Homer, The Odyssey. The sophistication of epic narrative. The Odyssey in education and academia. Homeric violence. Is the west founded on plunder and slaughter? Homeric sex and honor. Homeric psychedelia. The muse sings. A guest appearance from friend-of-the-pod Matt the Straussian. The difference between ancients and moderns: from the best regime to the realistic regime. A democratic Odyssey? Plato vs. Homer. What are the benefits of believing in the gods? Odysseus as philosopher king. Adorno meets Allan Bloom. Achilles/Sparta vs. Odysseus/Athens. Why does Odysseus reject Calypso and choose the human? Odysseus as man of pain and change. Homeric echoes in Dante, Melville, and Tennyson. Homeric gender. Is Homer a misogynist? Homeric race. Is Homer a racist? Homeric translation, male and female. The 20th-century loss of the hero in serious literature. Are Homer and the canon tainted? Representations of the poet’s freedom from ethical responsibility in The Odyssey. Art for art’s sake. Homeric magic. The glory of poetry, beyond left and right: that it means more than it says. The execution of the maids and the epic’s self-critique. Homeric cuisine. The metaphoric and the domestic. Homeric universality. Poets as vessels of the gods.
Note: my essay on The Odyssey.
Ep. 15. Men of Twists and Turns