![]() Homer’s name can be translated from a word that means blind, but the vivid imagery of the Iliad and the Odyssey suggest that the author of the poems must have had sight at some point in his life. The language of the Iliad and the Odyssey suggest that Homer came from the western coast of the modern nation of Turkey. As with the Odyssey, the poem is divided into 24 books and. ![]() It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. Modern scholars believe the Iliad and the Odyssey are based on oral legends, but the epics are often attributed to a storyteller named Homer. The Iliad ( / lid / 1 Ancient Greek:, romanized : Ilis, Attic Greek : i.li.s 'a poem about Ilium') is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. As the Trojans slept, Greek soldiers emerged from their hiding place inside the wooden horse, opened the city gates, and began to burn the sleeping city. After a great victory celebration of their defeat of the Greek army, the people of Troy slept for the night. The joyous Trojans opened the city gates and pulled in the giant statue. ![]() The Greek navy pretended to sail away, but they only sailed out to a hidden location. The Greeks left a huge wooden horse as a peace offering to the Trojans. The war began after a Trojan prince named Paris kidnapped Helen.Īccording to the Odyssey, the Trojan War ended when the Greeks pretended to give up their quest for Helen. The Trojan War was fought over Helen, who according to legend was the beautiful daughter of Zeus and the wife of the king of the Greek polis of Sparta. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.The two oldest surviving examples of Greek literature are the Iliadand the Odyssey, epic poems that describe the Trojan War, a conflict between the Greeks and the city of Troy that the epics say was fought almost 1200 years before the Common Era. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Kidnap Helen of Troy and you’ve got a 10 year slap-fight of epic proportions with pouty Achilles, war-hungry. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. And don’t forget the two greatest stories ever told, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Our reviewer, Alan Cheuse, teaches writing at George Mason University.Ĭopyright © 2010 NPR. NORRIS: The novels are "Ransom" by David Malouf and "The Lost Books of the Odyssey" by Zachery Mason. It's an absolute tribute and an absolute delight. This encounter, as is all of this inventive novel, is Homer filtered through Borges and many other modernists. In one of these chapters, he finds himself alone on an island in the middle of winter, in a cabin where sits a book, which happens to be the story of Odysseus, as Mason tells it, soldier and diplomat, a man of versatile intelligence who connived to destroy a sacred city in the east and made the long trip home over many trying years. Out our hero goes from Mediterranean island to island, and again and again, he arrives home in Ithaca, sometimes finding chaos, sometimes finding all is lost. ![]() In his own intense and slightly formal fashion, David Malouf delivers his own cartload of treasure from this ancient material, and in exchange, we get a deep and stately rendering of a magnificent poetic sequence.įirst-time novelist Zachery Mason employs a lighter touch in "The Lost Books of The Odyssey" with its multiple variations on the adventures of Odysseus and his fabled homecoming. Priam and his mule driver haul a cartload of Troy's gold, treasures he wants to exchange for the corpse of Hector. Priam, king of Troy, crosses the battle line in disguise to plead with Achilles for the body of his slain son Hector. In "Ransom," the Australian novelist David Malouf focuses on one of the great sequences in Homer and a lot of people would say in all Western literature one of the so-called embassy episodes of "The Iliad." The Iliad and the Odyssey owe their unique status precisely to the creative and therefore unanalyzable confluence of tradition and design, the crystalline fixity of a formulaic style and the mobile spontaneity of a brilliant personal vision. You can add to that list two new books now.ĪLAN CHEUSE: These two new works of fiction should be catnip to anyone who loves great literature and all of its spin-offs and variations and byplays and descendants. Homer's epic poems, "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey," have already been repurposed countless times. Why mess with the classics? There's no shortage of books, good and bad, that were inspired by great books. This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |