IH 0851 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Odysseus, Eumaeus, Swineherd

• School: Temple University
• Department: Intellectual Heritage
• Course: IH 0851
• Professor: Andrew Mossin

Document Summary

Presents three main episodes: the sirens: 12. 142-200, scylla and charybdis: 12. 201-259, the cattle of the sun god: 12. 60-453. As far as the odyssey is concerned, the third, longer episode is the most critical since it involves odysseus"s men eating the cattle of the sun, whereupon they are doomed to die. The book concludes with odysseus washing up on calypso"s island, where he"ll be stranded for the next seven years this closes odysseus"s story for the phaecians. Note: circe foreshadows what will happen to odysseus and his crew (12. 40-154) when they encounter the sirens, scylla and charybdis, and the cattle of the sun. Odysseus then re-tells these events from his own perspective (12. 180-460), creating an interesting narrative structure in which what the different speakers create different narrativizations of the same events. Ithaca after twenty years, the phaecians getting out of the taxi business, and the alteration of odysseus"s appearance.