Writer's Block: Bookmarks

[hermione_vader]

The Odyssey by Homer.  Technically, I had to read excerpts of this for a class, but I decided to read the whole thing instead because I hadn't gotten the chance before.  It's just a really good story with lots of undertones and subtext about various things in all of the books/episodes (chapters), and I genuinely loved it.  Sadly, I think I was the

Comments

[random00]

The Odyssey is one of my favourite epics. I certainly enjoy it more so than the Iliad, which is why I'm always sad that every year at least one of my profs wants me to read the latter and not the former. :(

Seriously. I know I'm a classics major, but enough already with the Iliad

[hermione_vader]

Awesome! *high fives* I haven't read The Iliad, but I've heard it mostly involves Achilles brooding brooding brooding. You have to read that every year? I can't understand why professors would choose a text where so little happens instead of one with a ton of adventures. The "nothing really happens" books should be saved for modern lit classes (and they often are).

[random00]

It really, really does. He and Agamemnon get into a fight, he flounces off and whines to his mother, then he spends the rest of the epic brooding. He only comes back to kill my bb Hector, so I have no sympathy for him, haha.

To be honest I'm really not sure why the Iliad is the go-to epic for Classics profs, but I figure it has to do with the fact that the few books where stuff actually does happen, are chock full of meaning. That and it highlights the methods of warfare used in Bronze Age/pre-Archaic Greece.

Even so, enough already, people.

[hermione_vader]

Ugh, Achilles, do you really have to do that to poor Hector? I really only know Hector through novel adaptations and Troy, but he's just so awesome. Meh.

While it's probably cool to lecture about ancient warfare, The Odyssey gets more into the Bronze Age values, like xenia (ideal guest/host relationship) and kleos (achieving fame in song/poetry) and stuff. My professor totally had a field day with that, and it was really interesting.

I get what you mean---I'm an English major, and I've had to read some of the same novels and short stories multiple times for classes. Like The Scarlet Letter. I'd take Achilles' brooding over Arthur Dimmesdale's any day.