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The "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" are the two major Greek poems attributed to Homer. While the "Iliad" focuses on the Trojan War, the "Odyssey" tells the story of Odysseus’ journey home after the war.
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April is National Poetry Month.
This presenter presented about the "Iliad" last year - Sing, Goddess: An Introduction to Homer’s "Iliad" - Somerset County Library System of New Jersey (libnet.info)
This year she has returned to tell us about the sequel to the "Iliad".
Homer’s "Odyssey" tells the tale of cunning, wily, unlucky Odysseus as he makes his way from Troy back to his homeland of Ithaca, encountering disaster, misfortune, and unfamiliar lands along the way. The Trojan War is over. Troy has fallen, and it is time for the Greek commanders to do what they have long yearned for: go home. Homer’s "Odyssey" tells the tale of cunning, wily, unlucky Odysseus as he makes his way from Troy back to his homeland of Ithaca, encountering disaster, misfortune, and unfamiliar lands along the way. It also tells the story of his clever and faithful wife, Penelope, who has been waiting for twenty years, now, for her husband to return while a band of suitors after her hand in marriage eat her out of house and home. Meanwhile Telemachus, the son that Odysseus left behind as an infant, has grown into a young man and embarks on a journey in search of news of his long-absent father. Over the course of twenty-four books a map of the mythic Mediterranean unfolds as Odysseus and Telemachus meet faces both familiar and not while a picture of the lives and loved ones the Greek warriors left behind all those years ago becomes clear. This talk will be an introduction to the world of Homer’s "Odyssey", briefly covering such topics as the history of text and Homer, the terrain and people of Odysseus’ Mediterranean and Greece, and major themes such as colonization, hospitality, and homecoming.
Presenter: Gabrielle Roehr is a doctoral candidate in Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her B.A. (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) with high honors in Classics and a minor in Art History from New York University in May of 2020. Her senior thesis, titled “The Archaic Present: Nostalgia and Ideology in the Age of Augustus,” examined the intersection of art and politics and the creation and maintenance of ideology in Augustan Rome, with special attention paid to Vergil’s Aeneid, Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, the Forum Augustum, and the Monumentum Ancyranum. She began the PhD program in Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in September of the same year. Her research interests include narrative and storytelling in Greek and Latin poetry, the relationship between weaving and poetry, and contemporary reception of ancient myth. Her in-progress dissertation (working title: “A Thousand Stories: Helen and the Tension in the Narrative Landscape”) examines Helen of Troy as narrator and object of narrative in Homer, Attic tragedy, and Latin poetry as well as in twentieth and twenty-first century anglophone adaptations of the Helen myth.
At the conclusion of the program please feel free to take a brief online survey here: https://www.projectoutcome.org/responses/74898
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AGE GROUP: | Adult |
EVENT TYPE: | Virtual | History | Arts & Culture |
TAGS: | nationalpoetrymonth | #NationalPoetryMonth |
