Odysseys

English 698, Autumn 2016

Jack Lynch

Course Description

Hours: By appointment

E-mail: Jack.Lynch@rutgers.edu (the best way to reach me).

Course Requirements

• Written Assignments: There will be two argumentative and analytical papers, the first of around eight to ten pages (2,500 words), the second either a new paper of the same length, or an expansion of your first paper to fifteen to twenty pages (3,500 to 5,000 words).
• Presentations: Each student will be particularly responsible for the readings on one day of the semester, producing and distributing a short annotated bibliography of relevant criticism and then beginning class with an oral report of around ten minutes. The report should begin with a very brief discussion of the day's annotated bibliography, giving a quick overview of the major scholarship on the topic. Thereafter, the topic is anything relevant to the day's readings. Reports should not exceed ten minutes and, while you're welcome to speak from notes, by no means should you just read a written text aloud. A bad report will get bogged down in birth dates and long bibliographies; a good report will raise as many fruitful questions as possible and get discussion rolling. Anything that will help — handouts, short readings for the rest of the class — is welcome and encouraged.
• Readings: I've done a good job, if I may say so myself, keeping the readings affordable — all of these can be had at the Rutgers Bookstore, and they're all easily available in cheap secondhand copies:
  • Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fables, Penguin, ISBN: 978-0140268867
  • James Joyce, Ulysses, ed. Walter Gabler, Vintage, ISBN: 978-0394743127
  • Derek Walcott, Omeros, FSG, ISBN: 978-0374523503
  • Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad, Canongate, ISBN: 978-1841957982
  Other materials will be available on-line, either linked from this syllabus (when copyright permits) or through Blackboard.

Schedule of Class Meetings

7 Sept.

Introduction: Class business, &c.

14 Sept.

The Thing Itself: Homer, Odyssey (late eighth century BCE), books 1–8.

21 Sept.

Odyssey, books 9–16.

28 Sept.

Odyssey, books 17–24; selections from various English Odyssey translations; Matthew Arnold, On Translating Homer (1861).

5 Oct.

Roman Odysseys: Virgil, Aeneid (c. 29–19 BCE), books 4 and 6; Ovid, Metamorphoses (first century CE), books 13–14; Heroides 1 (“Penelope to Ulysses”).

12 Oct.

Odysseus without the Odyssey: Selections from:

• Dante, Inferno, canto 26 (translations by Seth Zimmerman and Clive James) (early fourteenth century);
• Geoffrey Chaucer, translation of Boece, book 4, metrum 3 (1378–81?);
• John Lydgate, Troy Book, book 5 (1420);
• Peter Colse, Penelopes Complaint; or, A Mirrour for Wanton Minions (1596);
• Claudio Monteverde, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1639).

19 Oct.

Homeric Problems: Selections from:

• Thomas Blackwell, An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer (1735), sections 1 and 11;
• Robert Wood, Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer (1767);
• Friedrich August Wolf, Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795);
• Samuel Butler, The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897), chapters 1, 5, 6, 7, and 11;
• Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (1960).

26 Oct.

Realms of Gold:

• Charles Lamb, The Adventures of Ulysses (1808);
• John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer” (1816), “To Homer” (1818), and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819);
• Percy Bysshe Shelley, selection from A Defence of Poetry (1821, pub. 1840);
• Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters”; (1832) and “Ulysses” (1833, pub. 1840);
• Ezra Pound, “Canto I” (pub. 1920);
• W. H. Auden, “The Shield of Achilles” (1952).

2 Nov.

Ineluctable Modalities: James Joyce, Ulysses (1922), books 1–6.

9 Nov.

Ulysses, books 7–12.

16 Nov.

Ulysses, books 13–18.

23 Nov.

No Class: Rutgers is on a Friday schedule.

30 Nov.

A Masochistic Odyssey through the Empire: Derek Walcott, Omeros (1990).

7 Dec.

Helped by Women at Every Turn: Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad (2005).

14 Dec.

More Sweetly than Our Rhyme:

• Black-figured krater showing Odysseus blinding Polyphemus (c. 520 BCE);
• The Siren Vase (c. 470 BCE);
• Penelope Weaving (first quarter of the fifteenth century)
• Odysseus's Return to Penelope (c. 1474)
• Annibale Carracci, Mercury Protecting Ulysses from the Charms of Circe (c. 1590)
• Jan Brueghel the Elder, Odysseus and Calypso (1616)
• Pieter Lastman, Odysseus and Nausicaa (1619)
• Angelica Kauffman, Ulysses Conducted by Calypso to the Forest, Cuts the Trees to Build His Ship (1776)
• Angelica Kauffman, Calypso Calling Heaven and Earth to Witness Her Sincere Affection to Ulysses, though She Assents to His Departure (1776)
• Joseph Wright of Derby, Penelope Unravelling Her Web, by Lamp Light (1785)
• John Flaxman, illustrations to The Odyssey (1793);
• William Hamilton, Ulysses Slaying the Suitors of Penelope (1803)
• William Fuseli, Odysseus between Scylla and Charybdis (1806)
• J. M. W. Turner, Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus (1829)
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Penelope (1869)
• Dora Wheeler, “Penelope Unraveling Her Work at Night” (1885);
• John William Waterhouse, Ulysses and the Sirens (1891)
• Arnold Böcklin, Odysseus and Polyphemus (1896)
• John William Waterhouse, Penelope and the Suitors (1912)
• Romare Bearden, A Black Odyssey (1977);
• Coen Brothers, O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000).

Final Paper Due.