[Iliad2] See you Tonight for first session of Iliad

[Kim Llewellyn]

Thank you, Bill, for your moderating tonight. You kept everything on  
track and contributions flowed easily. It was a great discussion!   
Looking forward to our future meetings.
--Kim
On Jan 9, 2012, at 3:58 PM, Swislow, Bill wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I look forward to seeing you tonight at 8 p.m. ET for our first  
> Reading Odyssey session of Iliad.
> +1 (888) 298-1699
> 3470834#
>
> As a reminder, we are discussing Books 1 - 8 in the Stanley  
> Lombardo edition of Iliad.
>
> Below are the overall questions. Reminder that it's not homework.  
> You don't have to prepare anything and there are no grades here.
>
> Bring your questions, confusion, reactions, frustration, passion -  
> we'll use all of it to create our conversation.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bill
>
> ----------
> 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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