Download English I Summer Reading the Odyssey by Homer

English I Summer Reading the Odyssey by Homer (trans. Robert Fagles, Penguin Classics) READ the Odyssey. Then answer all questions on a separate piece of paper, and be prepared for a quiz the first week of school. Even though the highlighted questions have been answered for you, you are still responsible for knowing the information. The numbers in parentheses indicate the book and the line where the answer can be found, i.e., 1.71 is book/chapter one, line 71). ** The review article is at
the end of this pdf. A good
Books 1-­4 pre-read
for this book!
1. What is the Greek word that is used to describe Odysseus? [ANSWER: from review article posted—polutropos ] 2. Give two examples of how polutropos could be translated into English. [ANSWER: much-­‐
turned, much-­‐turning, wily, resourceful, complicated, contradictory. Robert Fagles translated it “man of twists and turns,” which carries a rich meaning with it, a man of many talents and interests, richly blessed and oft cursed, good at times, not so good other times.] 3. How does the poem start? [ANSWER: en medias res—in the middle of it all; that’s how the Greeks always do their storytelling.] Why start in the middle of the story? 4. At what time in Odysseus’s adventures abroad are we when the poem starts? (Remember, he will spend twenty years abroad: 10 years fighting at Troy and 10 years wandering.) 5. How are we left feeling about the suitors? Name one of them. 6. Orestus is ______________________’s son. He killed _____________________. [ANSWER: Agamemnon; Orestus killed Aegisthus.] Be sure to check out the fantastic index of characters in the back of the book. 7. The threat that Telemachus tosses at the suitors is… (1.430+) 8. Halitherses read prophesies in nature. What was it? (2.180+) 9. When they arrive in Sandy Pylos, Nestor is sacrificing to _____________________. (3.6) 10. After the sacking of Troy, what divided Agamemnon and Menelaus? (3.150+) 11. What advice is Telemachus given? Who should he be as brave as? (3.223) 12. Athena reveals herself to Nestor by…(3.415). Why is this seen as a good omen for Telemachus? Who do the gods usually favor? 13. What is Menelaus’ theory on bringing in strangers? (4.36) [NOTE: this is rather self-­‐
serving advice from the traveling poet, no?] Summer Reading 2013 – PreAP English I and English I 14. Who recognizes Telemachus first? (4.159) 15. How does Menelaus learn of the fortunes of his Achaean counterparts? (4.430+) 16. After we leave the suitors and Telemachus, what has Homer made sure that he has done with their story? (like the season one finale of a television drama series) Look at the last line of book four: what is the verb of that sentence—a perfect chapter conclusion? (4.950) Books 5-­8 17. What purpose do the first lines of Book 5 serve? [ANSWER: scene change and to invoke the gods.] 18. Hermes is sent again to _____________________to give her a final decision about Odysseus’s fate. What is Zeus’ plan for Odysseus? (5.38+) 19. At this time, Odysseus spend his days… and his nights… (5.93+ and 5.170+) 20. What explanation does Odysseus give for refusing immortality? Does he really give an explanation? (5.242) 21. On the 18th day, _________________ sees Odysseus nearing Phaeacia (5.309)? What is fated to happen once he reaches that island (5.318)? What is Poseidon’s reaction to see this (5.322-­‐
23)? 22. How does Odysseus show his cunning or luck when Ino presents the veil to him? (5.97) 23. Who rescues him from the shore? (5.421) 24. Nausithous’s parents are ____________________________, son of the earthquake god, and____________________________________________, daughter of the King of the Giants. (7.65-­‐66) 25. Who is the de facto head of the Palace of Alcinous? How is she described? (7.62; 7.80) 26. When will Odysseus leave for Ithaca? (7.364) 27. Compare Homer and Demodocus. How does he describe the bard/poet/traveling singer, entertainer? How is this totally self-­‐serving for Homer to describe Demodocus this way? (8.51; 8.546) 28. Despite all his resourcefulness, Odysseus has respect (or claims to have) for his elders and the gods, and did not make the mistake Eurytus made. What did he do? (8.257) Does Oysseus have that respect? Give two examples. 29. His first song retells the story of… (8.300+) 30. The second story: (8.560-­‐584) 31. Nausithous’s warning to Alcinous was… (8.632) Summer Reading 2013 – PreAP English I and English I Books 9-­12 32. What are the two parts of Odysseus’s resume that he gives when he introduces himself to the Assembly? (9.21-­‐22) 33. What does a man hold sweetest, according to Odysseus? What does this explain for us? (9.30) 34. What is the key to Odysseus’s escape from the Cyclops? (9.410; 9.428; 9.480) 35. Who doesn’t Polyphemus fear? (9.309) 36. What was Destiny about the escape from the Cyclops? (9.498+) 37. What was Odysseus’s stupidity (or lack of polutropos)? (9.558) 38. What are the two options Polyphemus gives Poseidon? (9.587) 39. What animal does Circe change the men into and what makes this so horrible? (10.262-­‐
265) 40. What are Eurylochus’s arguments against following Odysseus any longer? (10.478) 41. Name two of Tiresias’s prophecies (11.111+) 42. Choose two people who approach the ________________________ in Hades. What do they tell Odysseus? (11.206; 11.307-­‐10; 11.459-­‐465) 43. Homer and the oral poets receive another validation. What is this one? (11.417) 44. What are Agamemnon’s two warnings? (11.516) 45. Explain the Sirens (12.44+), Scylla (12.94+), Charybdis (12.115+). 46. Whose fault is it that they stop on Thrinacie? (12.319) 47. Who finishes him off? (12.319) Summer Reading 2013 – PreAP English I and English I English
For review (not assigned)
"Heroic Enterprise" December 22, 1996, By Richard Jenkyns (from The New York Times)
a review of THE ODYSSEY By Homer. Translated by Robert Fagles.
Introduction and notes by Bernard Knox. 541 pp. New York: Viking. $35.
Translators are the most generous of people, especially translators of poetry:
they act as go-betweens, bringing us to an acquaintance with literatures other than
our own, knowing all the while that there is so much in the best verse that can never
be carried across from one language to another. In some respects, though, Homer is
easier to translate than many great poets: the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' depend much less on nuances of diction
and the complex overtones of words than (say) Virgil or Aeschylus, and each is carried forward by a strong plot
and a forceful narrative drive. Amazingly, E. V. Rieu's prose version of the ''Odyssey,'' first published in 1946,
was Penguin Books' best-selling paperback until they knocked it from first place by publishing another literary
classic, ''Lady Chatterley's Lover.'' Rieu seems dated today, sometimes bureaucratic (''Amphinomus carried the
day and the meeting adjourned''), often too polite (for ''Cease these outrages'' he has ''I do ask you to refrain
from these outrages'') and generally rather pedestrian, but his success showed that Homer can command a
large modern audience.
A new version of Rieu, revised and much improved by his son, was published in 1991; either this or the
rival prose translation by Walter Shewring in Oxford's World's Classics series is a good one for the reader who
is looking for the closest rendering of Homer's words, though neither is as close as Martin Hammond's Penguin
translation of the ''Iliad,'' which like the Authorized Version of the Bible manages to sound like real language
while remaining extraordinarily near to the original words.
But every prose translation must necessarily misrepresent Homer for the simple reason that Homer is a
poet, and every generation needs verse translators to convey Homer's spirit to a new audience in a way that
even the finest prose can never do. Matthew Arnold's classic essay ''On Translating Homer'' singled out those
qualities that any English version should strive to represent: Homer, he said, is eminently rapid, eminently plain
and direct, both in expression and ideas, and eminently noble. It is very hard to find a way of reproducing all
these characteristics in English. The rapidity is partly a matter of sound: Greek, especially Homeric Greek, has a
very large number of short syllables, and the verse movement in these epics is faster and more flowing than in
those of Virgil, Dante or Milton. But Homer also moves rapidly because, coming out of a tradition of oral,
nonliterate poetry, he composes in larger blocks or units than literate poets. Characters and objects are supplied
with what modern scholarship, not very happily, has called ''formulaic'' adjectives: recurrently ships are ''swift''
and the sea ''wine-dark''; Odysseus' son, Telemachus, is pepnumenos, ''shrewd'' or ''sensible,'' while Odysseus
himself is polumetis, ''wily,'' or polutropos, literally ''much-turning'' or ''much-turned,'' a word that seems to refer
both to his wanderings and to his resourcefulness. Whole lines are formulaic and often repeated; for example,
''As soon as early rosy-fingered dawn appeared.'' Whereas Virgil's density encourages readers to linger over
every word, Homer's familiar formulas impel them quickly forward. One of the translator's challenges is how to
deal with the formula style.
The success of Robert Fagles's new translation can be seen from his opening lines:
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
How good that is. As he explains in a postscript, Mr. Fagles mostly uses a line of five- or six-beat stress,
leaning more toward six beats; occasionally he expands to seven beats or contracts to three (as in the third line
above). These sudden contractions are unlike Homer, but they work. Homer's meter, the dactylic hexameter,
can have as many as 17 syllables in a line, and seldom has fewer than 15; unlike the standard English meters,
Mr. Fagles's lines are long enough to give an idea of Homer's reach, and he has found rhythms that correspond
well to Homer's rapidity. ''Man of twists and turns'' preserves the multiple suggestiveness of polutropos, and it
manages to sound like a special phrase, not quite part of ordinary language, without being self-conscious or
eccentric. The same may be said of the inversion of word order in ''Many cities of men he saw'': it reminds us
that we are reading a heroic poem, composed in a heightened language, but it feels natural and unforced. The
verse idiom of the 20th century does not allow poets to create a grand style, but Mr. Fagles has been
remarkably successful in finding a style that is of our time and yet timeless, dignified and yet animated by the
vigor and energy essential to any good rendering of this poem.
It is interesting to compare the much-admired 1965 translation by Richmond Lattimore:
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven
far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel.
Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of,
many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea,
struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions.
Lattimore is mostly closer to the Greek than Mr. Fagles, but Mr. Fagles has not distorted the text in any
way that matters; though his manner is more ''poetic,'' he is (to return to Arnold's terms) essentially as plain and
direct as Lattimore, and distinctly more noble, so that Lattimore seems a little flat in the comparison. It is
perhaps significant that Lattimore begins ''Tell,'' while Mr. Fagles begins ''Sing''; here, in fact, it is Mr. Fagles who
is the more literal.
We can indeed see Mr. Fagles, polutropos and polumetis himself, searching for English equivalences to
Homer's effects. The ''Iliad'' begins, ''Sing to me, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles son of Peleus''; Greek allows the
poet to put the single word ''wrath'' first. Other translators have supposed this effect to be ruled out by English
word order and the existence of the definite article, but not Mr. Fagles: ''Rage -- Goddess, sing the rage of
Peleus' son Achilles'' is the opening of his 1990 translation. How will he manage with the start of the ''Odyssey,''
where the single word ''man'' is similarly the first word? He cannot do as he did with the ''Iliad''; still, his use of
the epanalepsis, or rhetorical repetition, ''the man . . . the man,'' indicates by repetition what the Greek indicates
by word order.
His way with Homer's formulas is flexible. ''When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once
more'' is allowed to recur, sometimes with minor variants. He is freest with the lines introducing speeches, and
here one may sometimes question his judgment. For example, when Odysseus replies to the princess
Nausicaa's farewell, his words are introduced by a wholly formulaic line: ''Answering her, cunning Odysseus
said. . . .'' Mr. Fagles writes, ''Odysseus rose to the moment deftly, gently.'' That is graceful, indeed touching,
and yet it strikes the wrong note, not because it is a free rendering but because it comments and interprets,
making an assessment of Odysseus' diplomacy and moral quality. An essential trait of Homer is his
transparency, his objectivity: he does not tell us what to think, and a translation is false to his spirit if it
represents him as interposing an authorial judgment.
Still, it would be wrong to cavil much. Let us hear Nausicaa's own words:
Farewell, my friend! And when you are at home,
home in your own land, remember me at times.
Mainly to me you owe the gift of life.
That preserves the clear simplicity, luminous and unsentimental, that makes the scene so poignant. But
Mr. Fagles can be tough as well as gentle: such scenes as Odysseus' shipwreck and his
slaughter of the suitors crackle with fire and excitement. This book is a memorable
achievement, and the long and excellent introduction by Bernard Knox is a further bonus,
scholarly but also relaxed and compellingly readable. Mr. Fagles's translation of the ''Iliad''
was greeted by a chorus of praise when it appeared; his ''Odyssey'' is a worthy successor.
Questions for expansion
a. How does Robert Fagles translate the word "polutropos" different than his successors? How can this be?
b. What makes the Iliad and Odyssey easier to translate than most other poetry?
c.
Why might some prefer Hammond's or Shewring's translations?
d. Conversely, why might we prefer Fagles' translation?
e. Matthew Arnold says that Homer's verse must be "rapid," "plain and direct, both in expression and ideas,"
and "noble." Why is that hard to accomplish in modern English?
f.
How in the few lines that Jenkyns supplies can we see how Fagles achieves this in his translating?
g. What allows Fagles to begin the Iliad with "Rage"? Does this work well?
h.
Finally, what do you think of the translation that Fagles crafted?