MMW 11 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Odysseus

• School: UCSD
• Department: Making of the Modern World
• Course: MMW 11
• Professor: David Jordan

Document Summary

My(cid:272)e(cid:374)aea(cid:374) so(cid:272)iety is lo(cid:374)g go(cid:374)e (cid:271)y ho(cid:373)er"s ti(cid:373)e everything collapsed and was abandoned . Ho(cid:373)er (cid:449)as li(cid:448)i(cid:374)g at the (cid:271)egi(cid:374)(cid:374)i(cid:374)g of gree(cid:272)e"s re(cid:272)o(cid:448)ery homer had to reflect on the values of his time in trying to write about greek history. Origins: birth of helen, daughter of zeus, birth and exile of paris, apple of discord. Part 1: stuff we have learned about ancient texts. Past tales are retold to fit their audience: get retold until they are frozen in a particular text format. Environmental effects and processes are not very visible in stories: folklore it not history. Valuable things in an ancient text to a historian may be tiny details: ho(cid:373)er"s des(cid:272)riptio(cid:374) of the (cid:448)arious ships i(cid:374) the iliad were boring to most viewers, but were of utmost importance to historians. Valuable things to a casual viewer may be the larger, grander themes, values, and psychological insights. Ancient works can become more relevant to people of later times.