Summary of Tuesday's class and Questions for Graziosi, Homer: A Very Short Introduction, Chs.1-4

Read the Introduction and Chapters 1-4 from Graziosi's Homer: A Very Short Introduction for next Tuesday (if we have class--the weather might be just as bad!). But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, even though you shouldn't cross icy bridges! (bad joke) 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: In Chapter 1, Graziosi quotes the famous German philosopher Nietzsche, who claimed, "Homer as the poet of the Iliad and the Odysseyis not a transmitted, historical fact--but rather an aesthetic judgement" (9). What did he mean by this? How can the identity of a poet be an "aesthetic judgement," and what does this say about Homer's myth?

Q2: What makes it so difficult to pinpoint when Homer wrote his epics? What clues do the poems offer and disguise? Is there anything definitive we can say about the identity of Homer's audience?

Q3: Graziosi writes that "the world of the similes often seems more humble than that described in the main narrative--but also technologically more advanced" (25). What does she mean that the similes and metaphors are often more 'advanced' than the world of the poem? And why is this significant?

Q4: In Chapter 4, Graziosi makes the claim that "Within the epics themselves, however, the voice of the narrator can clearly be heard" (34). Where do we hear or see this? And why does she think it's important to distinguish the narrator from the poem itself? 

SUMMARY OF TUESDAY'S CLASS AND IDEAS: 

Morales, Page 45, the role of Sisyphus: if he aberrant or heroic? The voice of a minority or of the people? Whose side does Homer seem to be on, the Greeks or the Trojans? Can a poet take a side? 

THE HERO ETHOS

• Page 46: Glaucus and Diomedes: the ethos of enemies—our parents were friends, therefore we are friends! Hospitality and Honor
• Page 56: Hector's criticism of Paris—not the ideal of honor
• Page 65: Phoenix to Achilles: Even the gods can bend—you can’t be pitiless
• page 68: Phoenix: your honor will be less, not greater, if you come to our aid to late. History will remember your actions. 
• 69: The Honor Code—a man accepts compensation for a murdered son and defrays his retribution. And yet you persist, who only lost a 'slave girl'? 

ACHILLES’ ETHOS/FATE

• Page 61: Do you have to be a god to love your mate?
• Page 60: Achilles’ philosophy: the coward and hero get the same reward, so what’s the use? Existentialism? 
• Page 62: Nothing is worth my life; note how Achilles fears death as the greatest evil, unlike Hector...
• Page 54: Hector: no man can escape his fate (stoic) 
• Page 74: Sarpedon: let’s go forward since no man can escape it
• TROJANS MORE HEROIC? GREEKS THE ENEMIES? Who are the “good guys” here?

WOMEN AT WAR

• Page 50: Helen’s lament, but also “In time to come poets will sing of us”: this echoes one of Sappho's famous fragments, "someone will remember us, I say, even in another time." 
• Page 52: Andromache’s lament—the doom to come & what he knows himself: if he leaves, he will die and she will be sold as a slave
• Page 49: Athena denies the Trojan’s prayers—if their hearts cannot be moved, what use of sacrifice?