The Greek Set Book 2012/13: Homer: The Odyssey

Tutor: Dr Maria Fragoulaki

m.fragoulaki@history.bbk.ac.uk, mfragoulaki@gmail.com

A selection of books/units from books 5-12 and 19-20 is taught from the original. The
course aims at a familiarity with, and appreciation of, the poem’s distinctive character:
language and style; its oral features (e.g. the folk-tale element, typical scenes, frequent
types of similes); thematology (nostos ‘homecoming’ being the big theme); geography
(‘far-off’/marvellous lands and near ones/Ithacan society and the world of the (royal)
oikos); ethics and society/-ies; heroic attributes; the gods and their relationship with
humans; the sophistication of the epic narrative; analogies and differences with the Iliad;
intertextual resonances. Classes are interactive, and translation and commentary of the
text (from the linguistic, metrical, historical and socio-cultural perspectives) will occupy
us for the most part of the class, but selective secondary reading will also be discussed in
the sessions.

Translations (two recommended prose ones)

Hammond, M., with intro by J. Griffin (2000, Duckworth, London)
Shewring, W., with intro by G. S. Kirk (1980, Oxford World’s Classics)
[The Loeb edn., containing the original, with A. T. Murray’s (1919) trans. revised by G.
Dimock (repr. with corrections, 1998) is useful to have].

Commentaries - Companions
Garvie, A. F., Homer. Odyssey. Books VI-VIII (Cambridge, 1994).
Rutherford, R. B., Homer. Odyssey. Books XIX-XX (Cambridge, 1992).
Steiner, D. Homer. Odyssey. Books XVII-XVIII (Cambridge, 2010).
Heubeck, A., S. West, J. B. Hainsworth, A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. Vol. I:
introduction and books I-VIII (Oxford, 1988).
Russo, J, M. Fernandez-Galiano and A. Heubeck, A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey.
Vol. III: introduction and books XVII-XXIV (Oxford, 1992).
Stanford, W. B. Homer Odyssey (2 Vols) (Vol. 1: 1959 [2nd ed.], Vol 2: 1958 [2nd ed.]).
Edwards, G. M., The Odyssey of Homer: Books vi and vii; with notes and vocabulary
(Cambridge, 1959).
Jones, P., Homer’s Odyssey. A Companion to the English Translation of Richmond
Lattimore (Bristol, 1988).

Vocabulary, language, metre

LSJ9 d [= Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon] is of course indispensable, especially
until some Homeric vocabulary and mastery of the dialect have been acquired].
Autenrieth, G., Homeric Dictionary, 1984 [1873] is also very good and saves time.
West, M. L., Introduction to Greek Metre (Oxford, 1987) [See also ‘Metre’ in the
Introductions of Rutherford 1992 (his section on ‘Grammar’ is also very helpful) and
Garvie 1994 (above)].
Monro, D. B., Homeric grammar (Bristol, 1998 [Oxford, 1891, 2nd ed.]).

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Bibliography
Some introductory reading
Griffin, J., Homer (Bristol, 1980a) (with short notes on further reading and translations at
the back).
Rutherford, R., Homer. Greece & Rome. New Surveys in the Classics no. 26 (Cambridge,
1996).
Griffin, J., Homer. The Odyssey (Cambridge, 2004, 2nd edn.).
Said, S. ‘Homer’ in OCD4 [= S. Hornblower, A. Spawforth, and E. Eidinow (eds.) Oxford
Classical Dictionary, 4th edn., 2012): completely replaces ed. 3 entry by M. M. Willcock
and has useful up-to-date bibliography.
Griffin, J., Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980b).
Mueller, M., The Iliad (Bristol, 2009, 2nd edn.) (with annotated bibliography at the back).

General
Cohen, B. The Distaff Side. Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey (New York,
1995).
Crotty, K. The Poetics of Supplication (New York, 1994).
Dimock, G. E. The Unity of the Odyssey (Massachusetts, 1989).
Doherty, L. E. Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences and Narrators in the Odyssey (Ann
Arbor, 1995).
Dougherty, C., The Raft of Odysseus. The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’s
Odyssey (Oxford, 2001).
Edwards, A. T., Achilles in the Odyssey (Königstein, 1985).
Fenik, B., Studies in the Odyssey (Wiesbaden, 1974).
Foley, J. M. Homer’s Traditional Art (Pennsylvania, 1999).
Graziosi, B and J. Haubold, Homer: The Resonance of Epic (London, 2005).
Malkin, I., The Returns of Odysseus. Colonization and Ethnicity (Berkeley/London,
1998).
Hartog, F., Memories of Odysseus. Frontier Tales from Ancient Greece. English tr. by J.
Lloyd, with forward by P. Cartledge (Edinburgh, 2001. Original French publ.
1996).
Howie, J. G. The Phaeakians in the Odyssey: Fable and Territorial Claim (Edinburgh,
1989).
Kakridis, J. Th. Homer Revisited (Lund, 1971).
Minchin, E., ‘Rhythm and Regularity in Homeric Composition’, in Mackie (ed.) 2004,
Oral Performance (below).
Minchin, E., Homer and the Resources of Memory: Some Applications of Cognitive
Theory to the Iliad and the Odyssey (Oxford, 2001).
Nagy, G., Homer the Preclassic (California, 2009), (esp. ch. 4).
— Homer the Classic (Harvard, 2009)
— Homeric Responses (Texas, 2003).
— Homeric Questions (Texas, 1996).
Powell, B., Composition by Theme in the Odyssey. Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie
(Meisenheim am Glan, 1977).
Pucci, P., Odysseus Polytropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad (New
York, 1987).
Ready, J., Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad (Cambridge, 2011) [contains
reference to the Odyssey].
Rinon, Y., Homer and the Dual Model of the Tragic (Ann Arbor, 2008).
Saïd, S., Homer and the Odyssey (Oxford, 2011).

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Segal, C., Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey (New York, 1994).
Strauss Clay, J., The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey (Princeton, 1983;
Reprint 1996).
Tsagalis, C., The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics
(Cambridge Mass., 2008).

On Homeric society
Finley, M., The World of Odysseus (London, 1977).
Van Wees, H., Status Warriors (Amsterdam, 1992).
Haubold, J. Homer’s People: epic poetry and social formation (Cambridge, 2000).
• Religion
Burkert, W., Greek Religion (Eng. trans.) (Oxford,1985), pp. 119-25.
Clay, J. S., The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey (Princeton, 1983).
Griffin 1980 (see above), pp. 144-204.
Kearns, E. ‘The Gods in the Homeric Epics’, in Fowler 2004 (see below), pp. 59-73.
Lloyd-Jones, H., (19832 [1971]) The Justice of Zeus. Sather Classical Lectures. London
(esp. 28-54).

On narrative technique
De Jong, I. J. F., A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge, 2001).
Grethlein, J. and A. Rengakos (eds) Narratology and Interpretation (Berlin, 2009)
[containing contributions on Homer and the Odyssey].
Lowe, N. J. The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative (Cambridge,
2000), esp. pp. 129-56.
Richardson, S., The Homeric Narrator (Tennessee, 1990).

On orality
Janko, R., ‘The Homeric poems as oral dictated texts’, Classical Quarterly 48 (1998) 1-
13.
Mackie, C. J., (ed.) Oral Performance and Its Context (Leiden, 2004) (containing: ‘The
Modesty of Homer’ by R. Scodel, and ‘Rhythm and Regularity in Homeric
Composition: Questions in the Odyssey’ by E. Minchin).
Minchin, E., (ed.) Orality, Literacy, and Performance in the Ancient World. Mnemosyne
Suppl. (Leiden, 2012) [chs 1 and 2, on the Odyssey].
Murnaghan, S., Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey (Princeton, 1987).
Ong, W., Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word (London, 1982).

Collective volumes
Doherty, L. E., (ed.) Homer’s Odyssey. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies (Oxford,
2009).
Fowler, R., (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Homer (Cambridge, 2004).
Morris, I. and B. Powell, (eds.) A New Companion to Homer. Mnemosyne Suppl. 163
(Leiden, 1997).
Myrsiades, K (ed.) Approaches to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (New York, 2010).
Roisman, H. M. and J. Roisman, (eds.) Essays on Homeric Epic (Waterville, 2002).
Schein, S. L., (ed.) Selected Interpretative Essays (Princeton, 1996).
Wright, G. M. and P. V. Jones, (eds.) Homer: German Scholarship in Translation
(Oxford, 1997).

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Afterlife
Concise treatments in: Silk, M. The Iliad, 2004, ch. 3; Griffin 2004, ch. 3 (above).
Graziosi, B., Inventing Homer. The Early Reception of Epic (Cambridge, 2002).
— and E. Greenwood, (eds.) Homer in the Twentieth Century: Between World Literature
and the Western Canon (Oxford, 2007).
Hall, E., The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey (Baltimore,
2008).
Hardwick, L. and C. Stray, (eds.) A Companion to Classical Receptions (Oxford, 2008)
[with chs on the Odyssey’s influence].

A useful online resource is that of the Centre for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University
http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=Publications&bdc=12&mn=0

Assessment
• BA degree (final exam + coursework)
Final examination counts for 70% of the course mark. Each of the two 2,500 words
essays counts for 15% of the course mark.
Essay 1 (Autumn term): to be submitted by Mon 10 December 2012, by 6pm.
Essay 2 (Spring term): to be submitted by Mon 18 March 2013, by 6pm.

• MA degree (coursework)
One 5,000-word essay to be submitted by 1 May or 15 June 2013.
Please arrange in time with me to submit a draft to comment on before the deadline.