{"id":45,"date":"2012-08-25T14:22:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T14:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/knownworld\/?p=45"},"modified":"2012-08-26T00:07:42","modified_gmt":"2012-08-26T00:07:42","slug":"sample-blog-post-for-the-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/2012\/08\/25\/sample-blog-post-for-the-odyssey\/","title":{"rendered":"Sample Blog Post for the Odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"

We ran out of time to finish our discussion of the role that physical space plays in the\u00a0Odyssey<\/em>, and so I would like to use my first blog post to talk a little bit about the ways in which I think this poem turns a collection of unconnected places into a coherent world.<\/p>\n

Leaving aside minor variations in scenery, the first four books of the Odyssey<\/em> take place in three different locations: the palaces of Odysseus, Nestor and Menelaos, located on Ithaca, at Pylos and at Sparta (we skipped the part about Nestor, but I\u2019ll briefly talk about it anyway).\u00a0 The first thing I find remarkable about this is that even though the journey from Ithaca to Sparta would have been an exceedingly dangerous and difficult one for the ancient Greeks, Homer literally spends less than a handful of lines to cover it (I count one line at the end of Book II and two lines at the beginning of Book IV).\u00a0 Traveling is clearly not a big focus of the Odyssey<\/em>, or at least not of the parts that we have read so far.\u00a0 Where you arrive is what matters.\u00a0 This seems strange to me, given that most of us are likely to think about this poem as principally a travel narrative.\u00a0 And it makes me wonder about other similar narratives from world literature.\u00a0 The story of Sindbad the Sailor, for instance, or the tale of the Argonauts.\u00a0 Do ships matter much there?<\/p>\n

At any rate, we have three palaces, all very different and yet strangely similar.\u00a0 What\u2019s similar about them is that life seems to be one big party.\u00a0 At Odysseus\u2019 place, the suitors are constantly drinking and eating.\u00a0 At Nestor\u2019s, \u201cblack bulls were being offered by the people to the blue-maned god who makes the islands tremble\u201d (III, 7-9) and Telemakhos is immediately invited to share in the sacrificial meat.\u00a0 (The blue-maned god is Poseidon, of course, and Athena has a great deal of fun gate-crashing a feast in her rival\u2019s honor).\u00a0 Menelaos, finally, is celebrating the wedding of his son Megapenthes, complete with minstrels and acrobats.\u00a0 (\u201cMegapenthes,\u201d by the way, means \u201cgreat sorrow,\u201d \u00a0and I\u2019m guessing the poor kid got beat up on the playground a lot).\u00a0 Clearly, all these feasts are partly an expression of longing for \u201cthe good old days,\u201d but they also alert us to the fact that hospitality is a central theme of these early books of the Odyssey<\/em>.\u00a0 The reasons the suitors can get away with their constant carousing, for instance, is that they are guests, and guest are to be shown a good time.\u00a0 This, in turn, tells us something about the relationship between Achaian households and the wider world.\u00a0 Strangers are to be treated with honor and should, as Telemakhos soon experiences with both Nestor and Menelaos, be asked to report their stories.\u00a0 These palaces, in other words, invite the world inwards, even if certain rituals are expected to be followed.<\/p>\n

There are important differences between these various courts as well, however, and I hope you will have fun exploring them in the comments section.\u00a0 One thing should be immediately obvious: compared to Menelaos\u2019 urbane manor at Sparta, Odysseus\u2019 homestead is kind of a hovel (it is, after all, located on a rocky island at the fringes of the Greek world).\u00a0 When Telemakhos steps in to the palace, he exclaims: \u201cMy dear friend, can you believe your eyes? \u2013 the murmuring hall, how luminous it is with bronze, gold, amber, silver and ivory!\u00a0 This is the way the court of Zeus must be, inside, upon Olympos.\u00a0 What a wonder!\u201d (IV, 77-80).\u00a0 This is spoken like a true country bumpkin, and after all, his daddy keeps the ancient equivalent of a gun rack (a \u201cpolished rack (\u2026) where tough spear on spear of the old soldier, his father, stood in order\u201d [I, 158-59]) right in his living room.\u00a0 Fortunately, Menelaos is a gracious host and, overhearing Telemakhos wonderment, immediately downplays his own riches.<\/p>\n

Given such opulence abroad (opulence which, one assumes, Kalypso can easily match), the big question for me going into Books V and VI then becomes why Odysseus is so desperate to go home at all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We ran out of time to finish our discussion of the role that physical space plays in the\u00a0Odyssey, and so I would like to use my first blog post to talk a little bit about the ways in which I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-odyssey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}