[Iliad1] Monday is our first session of Iliad discussion

[Andre Stipanovic]

Hey everyone,

I look forward to discussing the Iliad with you this Monday night, January
9, 2012 at 8pm ET!
+1 (888) 298-1699
Conference Code:  8473566#

As a reminder, we are discussing Books 1 - 8 in the Stanley Lombardo
edition of Iliad.

Below are the overall questions - take a quick look at those. But it's not
homework. You don't have to prepare anything.  There are no grades here.
It's all about learning and connecting with each other and these great
classics. 

Bring your questions, confusion, reactions, frustration, passion - we'll
use all of it to create our conversation. 

Thanks,

Andre

---------- 
General questions
---------- 
Every reader should read through these first three questions.

1. Oral poetry
Homer’s poems come out of an oral tradition that was hundreds of years
old before it was written down. Homer himself, if he really existed, may
have lived on the cusp of the era of literacy, perhaps in the first
generation of poets who had the means to write down, and reshape with
writing, these oral songs.
Consider these questions:
- What was surprising to you about the language and style of Homer? Was
there anything that was initially difficult that became enjoyable?
- Jot down one or two examples of your favorite passages or phrases.
- How do you think oral poetry, or oral culture, may be different from
written?
- Modern readers also live at the cusp of a new media era, the dawn of the
digital age. How do you think the means of transmission (the "media")
affect styles of literature? 

2. The gods
To read Homer for a modern reader is to grapple with the gods. 
Consider these questions:
- Are the gods merely puppet masters or is something else going on?
- The first scene on Olympus (pp. 16-19) gives an early opportunity to
understand the gods and their role in the poem. What's going on here? What
do we learn?
- What does the appearance of lame Hephaestus (p. 19) show us about the
world of the immortals, where injuries and torments end up as jokes in the
course of centuries, and that of humans, which is bounded by death?

3. Achilles and the heart of the Iliad
Homer jumps right in with the stunningly forceful depiction of the angry
Achilles: those first few lines of Iliad are gripping. Readers may be
tempted to see Achilles as spoiled or whiny, or to regard his fight with
Agamemnon as a jealous scrap over a girl.
Consider these questions:
- Did it annoy you that the great poem seemed to be driven by something so
banal or, depending on your perspective, such a tired (and "sexist")
cliché as men fighting over a woman? (Note: we write this with some irony
knowing that the whole Trojan was, of course, a fight over a woman)
- As you read through the first books did you find yourself grappling with
whether there is something deeper going on? Or something more relevant?
What did you decide? 
- And did the answer to that question inform the other question that most
every reader has: why has this poem lasted so long?


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