Good Afternoon!

1. Good Afternoon! • Please: • take your seat • take out a pen and your notebook • be ready to write when the music ends.

2. QuickWrite • What does the term “epic hero” mean to you (“epic hero” not “epic fail”ure)? Tell me what you can about an epic hero from any literary genre you are familiar with (movies, books, songs, poetry, television).

3. For Today: • QuickWrite • Collect Literary Analysis Papers • Return R&J exams • Library • Anticipating The Odyssey • The Epic Epic • Who was Homer?

4. Collecting of the Papers • Please stack your papers by table • Remember to include • Rough Draft • Peer Edit Half-Sheet • Final Draft • These need not be stapled, but have them close by. • Any questions or concerns about how Thursday’s class or peer/self editing went?

5. R&J Exam Score Adjustment • If you missed questions: • 6 • 10 • 14 • 25 • 39 • 46 • Pleas circle the red letter answer printed next to it. • Add up the number of red letters circled and write +X near your name on the side.

6. To the Library! • Please bring your copies of Romeo and Juliet!

7. Ancient Greece Exploration • http://carlos.emory.edu/ODYSSEY/GREECE/welcome.html • Gods/Goddesses, Geography, Victory and Warfare, Epic

8. The Epic Epic • Epic. An extended narrative poem recounting actions, travels, adventures, and heroic episodes and written in a high style (with ennobled diction, for example). It may be written in hexameter verse, especially dactylic hexameter (six dactyls [one stressed, two unstressed]), and it may have twelve books or twenty four books.

9. Side Note on Dactylic Hexameter • The first line of Homer’s Iliad—“Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles”—provides an example… in Greek: • μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος • Dividing the line into metrical units: • μῆνιν ἄ | ειδε, θε | ά, Πη | ληϊά | δεω Ἀχι | λῆος • Dactyl (-- u u), dactyl, spondee (-- --), dactyl, dactyl, trochee (-- u).

10. The Epic Epic • Characteristics of the classical epic include these: • The main character or protagonist is heroically larger than life, often the source and subject of legend or a national hero • The deeds of the hero are presented without favoritism, revealing his failings as well as his virtues • The action, often in battle, reveals the more-than-human strength of the heroes as they engage in acts of heroism and courage • The setting covers several nations, the whole world, or even the universe • The episodes, even though they may be fictional, provide an explanation for some of the circumstances or events in the history of a nation or people • The gods and lesser divinities play an active role in the outcome of actions • All of the various adventures form an organic whole, where each event relates in some way to the central theme

11. The Epic Epic • Typical in epics is a set of conventions (or epic machinery). Among them are these: • Poem begins with a statement of the theme ("Arms and the man I sing") • Invocation to the muse or other deity ("Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles") • Story begins in medias res (in the middle of things) • Catalogs (of participants on each side, ships, sacrifices) • Histories and descriptions of significant items (who made a sword or shield, how it was decorated, who owned it from generation to generation)

12. The Epic Epic • More epic machinery: • Epic simile (a long simile where the image becomes an object of art in its own right as well as serving to clarify the subject). • Frequent use of epithets ("Aeneas the true"; "rosy-fingered Dawn"; "tall-masted ship") • Use of patronymics (calling son by father's name): "Anchises' son" • Long, formal speeches by important characters • Journey to the underworld • Use of the number three (attempts are made three times, etc.) • Previous episodes in the story are later recounted

13. The Epic Epic • Homer, Iliad • Homer, Odyssey • Virgil, Aeneid • Milton, Paradise Lost • Modern examples????

14. About the Author • In the Western classical tradition Homer is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics are at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature. When he lived is controversial. Herodotus estimates that Homer lived 400 years before Herodotus' own time, which would place him at around 850 BC;while other ancient sources claim that he lived much nearer to the supposed time of the Trojan War, in the early 12th Century BC.

15. The Homeric Question • The main subtopics of the Homeric Question are: • "Who is Homer?" • "Are the epics of multiple or single authorship?" • "By whom, when, where, and under what circumstances were the poems composed?” • To these questions the possibilities of modern textual criticism and archaeological answers have added a few more: • "How reliable is the tradition embodied in the Homeric poems?" • "How old are the oldest elements in Homeric poetry which can be dated with certainty?"

16. For Next Time: • Please read Books 1 and 2 of The Odyssey • whauser84@gmail.com