and pass it on. If you have a problem receiving attachments, reply to
this message and let me know that you have not received the Short
Annotated List of Readings. There is a collection of German essays on
Homer being translated into English coming out -- still to come out
soon in the US. Lots of links on the Web to Odyssey, Homer, Greek.
Some of the best can be viewed in Athemoo's Olympus. We need an
audience console with a multilingual editor.
just an idea
Jim Terral
South Slocan, BC
http://www.netidea.com/~jterral/
http://moo.hawaii.edu/athemoo/WebMOO.html
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A Short Annotated List of Readings
1. Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths, 2 vol. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1955. Map.
Handy reference, well-documented from classical sources.
Gives alternate versions of stories. Graves objects to
the Jungian approach and builds instead an interpretive
framework based on archeological and anthropological data
and extended by systematic speculation. He sees the Greek
Myths as recording actual events according to what seems
a reasonably consistent set of interpretive rules. "True
myth," he defines as "the reduction to narrative
shorthand of a ritual mime performed on public festivals,
and in many cases recorded pictorially on temple walls,
vases, seals, bowls, mirrors, chests, shields,
tapestries, and the like" (12).
For example, Graves interprets "all early myths about the
gods' seduction of nymphs" as referring "apparently to
marriages between Hellenic chieftains and local
priestesses; bitterly opposed by Hera, which means by
conservative religious feeling." These stories do, after
all, refer to the political and historical process behind
personal dynamics. The stories, in fact, create the
personal dynamics, sanction them by suggestion. Myth,
then, becomes an alternative to Confession. Or merely
confessional literature.
Most interesting is his support of Samuel Butler's idea
that the bulk of Homer's rambling collection of episodes
was unified by the superior narrative talents of a
Sicilian woman, represented in the Odyssey as the
Phaiakian princess, Nausicaa.
Victorian critics saw Nausicaa as a charming silly. She
may be a little too trusting. But she sees the touch of
the gods on Odysseus. She tells him exactly what he needs
to know about the dynamics of her family and her
community. He is the one who could be in trouble. These
are Poseidon's people, like Cyclops. Some people just eat
their visitors in this world of the semi-historic
Mediterranean (See Iphegenia among the Taurians). The
most important thing to know is when to lie and when to
tell the truth. Graves explores these possibilities in
Homer's Daughter.
2. Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God:
Occidental Mythology, vol. 3. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1964.
Another Anglo. Well-known collaborator with Robert Bly,
James Hillman. More of a Jungian. His studies provide a
broader framework for the Greek Myths. "The usual form,"
for instance, "in which Medusa is shown--squatting, arms
raised, tongue lolling over the chin, eyes wide--is a
pose that is characteristic of the guardian of the other
world in the pig cults of Melanesia. There she is a
guardian demoness on the road to the yonder world, beyond
whose ban the offering of a pig--offered in the way of a
substitute for oneself--allows one to pass."
This will remind readers of the Odyssey: in order to
enable the dead to speak, Odysseus had to dig a trench
and fill it with blood. The ghosts, first Tiresias, then
his mother Anticlea and others drink of the blood; then
they can speak to him.
Campbell confirms that the time of the Odyssey was a time
of transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. Is writing
after the deciphering of Linear B. The Gilgamesh Epic is
also being unearthed. 1500 years before Homer.
Campbell and Graves, like Ovid and the Brothers Grimm,
are compilers. They use their research skills with their
imaginations to put all the raw data together. I don't
think I would describe either as particularly "feminist"
although I would expect their work to be interesting to
feminists.
3. The book I am now reading by Jane Ellen Harrison combines
"Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion" and "Themis:
A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion." She may
be better known for her *Prolegomena to the Study of
Greek Religion*
Harrison (b. 1850, d. 1928) was a Cambridge scholar and
is an important connecting link between Schliemann and
the work of Milman Parry. Her wit and style won me away
from Graves' novel, Homer's Daughter (which was too
didactic for me). She explores isses associated with meat
and cannibalism (among many other things). The idea, for
instance, that meat was always communal. You didn't go
out for a burger on your way back to the office. When
there was meat, it belonged to everybody--including human
meat. Compare Polyphemus.
Harrison, I think it is fair to say, also represents a
furthering of Schliemann's resurrection of the
mythographic process as a living human tool. She inhabits
these places, reports with intelligence and sensitivity,
uses the work of the Pelasgians, the Homerics, the
Classicals, as active sources of wisdom about life.
4. Lord, Albert B. Singer of Tales. New York: Atheneum,
1968. Parry's student's book about yet another
transforming piece of Homeric research. These are the
guys who went out and studied Yugoslav story-tellers.
Chapters on the Odyssey, anecdotal as well as analytical.
This work was fundamental to opening up the whole
shamanic concept of art which is still important to
performance poets like bill bissett and Angela Carter.
Roots of artists like Stelarc. Knowledge of life emerges
as an important construct in this study too.
5. Mary Renault, Mask of Apollo. Toronto: Bantam, A very
readable novel about an actor. Set in Classical Greek
times. Renault wrote several other historical novels of
potential interest inlcuding The King Must Die.
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