Classics & Religious Studies Faculty Publication Series

In the sparkling first chapter of Louis de Bernieres's Corelli's Mandolin, the world of Homer's Odysseus is explicitly invoked. This is hardly surprising in a historical novel which will detail the Italian occupation of the Greek island of Cephallonia, near neighbor of Odysseus's Ithaca, during World War II. What is less immediately apparent is that the novel contains a further pattern of inexplicit allusion to the Odyssey, along with a pervasive theme of nostos. Emphasis on "homecoming" helps create the novel's ardent encomium to the Greek homeland that inspires such fierce love of place in its people …

On The Idea Of Reflexive Rhetoric In Homer, Mari Lee Mifsud Jr.

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

When Henry Johnstone and I translated this passage, we wondered to what extent we could say that Odysseus persuades himself to endure. Is Odysseus involved in self-persuasion, what Johnstone has termed reflexive rhetoric, when he deliberates? Answering this question led us to explore related questions such as, does Odysseus have a "self" to which his deliberation/persuasion can be addressed? If so, how do we know that Odysseus actually persuades himself when he deliberates? If Odysseus does persuade himself, can we say he practices rhetoric on himself? Can we even talk of rhetoric in Homer? Through this essay, I wish …

Whip, Whipped, And Doctors: Homer's Illiad And Camus' The Plague, Paula Saffire

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Albert Camus in The Plague gives a pressing, pitilessly clear description of plague conditions:' We are all locked in a city. The gates are closed. The plague rages inside. The only question is, who will die first? This is the situation in Camus' town of Oran; it is also the situation of the Trojans in Homer's Illiad. And finally, it is the situation of human life.'

Review Of Mandelbaum's Odyssey Of Homer, Paula Saffire

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

Two Papyrus Fragments Of The Odyssey, James G. Keenan

Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The two papyri edited below are housed in the Rare Books Department of the Bancroft Library on the University of California's Berkeley campus. Of Roman date, they were summarily described on page 303 of The Tebtunis Papyri Vol. II and have listings in Roger A. Pack's Greek and Latin Literary Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt. The collations which follow are based upon P. von der Muihll's edition (Basel 1946). For fragment no. 1, pertinent excerpts from the apparatus criticus of that edition are reproduced.