Classical Literature and Philology Commons^™

Myth Rewrites: Do We Need A Reboot?, Livia M. Nocito

Interdivisional Studies Honors Papers

As myth rewrites have permeated popular culture in recent years, the alterations made to their narratives have shifted the original meanings of the ancient texts. They have sought to provide a modernized retelling for readers of a new age to enjoy while simultaneously attempting to hold a mirror to a society that has remained patriarchal and redeems the narrative. By analyzing the three iterations of Medusa’s origins, as well as The Odyssey and it’s newest musical adaptation, “EPIC: The Musical,” myth rewrites are proven to not only be beneficial to introducing new audiences to ancient mythology, but also finds its …

Cultural And Personal Inheritance: Generational Trauma In Madeline Miller's Circe, Emily Stucky

The Cardinal Edge

Madeline Miller’s Circe, Miller considers varying perspectives on a well-known character—one who has been vilified as a monster, recast as a feminist icon, and rewritten into a variety of spaces in between. As part of this continuous narrative, Miller draws on the inherently hybrid space of Circe’s character to construct her as a product of her multi-faceted lineage. A character with so many identities makes for a complicated subject, but Miller utilizes this plurality to her advantage, deliberately casting Circe as a product of multiple backgrounds—occupying both the space of oppressor and oppressed—to both compound her status as a …

Penelope: Our Cunning Hero, Rossana Leal

CMC Senior Theses

In the literary world, Homer’s Odyssey has served as a fundamental text in the Western canon. It was influential to great writers such as Virgil and Dante, along with being a significant influence in Ancient Greek religion. The subject of both mystery and celebration, Homer remains one of the most prominent authors in literary history. His work has received several interpretations over the years. This thesis takes a feminist and modern approach to the epic poem, focusing on Penelope as the protagonist of the epic and argues for her status as not just an equal partner for her husband, but …

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 …

Introducing Odysseus: Force, Resistance And Nostos In The Formation Of Odysseus’ Character, Haley Ryan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the ways in which Odysseus’ self-introductions to other characters in the Odyssey reveal the complexities of his character with regard to homecoming and his apparent resistance to it. In examining these introductions, the thesis argues that Odysseus that the language Odysseus uses when he introduces himself is often filled with allusions to force and resistance, indicating that he is perhaps more ambivalent about completing his journey home than would be expected of him. The manifestations of this ambivalence in his behavior upon arriving at Ithaka is also explored in the final chapters.

The Fabric Of Gifts: Culture And Politics Of Giving And Exchange In Archaic Greece, Beate Wagner-Hasel

Zea E-Books Collection

When the Greek leader Agamemnon took for himself the woman awarded to Achilles as his spoils of battle, the warrior’s resulting anger and outrage nearly cost his side the war. Beyond the woman herself was what she symbolised — a matter of esteem rather than material value. In Archaic Greece the practices of gift giving existed alongside an economy of market relations. The value of gifts and the meanings of exchange in ancient societies are fundamental to the debates of 19th-century economists, to Marcel Mauss’s famous Essai sur le don (1923-4), and to the definition of experiential value by modern …

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 …

Penelope’S Daughters, Barbara Dell`Abate-Çelebi

Zea E-Books Collection

A feminist perspective of the myth of Penelope in Annie Leclerc’s Toi, Pénélope, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and Silvana La Spina’s Penelope.

At the origin of Western literature stands Queen Penelope—faithfully waiting for her husband to come home: keeping house, holding on to the throne, keeping the suitors at arm’s length, preserving Odysseus’ place and memory, deserted for the pursuit of war and adventures, and bringing up a son alone, but always keeping the marriage intact. Yet recently the character of Penelope, long the archetype of abandoned, faithful, submissive, passive wife, has been reinterpreted by feminist criticism and re-envisioned by …

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

Student Research

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Case For The Defense, Scott Richardson

Classics Faculty Publications

John Vlahos's bold and confident assertion that Penelope recognizes Odysseus well before book 23 will be controversial among readers who follow the party line established by the literal-minded Eustathius. Once we accept the likelihood, however, provided by evidence quite clear once it is pointed out, that the narrator is not as blatant and upfront as we generally assume, Vlahos's case becomes quite plausible. In fact, the traditional view that Penelope is clueless until she performs the bed-trick starts to sound rather naïve and does not do justice to Homer's talent for indirection and subtlety. The argument for early recognition makes …

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 …

The Getty Homer Fragment, Marianina Demetri Olcott

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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.