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128-503: The nearly identical line, listing the same four abstractions (without capitalizations, and with different case endings), in the same order, occurs in Homer's Odyssey , where Odysseus describes the decorations on Heracles' golden belt: Like all of the children of Eris given by Hesiod, the Phonoi are a personified abstraction, allegorizing the meaning of their name, and representing one of

256-683: A canon ensured a book's preservation as the best way to retain information about a civilization. In contemporary use, the Western canon defines the best of Western culture . In the ancient world, at the Alexandrian Library , scholars coined the Greek term Hoi enkrithentes ["the admitted", "the included"] to identify the writers in the canon. Although the term is often associated with the Western canon, it can be applied to works of literature, music and art, etc. from all traditions, such as

384-666: A clay cup found in Ischia , Italy, are the words "Nestor's cup, good to drink from." Some scholars, such as Calvert Watkins , have tied this cup to a description of King Nestor's golden cup in the Iliad. If the cup is an allusion to the Iliad , that poem's composition can be dated to at least 700–750 BC. Dating is similarly complicated by the fact that the Homeric poems, or sections of them, were performed regularly by rhapsodes for several hundred years. The Odyssey as it exists today

512-615: A canon of literature is the question of authority; who should have the power to determine what works are worth reading? Charles Altieri , of the University of California, Berkeley , states that canons are "an institutional form for exposing people to a range of idealized attitudes." It is according to this notion that work may be removed from the canon over time to reflect the contextual relevance and thoughts of society. American historian Todd M. Compton argues that canons are always communal in nature; that there are limited canons for, say

640-537: A commonplace writer"). Such classification were initiated with the Greeks' ranking their cultural works, with the word canon (ancient Greek κανών, kanṓn: "measuring rod, standard"). Similarly, early Christian Church Fathers declared as canon the authoritative texts of the New Testament , preserving them given the expense of vellum and papyrus and mechanical book reproduction. Thus, being included in

768-477: A critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked. One of the main objections to

896-485: A fig tree. Washed ashore on Ogygia , he remained there as Calypso's lover. Having listened to his story, the Phaeacians agree to provide Odysseus with more treasure than he would have received from the spoils of Troy. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbour on Ithaca. Odysseus awakens and believes that he has been dropped on a distant land before Athena appears to him and reveals that he

1024-455: A general reevaluation of women's historical and academic contributions in response to the belief that women's lives and contributions have been underrepresented as areas of scholarly interest. However, in Britain and America at least women achieved major literary success from the late eighteenth century, and many major nineteenth-century British novelists were women, including Jane Austen ,

1152-523: A hostile view was expressed that emphasis on their importance had been an attempt by Eliot and his followers to impose a 'high Anglican and royalist literary history' on 17th-century English poetry. The American critic Yvor Winters suggested in 1939 an alternative canon of Elizabethan poetry , which would exclude the famous representatives of the Petrarchan school of poetry, represented by Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser . Winters claimed that

1280-513: A leading role. Unable to hide his emotion as he relives this episode, Odysseus at last reveals his identity. He then tells the story of his return from Troy. Odysseus recounts his story to the Phaeacians. After a failed raid against the Cicones , Odysseus and his twelve ships were driven off course by storms. Odysseus visited the lotus-eaters who gave his men their fruit which caused them to forget their homecoming. Odysseus had to drag them back to

1408-501: A line from Aeschylus' tragedy Libation-Bearers : "may the ancient murder [phonos] breed no more in the house." In the Posthomerica of Quintus Smyrnaeus , "dreadful" Phonos (along with Kydoimos) "stalked" the battle field. Odyssey The Odyssey ( / ˈ ɒ d ɪ s i / ; Ancient Greek : Ὀδύσσεια , romanized :  Odýsseia ) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer . It

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1536-584: A literary style labeled as magic realism , which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo (the town mainly inspired by his birthplace Aracataca ), and most of them explore the theme of solitude . On his death in April 2014, Juan Manuel Santos , the President of Colombia, described him as "the greatest Colombian who ever lived." Mario Vargas Llosa , (b. 1936)

1664-408: A literature survey class, or an English department reading list, but there is no such thing as one absolute canon of literature. Instead, there are many conflicting canons. He regards Bloom's "Western Canon" as a personal canon only. The process of defining the boundaries of the canon is endless. The philosopher John Searle has said, "In my experience there never was, in fact, a fixed 'canon'; there

1792-501: A narrow interpretation of the West, dominated by British and American culture, at least under contemporary circumstances, prompting demands for a more diversified canon amongst the hemisphere. A classic is a book, or any other work of art, accepted as being exemplary or noteworthy. In the second-century Roman miscellany Attic Nights , Aulus Gellius refers to writers as "classicus... scriptor, non proletarius" ("A distinguished, not

1920-579: A particular version of the text had become canonised. The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely copied and used as school texts in lands where the Greek language was spoken throughout antiquity. Scholars may have begun to write commentaries on the poems as early as the time of Aristotle in the 4th century BC. In the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, scholars affiliated with the Library of Alexandria —particularly Zenodotus and Aristarchus of Samothrace —edited

2048-478: A plan to ambush his ship and kill him as he sails back home. Penelope overhears their plot and worries for her son's safety. In the course of Odysseus's seven years as a captive of Calypso on the island Ogygia , she has fallen deeply in love with him, even though he spurns her offers of immortality as her husband and still mourns for home. She is ordered to release him by the messenger god Hermes , who has been sent by Zeus in response to Athena's plea. Odysseus builds

2176-609: A profound influence on medieval scholarship. Their influence extended from Late Antiquity into the Renaissance , and his views were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics . In metaphysics, Aristotelianism profoundly influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophical and theological thought during the Middle Ages and continues to influence Christian theology , especially

2304-405: A raft and is given clothing, food, and drink by Calypso. When Poseidon learns that Odysseus has escaped, he wrecks the raft, but helped by a veil given by the sea nymph Ino , Odysseus swims ashore on Scherie , the island of the Phaeacians. Naked and exhausted, he hides in a pile of leaves and falls asleep. The next morning, awakened by girls' laughter, he sees the young Nausicaä , who has gone to

2432-455: A re-telling of the Odyssey set in Dublin , is divided into eighteen sections ("episodes") which can be mapped roughly onto the twenty-four books of the Odyssey . Joyce claimed familiarity with the original Homeric Greek, but this has been disputed by some scholars, who cite his poor grasp of the language as evidence to the contrary. The book, and especially its stream of consciousness prose,

2560-615: A student's education, such as Plato's Republic , or Dante's Divine Comedy . Such programs often focus exclusively on Western culture. Their employment of primary texts dictates an interdisciplinary approach, as most of the Great Books do not fall neatly under the prerogative of a single contemporary academic discipline. Great Books programs often include designated discussion groups as well as lectures, and have small class sizes. In general students in such programs receive an abnormally high degree of attention from their professors, as part of

2688-466: A type scene in the Odyssey. Two important parts of an omen type scene are the recognition of the omen, followed by its interpretation . In the Odyssey , all of the bird omens—with the exception of the first—show large birds attacking smaller birds. Accompanying each omen is a wish which can be either explicitly stated or only implied. For example, Telemachus wishes for vengeance and for Odysseus to be home, Penelope wishes for Odysseus' return, and

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2816-409: A very specific type scene that accompanies it. Throughout the epic, the testing of others follows a typical pattern. This pattern is: Omens occur frequently throughout the Odyssey . Within the epic poem, they frequently involve birds. According to Thornton, most crucial is who receives each omen and in what way it manifests. For instance, bird omens are shown to Telemachus, Penelope, Odysseus, and

2944-422: A wooden stake. When Polyphemus cried out, his neighbors left after Polyphemus claimed that "Nobody" had attacked him. Odysseus and his men finally escaped the cave by hiding on the underbellies of the sheep as they were let out of the cave. As they escaped, however, Odysseus taunted Polyphemus and revealed himself. The Cyclops prayed to his father Poseidon, asking him to curse Odysseus to wander for ten years. After

3072-491: A world beyond man and that influences the fact he cannot return home. These beings that are close to the gods include the Phaeacians who lived near the Cyclopes, whose king, Alcinous, is the great-grandson of the king of the giants, Eurymedon , and the grandson of Poseidon. Some of the other characters that Odysseus encounters are the cyclops Polyphemus , the son of Poseidon; Circe, a sorceress who turns men into animals; and

3200-579: Is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic, and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature . One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his books have sold over thirteen million copies in sixty-three languages, making him the country's best-selling writer. Pamuk is the author of novels including The White Castle , The Black Book , The New Life , My Name Is Red , Snow , The Museum of Innocence , and A Strangeness in My Mind . He

3328-547: Is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, essayist, college professor, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature . Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom . Upon announcing

3456-790: Is a list of books considered to be "essential", and it can be published as a collection (such as Great Books of the Western World , Modern Library , Everyman's Library or Penguin Classics ), presented as a list with an academic's imprimatur (such as Harold Bloom 's ), or be the official reading list of a university. In The Western Canon Bloom lists "the major Western writers" as Dante Alighieri , Geoffrey Chaucer , Miguel de Cervantes , Michel de Montaigne , William Shakespeare , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , William Wordsworth , Charles Dickens , Leo Tolstoy , James Joyce and Marcel Proust . A university or college Great Books Program

3584-525: Is a program inspired by the Great Books movement begun in the United States in the 1920s by John Erskine of Columbia University , which proposed to improve the higher education system by returning it to the western liberal arts tradition of broad cross-disciplinary learning. These academics and educators included Robert Hutchins , Mortimer Adler , Stringfellow Barr , Scott Buchanan , Jacques Barzun , and Alexander Meiklejohn . The view among them

3712-433: Is discovered by the housekeeper Eurycleia when she recognizes an old scar as she is washing his feet. Eurycleia tries to tell Penelope about the beggar's true identity, but Athena makes sure that Penelope cannot hear her. Odysseus swears Eurycleia to secrecy. The next day, at Athena's prompting, Penelope maneuvers the suitors into competing for her hand with an archery competition using Odysseus's bow. The man who can string

3840-436: Is indeed on Ithaca. She hides his treasure in a nearby cave and disguises him as an elderly beggar so he can see how things stand in his household. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own slaves, swineherd Eumaeus , who treats him hospitably and speaks favorably of Odysseus. After dinner, the disguised Odysseus tells the farm laborers a fictitious tale of himself. Telemachus sails home from Sparta, evading an ambush set by

3968-471: Is likely not significantly different. Aside from minor differences, the Homeric poems gained a canonical place in the institutions of ancient Athens by the 6th century. In 566 BC, Peisistratos instituted a civic and religious festival called the Panathenaia , which featured performances of Homeric poems. These are significant because a "correct" version of the poems had to be performed, indicating that

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4096-428: Is mentioned along with other personifications associated with battle: Upon it were wrought Pursuit [ Proioxis ] and Rally [ Palioxis ]; upon it burned Tumult [ Homados ] and Murder [Phonos] and Slaughter [ Androktasia ]; upon it was Strife [ Eris ], upon it rushed Battle-Din [ Kydoimos ], upon it deadly Fate [ Ker ] was dragging men by the feet through the battle, holding one who was alive but freshly wounded, another who

4224-647: Is one of the oldest works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. Like the Iliad , the Odyssey is divided into 24 books . It follows the Greek hero Odysseus , king of Ithaca , and his journey home after the Trojan War . After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey from Troy to Ithaca, via Africa and southern Europe, lasted for ten additional years during which time he encountered many perils and all of his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus

4352-402: Is that he will eat him last. Calypso also exemplifies poor guest-friendship because she does not allow Odysseus to leave her island. Another important factor to guest-friendship is that kingship implies generosity. It is assumed that a king has the means to be a generous host and is more generous with his own property. This is best seen when Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, begs Antinous, one of

4480-702: Is the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University , where he teaches writing and comparative literature . Born in Istanbul , Pamuk is the first Turkish Nobel laureate. He is also the recipient of numerous other literary awards. My Name Is Red won the 2002 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger , 2002 Premio Grinzane Cavour , and 2003 International Dublin Literary Award . Octavio Paz Lozano (1914–1998)

4608-453: Is widely considered foundational to the modernist genre. Nikos Kazantzakis 's The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel begins where the Odyssey ends, with Odysseus leaving Ithaca again. Western canon The Western canon is the embodiment of high-culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly cherished across the Western hemisphere , such works having achieved

4736-457: The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey . Both Odysseus and Gilgamesh are known for traveling to the ends of the earth and on their journeys go to the land of the dead. On his voyage to the underworld, Odysseus follows instructions given to him by Circe, who is located at the edges of the world and is associated through imagery with the sun. Like Odysseus, Gilgamesh gets directions on how to reach

4864-634: The Brontë family , Elizabeth Gaskell , and George Eliot . There were also three major female poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson . In the twentieth century there were also many major female writers, including Katherine Mansfield , Dorothy Richardson , Virginia Woolf , Eudora Welty , and Marianne Moore . Notable female writers in France include Colette , Simone de Beauvoir , Marguerite Yourcenar , Nathalie Sarraute , Marguerite Duras and Françoise Sagan . Much of

4992-578: The Chinese classics . With regard to books, what makes a book "classic" has concerned various authors, from Mark Twain to Italo Calvino , and questions such as "Why Read the Classics?", and "What Is a Classic?" have been considered by others, including T. S. Eliot , Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve , Michael Dirda , and Ezra Pound . The terms "classic book" and Western canon are closely related concepts, but are not necessarily synonymous. A "canon"

5120-424: The Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently and that the stories formed as part of a long oral tradition . Given widespread illiteracy, the poem was performed by an aoidos or rhapsode and was more likely to be heard than read. Crucial themes in the poem include the ideas of nostos (νόστος; "return"), wandering, xenia (ξενία; "guest-friendship"), testing, and omens. Scholars still reflect on

5248-522: The Iliad , Alexander Pope began to translate the Odyssey because of his financial situation. His second translation was not received as favourably as the first. Emily Wilson , a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania , notes that as late as the first decade of the 21st century, almost all of the most prominent translators of Greek and Roman literature had been men. She calls her experience of translating Homer one of "intimate alienation." Wilson writes that this has affected

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5376-511: The Middle East , and South America. Writers from Africa, Turkey, China, Egypt, Peru, and Colombia, Japan, etc., have received Nobel prizes since the late 1960s. Writers from Asia and Africa have also been nominated for, and also won, the Booker prize in recent years. Susan Hardy Aitken argues that the Western canon has maintained itself by excluding and marginalising women, whilst idealising

5504-831: The Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Roman Catholic Church . Aristotle was well known among medieval Muslim intellectuals and revered as "The First Teacher" ( Arabic : المعلم الأول ). His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics . The vast body of Christian philosophy is typically represented on reading lists mainly by Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas . The academic canon of early modern philosophy generally includes Descartes , Spinoza , Leibniz , Locke , Berkeley , Hume , and Kant . Major philosophers of

5632-616: The Odyssey alone spans nearly 2,000 oversized pages in a twentieth-century edition. The first printed edition of the Odyssey , known as the editio princeps , was produced in 1488 by the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles , who had been born in Athens and had studied in Constantinople. His edition was printed in Milan by a Greek printer named Antonios Damilas. Since the late 19th century, many papyri containing fragments of

5760-576: The Odyssey and the Iliad , published together in 1616 but serialised earlier, were the first to enjoy widespread success. The texts had been published in translation before, with some translated not from the original Greek. Chapman worked on these for a large part of his life. In 1581, Arthur Hall translated the first 10 books of the Iliad from a French version. Chapman's translations persisted in popularity, and are often remembered today through John Keats ' sonnet " On First Looking into Chapman's Homer " (1816). Years after completing his translation of

5888-590: The Odyssey have been found in Egypt, some with content different from later medieval versions. In 2018, the Greek Cultural Ministry revealed the discovery of a clay tablet near the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, containing 13 verses from the Odyssey 's 14th book. While it was initially reported to date from the 3rd century AD, the date is unconfirmed. George Chapman 's English translations of

6016-399: The Odyssey was in the 16th century. Adaptations and re-imaginings continue to be produced across a wide variety of media . In 2018, when BBC Culture polled experts around the world to find literature's most enduring narrative, the Odyssey topped the list. The Odyssey begins after the end of the ten-year Trojan War (the subject of the Iliad ), from which Odysseus (also known by

6144-421: The Renaissance include Niccolò Machiavelli , Michel de Montaigne , Pico della Mirandola , Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno , Marsilio Ficino and Gemistos Plethon . The seventeenth century was important for philosophy, and the major figures were Francis Bacon , Thomas Hobbes , René Descartes , Blaise Pascal , Baruch Spinoza , John Locke and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz . Major philosophers of

6272-399: The bard , performs a narrative poem for them. That night, Athena, disguised as Telemachus, finds a ship and crew for the true prince. The next morning, Telemachus calls an assembly of citizens of Ithaca to discuss what should be done with the insolent suitors, who then scoff at Telemachus. Accompanied by Athena (now disguised as Mentor ), the son of Odysseus departs for the Greek mainland to

6400-503: The eighth circle of hell , where Odysseus appends a new ending to the Odyssey in which he never returns to Ithaca and instead continues his restless adventuring. Edith Hall suggests that Dante's depiction of Odysseus became understood as a manifestation of Renaissance colonialism and othering , with the cyclops standing in for "accounts of monstrous races on the edge of the world", and his defeat as symbolising "the Roman domination of

6528-483: The humanities ). Knox used the intentionally "provocative" title "The Oldest Dead White European Males" as the title of his lecture and his subsequent book of the same name, in both of which Knox defended the continuing relevance of classical culture to modern society. Defenders maintain that those who undermine the canon do so out of primarily political interests, and that such criticisms are misguided and/or disingenuous. As John Searle , Professor of Philosophy at

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6656-468: The wider African diaspora of writers in Britain, France, Latin America, and Africa. This correlated largely with the shift in social and political views during the civil rights movement in the United States. The first global recognition came in 1950 when Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Literature. Chinua Achebe 's novel Things Fall Apart helped draw attention to African literature . Nigerian Wole Soyinka

6784-485: The 1990s the concept of the Western canon was vehemently condemned, just as earlier Modern Library lists had been criticized as "too American," Modern Library responded by preparing new lists of "100 Best Novels" and "100 Best Nonfiction" compiled by famous writers, and later compiled lists nominated by book purchasers and readers. Some intellectuals have championed a "high conservative modernism" that insists that universal truths exist, and have opposed approaches that deny

6912-478: The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy said it had been given to Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Many philosophers today agree that Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western culture since its inception. Alfred North Whitehead once noted: "The safest general characterization of

7040-602: The Chinese answer to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller . He is best known to Western readers for his 1987 novel Red Sorghum Clan , of which the Red Sorghum and Sorghum Wine volumes were later adapted for the film Red Sorghum . In 2012, Mo was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work as a writer "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary". Orhan Pamuk (b. 1952)

7168-618: The European intellectual filter. This view of African-American literature as a tool in the struggle for African-American political and cultural liberation has been stated for decades, most famously by W. E. B. Du Bois . Since the 1960s the Western literary canon has been expanded to include writers from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This is reflected in the Nobel Prizes awarded in literature. Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972)

7296-693: The European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato ." Clear, unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers to Early Islamic philosophy , the European Renaissance , and the Age of Enlightenment . Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens . He is widely considered

7424-547: The Homeric poems, wrote commentaries on them, and helped establish the canonical texts. The Iliad and the Odyssey remained widely studied and used as school texts in the Byzantine Empire during the Middle Ages . The Byzantine Greek scholar and archbishop Eustathios of Thessalonike ( c.  1115  – c.  1195/6 AD ) wrote exhaustive commentaries on both of the Homeric epics that became seen by later generations as authoritative; his commentary on

7552-468: The Latin variant Ulysses), king of Ithaca , has still not returned because he angered Poseidon , the god of the sea. Odysseus's son, Telemachus , is about 20 years old and is sharing his absent father's house on the island of Ithaca with his mother Penelope and the suitors of Penelope , a crowd of 108 boisterous young men who each aim to persuade Penelope for her hand in marriage, all the while reveling in

7680-659: The Native or Plain Style anti-Petrarchan movement had been undervalued and argued that George Gascoigne (1525–1577) "deserves to be ranked […] among the six or seven greatest lyric poets of the century, and perhaps higher". Towards the end of the 20th century the established canon was increasingly disputed. In the twentieth century there was a general reassessment of the literary canon , including women's writing , post-colonial literatures , gay and lesbian literature , writing by racialized minorities, working people's writing, and

7808-718: The Souls of Today's Students (1987), argues that moral degradation results from ignorance of the great classics that shaped Western culture. Bloom further comments: "But one thing is certain: wherever the Great Books make up a central part of the curriculum, the students are excited and satisfied." His book was widely cited by some intellectuals for its argument that the classics contained universal truths and timeless values which were being ignored by cultural relativists . Classicist Bernard Knox made direct reference to this topic when he delivered his 1992 Jefferson Lecture (the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in

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7936-593: The University of California, Berkeley, has written: There is a certain irony in this [i.e., politicized objections to the canon] in that earlier student generations, my own for example, found the critical tradition that runs from Socrates through the Federalist Papers , through the writings of Mill and Marx , down to the twentieth century, to be liberating from the stuffy conventions of traditional American politics and pieties. Precisely by inculcating

8064-700: The best in the Spanish language , he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature . García Márquez started as a journalist, and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing

8192-406: The bow and shoot an arrow through a dozen axe heads would win. Odysseus takes part in the competition, and he alone is strong enough to string the bow and shoot the arrow through the dozen axe heads, making him the winner. He then throws off his rags and kills Antinous with his next arrow. Odysseus kills the other suitors, first using the rest of the arrows and then, along with Telemachus, Eumaeus, and

8320-415: The cannibalistic Laestrygonians destroyed all of his ships except his own, Odysseus sailed on and reached the island of Aeaea , home of witch-goddess Circe . She turned half of his men into swine with drugged cheese and wine. Hermes warned Odysseus about Circe and gave Odysseus an herb called moly , making him resistant to Circe's magic. Odysseus forced Circe to change his men back to their human forms and

8448-557: The cannibalistic giants, the Laestrygonians. Throughout the course of the epic, Odysseus encounters several examples of xenia ("guest-friendship"), which provide models of how hosts should and should not act. The Phaeacians demonstrate exemplary guest-friendship by feeding Odysseus, giving him a place to sleep, and granting him many gifts and a safe voyage home, which are all things a good host should do. Polyphemus demonstrates poor guest-friendship. His only "gift" to Odysseus

8576-480: The central figures of the British renaissance canon remain, Edmund Spenser , Sir Philip Sidney , Christopher Marlowe , William Shakespeare , Ben Jonson , and John Donne . Spenser , Donne , and Jonson were major influences on 17th-century poetry. However, poet John Dryden condemned aspects of the metaphysical poets in his criticism. In the 18th century Metaphysical poetry fell into further disrepute, while

8704-455: The claim that because blacks had no written traditions they were bearers of an inferior culture." African-American writers were also attempting to subvert the literary and power traditions of the United States. Some scholars assert that writing has traditionally been seen as "something defined by the dominant culture as a white male activity." This means that, in American society, literary acceptance has traditionally been intimately tied in with

8832-424: The core of canon music and remains mostly unchanged to our days. It integrates a huge body of works starting from the 17th century and are reproduced on an ensemble of all acoustic musical instruments that were common in that century's Europe. The term "classical music" did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to distinctly canonize the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Ludwig van Beethoven as

8960-568: The course of the 1920s, Eliot did much to establish the importance of the metaphysical school, both through his critical writing and by applying their method in his own work. However, by 1961 A. Alvarez was commenting that "it may perhaps be a little late in the day to be writing about the Metaphysicals. The great vogue for Donne passed with the passing of the Anglo-American experimental movement in modern poetry." Two decades later,

9088-511: The cowherd Philoetius, with swords and spears. Once the battle is won, Telemachus also hangs twelve of their household maids whom Eurycleia identifies as guilty of betraying Penelope or having sex with the suitors. Odysseus identifies himself to Penelope. She is hesitant but recognizes him when he mentions that he made their bed from an olive tree still rooted to the ground. She embraces him and they sleep. The next day, Odysseus goes to his father Laertes 's farm and reveals himself. Following them to

9216-428: The crew overriding Odysseus's wishes to remain away from the island. Zeus caused a storm that prevented them from leaving, causing them to deplete the food given to them by Circe. While Odysseus was away praying, his men ignored the warnings of Tiresias and Circe and hunted the sacred cattle. Helios insisted that Zeus punish the men for this sacrilege. They suffered a shipwreck, and all but Odysseus drowned as he clung to

9344-419: The cultural productions of historically marginalized groups. This reassessment has resulted in a whole scale expansion of what is considered "literature", and genres hitherto not regarded as "literary", such as children's writing, journals, letters, travel writing, and many others are now the subjects of scholarly interest. The Western literary canon has also expanded to include the literature of Asia, Africa,

9472-525: The curriculum at the University of Chicago . University president Robert Maynard Hutchins and his collaborator Mortimer Adler developed a program that offered reading lists, books, and organizational strategies for reading clubs to the general public. An earlier attempt had been made in 1909 by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot , with the Harvard Classics , a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature. Eliot's view

9600-451: The early period of feminist literary scholarship was given over to the rediscovery and reclamation of texts written by women. Virago Press began to publish its large list of 19th and early 20th-century novels in 1975 and became one of the first commercial presses to join in the project of reclamation. In the twentieth century, the Western literary canon started to include African writers not only from African-American writers , but also from

9728-907: The eighteenth century include George Berkeley , Montesquieu , Voltaire , David Hume , Giambattista Vico , Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Denis Diderot , Immanuel Kant , Edmund Burke and Jeremy Bentham . Important nineteenth century philosophers include Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Giuseppe Mazzini , Arthur Schopenhauer , Auguste Comte , Søren Kierkegaard , Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels and Friedrich Nietzsche . Major twentieth century figures include Henri Bergson , Edmund Husserl , Bertrand Russell , Martin Heidegger , Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jean-Paul Sartre , Simone de Beauvoir , and Simone Weil , Michel Foucault , Pierre Bourdieu , Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas . A porous distinction between analytic and continental approaches emerged during this period. Classical music forms

9856-515: The end of the Odyssey . For instance, one example is that of Agamemnon's homecoming versus Odysseus'. Upon Agamemnon's return, his wife Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, kill Agamemnon. Agamemnon's son, Orestes , out of vengeance for his father's death, kills Aegisthus. This parallel compares the death of the suitors to the death of Aegisthus and sets Orestes up as an example for Telemachus. Also, because Odysseus knows about Clytemnestra's betrayal, Odysseus returns home in disguise in order to test

9984-439: The escape, Aeolus gave Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home. Just as Ithaca came into sight, the sailors opened the bag while Odysseus slept, thinking it contained gold. The winds flew out, and the storm drove the ships back the way they had come. Aeolus, recognizing that Odysseus had drawn the ire of the gods, refused to further assist him. After

10112-637: The existence of universal truths. Yale University Professor of Humanities and famous literary critic Harold Bloom also argued strongly in favor of the canon, in his 1994 book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages , and in general the canon remains as a represented idea in many institutions. Allan Bloom (no relation), in his highly influential The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished

10240-452: The farm is a group of Ithacans, led by Eupeithes , father of Antinous, who are out for revenge for the murder of the suitors. A battle breaks out, but it is quickly stopped by Athena and Zeus. The Odyssey is 12,109 lines composed in dactylic hexameter , also called Homeric hexameter. It opens in medias res , in the middle of the overall story, with prior events described through flashbacks and storytelling. The 24 books correspond to

10368-679: The first contemporary writers of Arabic literature , along with Tawfiq el-Hakim , to explore themes of existentialism . He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films. Kenzaburō Ōe (1935–2023) was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature . His novels, short stories, and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory , deal with political, social, and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons , nuclear power , social non-conformism , and existentialism . Ōe

10496-569: The homeland of Odysseus, which may or may not be the same island that is now called Ithakē (modern Greek: Ιθάκη ). The wanderings of Odysseus as told to the Phaeacians, and the location of the Phaeacians' own island of Scheria, pose more fundamental problems, if geography is to be applied: scholars, both ancient and modern, are divided as to whether any of the places visited by Odysseus (after Ismaros and before his return to Ithaca) are real. Both antiquated and contemporary scholars have attempted to map Odysseus's journey but now largely agree that

10624-433: The host's home. Another theme throughout the Odyssey is testing. This occurs in two distinct ways. Odysseus tests the loyalty of others and others test Odysseus' identity. An example of Odysseus testing the loyalties of others is when he returns home. Instead of immediately revealing his identity, he arrives disguised as a beggar and then proceeds to determine who in his house has remained loyal to him and who has helped

10752-454: The household of Nestor , most venerable of the Greek warriors at Troy , who resided in Pylos after the war. From there, Telemachus rides to Sparta , accompanied by Nestor's son . There he finds Menelaus and Helen , who are now reconciled. Both Helen and Menelaus also say that they returned to Sparta after a long voyage by way of Egypt. There, on the island of Pharos , Menelaus encounters

10880-730: The interest in Elizabethan poetry was rekindled through the scholarship of Thomas Warton and others. However, the canon of Renaissance poetry was formed in the Victorian period with anthologies like Palgrave's Golden Treasury . In the twentieth century T. S. Eliot and Yvor Winters were two literary critics who were especially concerned with revising the canon of renaissance English literature. Eliot, for example, championed poet Sir John Davies in an article in The Times Literary Supplement in 1926. During

11008-456: The island of Thrinacia and that failure to do so would result in the loss of his ship and his entire crew. He then meets his dead mother Anticleia and first learns of the suitors and what happened in Ithaca in his absence. Odysseus also converses with his dead comrades from Troy. Returning to Aeaea, they buried Elpenor and were advised by Circe on the remaining stages of the journey. They skirted

11136-411: The king's palace and eating up his wealth. Odysseus's protectress, the goddess Athena , asks Zeus , king of the gods , to finally allow Odysseus to return home when Poseidon is absent from Mount Olympus . Disguised as a chieftain named Mentes , Athena visits Telemachus to urge him to search for news of his father. He offers her hospitality, and they observe the suitors dining rowdily while Phemius ,

11264-463: The land of the Sirens . All of the sailors had their ears plugged up with beeswax, except for Odysseus, who was tied to the mast as he wanted to hear the song. He told his sailors not to untie him as it would only make him drown himself. They then passed between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis . Scylla claimed six of his men. Next, they landed on the island of Thrinacia, with

11392-412: The land of the dead from a divine helper: the goddess Siduri , who, like Circe, dwells by the sea at the ends of the earth, whose home is also associated with the sun. Gilgamesh reaches Siduri's house by passing through a tunnel underneath Mt. Mashu , the high mountain from which the sun comes into the sky. West argues that the similarity of Odysseus' and Gilgamesh's journeys to the edges of the earth are

11520-500: The landscapes, especially of the Apologia (Books 9 to 11), include too many mythic aspects as features to be unequivocally mappable. Classicist Peter T. Struck created an interactive map which plots Odysseus's travels, including his near homecoming which was thwarted by the bag of wind. Scholars have seen strong influences from Near Eastern mythology and literature in the Odyssey . Martin West notes substantial parallels between

11648-547: The last 548 lines of the Odyssey , corresponding to Book 24, are believed by many scholars to have been added by a slightly later poet. The events in the main sequence of the Odyssey (excluding Odysseus's embedded narrative of his wanderings) have been said to take place in the Peloponnese and in what are now called the Ionian Islands . There are difficulties in the apparently simple identification of Ithaca,

11776-597: The letters of the Greek alphabet ; the division was likely made after the poem's composition, by someone other than Homer, but is generally accepted. In the Classical period , some of the books (individually and in groups) were commonly given their own titles: Book 22 concludes the Greek Epic Cycle , though fragments remain of the "alternative ending" of sorts known as the Telegony . The Telegony aside,

11904-490: The loyalty of his own wife, Penelope. Later, Agamemnon praises Penelope for not killing Odysseus. It is because of Penelope that Odysseus has fame and a successful homecoming. This successful homecoming is unlike Achilles , who has fame but is dead, and Agamemnon, who had an unsuccessful homecoming resulting in his death. Only two of Odysseus's adventures are described by the narrator. The rest of Odysseus' adventures are recounted by Odysseus himself. The two scenes described by

12032-414: The many harmful things which might be thought to result from discord and strife, with no other identity. There are also a few examples, in ancient poetry, of Phonos (singular), as the personification of murder. The Hesiodic poem Shield of Heracles (lines 144–319) describes the many dozens of things depicted on Heracles' elaborately decorated shield. In one section of this long description, Phonos

12160-445: The most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, especially the Western tradition . Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher . His writings cover many subjects – including physics , biology , zoology , metaphysics , logic , ethics , aesthetics , rhetoric , linguistics , politics and government—and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy . Aristotle's views on physical science had

12288-499: The narrative significance of certain groups in the poem, such as women and slaves, who have a more prominent role in the epic than in many other works of ancient literature. This focus is especially remarkable when contrasted with the Iliad , which centres the exploits of soldiers and kings during the Trojan War. The Odyssey is regarded as one of the most significant works of the Western canon . The first English translation of

12416-482: The narrator are Odysseus on Calypso's island and Odysseus' encounter with the Phaeacians. These scenes are told by the poet to represent an important transition in Odysseus' journey: being concealed to returning home. Calypso's name comes from the Greek word kalúptō ( καλύπτω ), meaning 'to cover' or 'conceal', which is apt, as this is exactly what she does with Odysseus. Calypso keeps Odysseus concealed from

12544-412: The old sea-god Proteus , who tells him that Odysseus was a captive of the nymph Calypso . Telemachus learns the fate of Menelaus's brother, Agamemnon , king of Mycenae and leader of the Greeks at Troy: he was murdered on his return home by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus . The story briefly shifts to the suitors, who have only just realized that Telemachus is gone. Angry, they formulate

12672-454: The oldest works of extant literature commonly read by Western audiences. As an imaginary voyage , it is considered a distant forerunner of the science fiction genre, and, says science fiction scholar Brian Stableford , "there are more science-fictional transfigurations of the Odyssey than of any other literary text". In Canto XXVI of the Inferno , Dante Alighieri meets Odysseus in

12800-423: The original Greek, the word used is hai , the feminine article, equivalent to "those female people". The influence of the Homeric texts can be difficult to summarise because of how greatly they have affected the popular imagination and cultural values. The Odyssey and the Iliad formed the basis of education for members of ancient Mediterranean society. That curriculum was adopted by Western humanists, meaning

12928-501: The overall aim of fostering a community of learning. Over 100 institutions of higher learning, mostly in the United States, offer some version of a Great Books Program as an option for students. For much of the 20th century, the Modern Library provided a larger convenient list of the Western canon. The list numbered more than 300 items by the 1950s, by authors from Aristotle to Albert Camus, and has continued to grow. When in

13056-414: The popular conception of characters and events of the Odyssey, inflecting the story with connotations not present in the original text: "For instance, in the scene where Telemachus oversees the hanging of the slaves who have been sleeping with the suitors, most translations introduce derogatory language ("sluts" or "whores") [...] The original Greek does not label these slaves with derogatory language." In

13184-539: The result of the influence of the Gilgamesh epic upon the Odyssey . In 1914, paleontologist Othenio Abel surmised the origins of the Cyclops to be the result of ancient Greeks finding an elephant skull. The enormous nasal passage in the middle of the forehead could have looked like the eye socket of a giant, to those who had never seen a living elephant. Classical scholars, on the other hand, have long known that

13312-489: The seashore with her maids after Athena told her in a dream to do so. He appeals for help. She encourages him to seek the hospitality of her parents, Arete and Alcinous . Alcinous promises to provide him a ship to return him home without knowing the identity of Odysseus. He remains for several days. Odysseus asks the blind singer Demodocus to tell the story of the Trojan Horse , a stratagem in which Odysseus had played

13440-520: The ship by force. Afterward, Odysseus and his men landed on a lush, uninhabited island near the land of the Cyclopes . The men entered the cave of Polyphemus , where they found all the cheeses and meat they desired. Upon returning to his cave, Polyphemus sealed the entrance with a massive boulder and proceeded to eat Odysseus's men. Odysseus devised an escape plan in which he, identifying himself as "Nobody," plied Polyphemus with wine and blinded him with

13568-463: The status of classics . Recent discussions upon the matter emphasise cultural diversity within the canon. The canons of music and visual arts have been broadened to encompass often overlooked periods, whilst recent media like cinema grapple with a precarious position. Criticism arises, with some viewing changes as prioritising activism over aesthetic values, often associated with critical theory, as well as postmodernism . Another critique highlights

13696-471: The story of the Cyclops was originally a folk tale , which existed independently of the Odyssey and which became part of it at a later date. Similar stories are found in cultures across Europe and the Middle East. According to this explanation, the Cyclops was originally simply a giant or ogre, much like Humbaba in the Epic of Gilgamesh . Graham Anderson suggests that the addition about it having only one eye

13824-493: The suitors wish for the death of Telemachus. There is no scholarly consensus on the date of the composition of the Odyssey . The Greeks began adopting a modified version of the Phoenician alphabet to write down their own language during the mid-8th century BC. The Homeric poems may have been one of the earliest products of that literacy, and if so, would have been composed some time in the late 8th century BC. Inscribed on

13952-411: The suitors, for food and Antinous denies his request. Odysseus essentially says that while Antinous may look like a king, he is far from a king since he is not generous. According to J. B. Hainsworth, guest-friendship follows a very specific pattern: Another important factor of guest-friendship is not keeping the guest longer than they wish and also promising their safety while they are a guest within

14080-418: The suitors. Telemachus and Penelope receive their omens as well in the form of words, sneezes, and dreams. However, Odysseus is the only character who receives thunder or lightning as an omen. She highlights this as crucial because lightning, as a symbol of Zeus, represents the kingship of Odysseus. Odysseus is associated with Zeus throughout both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Omens are another example of

14208-442: The suitors. After Odysseus reveals his true identity, the characters test Odysseus' identity to see if he really is who he says he is. For instance, Penelope tests Odysseus' identity by saying that she will move the bed into the other room for him. This is a difficult task since it is made out of a living tree that would require being cut down, a fact that only the real Odysseus would know, thus proving his identity. Testing also has

14336-730: The suitors. He disembarks on the coast of Ithaca and meets Odysseus. Odysseus identifies himself to Telemachus (but not to Eumaeus), and they decide that the suitors must be killed. Telemachus goes home first. Accompanied by Eumaeus, Odysseus returns to his own house, still pretending to be a beggar. He is ridiculed by the suitors in his own home, especially Antinous . Odysseus meets Penelope and tests her intentions by saying he once met Odysseus in Crete. Closely questioned, he adds that he had recently been in Thesprotia and had learned something there of Odysseus's recent wanderings. Odysseus's identity

14464-399: The text was so much a part of the cultural fabric that it became irrelevant whether an individual had read it. As such, the influence of the Odyssey has reverberated through over a millennium of writing. The poem topped a poll of experts by BBC Culture to find literature's most enduring narrative. It is widely regarded by western literary critics as a timeless classic and remains one of

14592-473: The very power dynamics which perpetrated such evils as racial discrimination. By borrowing from and incorporating the non-written oral traditions and folk life of the African diaspora , African-American literature broke "the mystique of connection between literary authority and patriarchal power." In producing their own literature, African Americans were able to establish their own literary traditions devoid of

14720-660: The western Mediterranean". Some of Ulysses's adventures reappear in the Arabic tales of Sinbad the Sailor . The Irish writer James Joyce 's modernist novel Ulysses (1922) was significantly influenced by the Odyssey . Joyce had encountered the figure of Odysseus in Charles Lamb 's Adventures of Ulysses , an adaptation of the epic poem for children, which seems to have established the Latin name in Joyce's mind. Ulysses,

14848-421: The works of European men. Where women's work is introduced it can be considered inappropriately rather than recognising the importance of their work; a work's greatness is judged against socially situated factors which exclude women, whilst being portrayed as an intellectual approach. The feminist movement produced both feminist fiction and non-fiction and created new interest in women's writing. It also prompted

14976-460: The world and unable to return home. After leaving Calypso's island, the poet describes Odysseus' encounters with the Phaeacians—those who "convoy without hurt to all men" —which represents his transition from not returning home to returning home. Also, during Odysseus' journey, he encounters many beings that are close to the gods. These encounters are useful in understanding that Odysseus is in

15104-401: Was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read. Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature . He is regarded as one of

15232-402: Was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize , the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature , and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature . Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century and one of

15360-521: Was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage. The Odyssey was originally composed in Homeric Greek in around the 8th or 7th century BC and, by the mid-6th century BC, had become part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity , Homer's authorship of the poem was not questioned, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that

15488-474: Was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world , where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today". Guan Moye (b. 1955), better known by the pen name "Mo Yan", is a Chinese novelist and short story writer. Donald Morrison of the U.S. news magazine TIME referred to him as "one of the most famous, oft-banned and widely pirated of all Chinese writers ", and Jim Leach called him

15616-412: Was invented to explain how the creature was so easily blinded. Homecoming (Ancient Greek: νόστος, nostos ) is a central theme of the Odyssey . Anna Bonafazi of the University of Cologne writes that, in Homer, nostos is "return home from Troy, by sea". Agatha Thornton examines nostos in the context of characters other than Odysseus, in order to provide an alternative for what might happen after

15744-548: Was rather a certain set of tentative judgments about what had importance and quality. Such judgments are always subject to revision, and in fact they were constantly being revised." One of the notable attempts at compiling an authoritative canon for literature in the English-speaking world was the Great Books of the Western World program. This program, developed in the middle third of the 20th century, grew out of

15872-416: Was seduced by her. They remained with her for one year. Finally, guided by Circe's instructions, Odysseus and his crew crossed the ocean and reached a harbor at the western edge of the world, where Odysseus sacrificed to the dead . Odysseus summoned the spirit of the prophet Tiresias and was told that he may return home if he is able to stay himself and his crew from eating the sacred livestock of Helios on

16000-428: Was that the emphasis on narrow specialization in American colleges had harmed the quality of higher education by failing to expose students to the important products of Western civilization and thought. The essential component of such programs is a high degree of engagement with primary texts, called the Great Books. The curricula of Great Books programs often follow a canon of texts considered more or less essential to

16128-427: Was the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1986, and American Toni Morrison was the first African-American woman to win, in 1993. Some early Afro-American writers were inspired to defy ubiquitous racial prejudice by proving themselves equal to European American authors. As Henry Louis Gates Jr., has said, "it is fair to describe the subtext of the history of black letters as this urge to refute

16256-466: Was the same as that of Scottish philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle : "The true University of these days is a Collection of Books". ("The Hero as Man of Letters", 1840) The canon of Renaissance English poetry of the 16th and early 17th century has always been in some form of flux and towards the end of the 20th century the established canon was criticised, especially by those who wished to expand it to include, for example, more women writers. However,

16384-463: Was unwounded, another who had died. Around her [Fate's] shoulders she wore a cloak, purple with the blood of men, and she glared terribly and bellowed with a clanging sound. Phonos is mentioned in Aeschylus 's tragedy Seven Against Thebes . As one of several insults that Amphiaraus casts at Tydeus , Amphiaraus calls him "high priest" of Phonos. Personified murder seems also to be referred to in

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