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In the chapter "Contemporary Myth-Making and Myth-Unmaking" from the book Between Deadlock and Humanism. On Some Phenomena of Modern Western Literature, published postmortem in 1967, Minko Nikolov delineates two divergent trends in Bulgarian critical thought during the 1960s in the Eastern Bloc. These tendencies constitute a good prism through which to interpret the critical debate on Zhechev's "The Myth of Odysseus". The trend of myth-making relates completely to Toncho Zhechev who constructs a modern myth of "return to homeland", encompassing ancestors, family, village, tradition, or more broadly, a mythological, cyclical conception of time. The reverse trend of myth-unmaking in this context is attributed to Iskra Panova, Minko Nikolov, and the intellectualist vein in general. This article focuses on the debate between intellectualism (modern critical thinking) and impressionism (essayistic creative thinking) as preceding the structuralists/impressionists polemic in the 1970s. The basis of the intellectualists-impressionists conflict is an authentically Bulgarian-European axis that continues haunting our public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Unlike the fat body of Iros, παχύς bodies in Homeric poetry are powerful, attractive, and consistent with a non-gender- specific conception of the erotic. In Odyssey 18, Iros' bulk belies his lack of strength, but Odysseus' large frame, elsewhere described as παχύς, both promises and delivers effective action. A threat of castration distances Iros from the erotic; Odysseus enjoys sexual intimacy with several characters. Penelope exercises seductive charms over the suitors in book 18, shortly after being described as παχύς; the description of her "παχύς hand" at 21.6 suggests both bulk and strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this text is to examine the morally devised limits of human knowledge using examples from an exposition of Odysseus’ journey beyond the Pillars of Heracles found in Canto XXVI of Dante’s Divine Comedy. First, the literary context of the protagonist and its comparison with the ancient model will be briefly introduced. This will be followed by a separate analysis of the individual elements of the story in the light of the issue of the limits of knowledge mentioned above, taking into account the historical context.

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The paper focuses on the repeated and systematic references to the figure of Ulysses in the work of Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, Eugene Thacker, and Reza Negarestani. These are not random occurrences; Ulysses represents a key figure in the mutually interconnected visions and reflections related to the idea of a “world without people” that binds the named authors implicitly and explicitly to the originally Dantean imagery. Through a detailed exposition of the Ulyssean positions of the philosophers in question, the essay demonstrates twofold: first, that the “nihilistic branch” of speculative realism can be read as a specific inversion of the Dantean agenda, and second, that in light of the arguments of “transcendental nihilism” and the logical radicalization of the Ulyssean figure, Dante’s Divine Comedy can be read as an anachronistic speculative project.

Blumenberg's philosophical anthropology, about the origin and development of imaginative thinking among early human beings, serves as the backdrop to this article about the reasons art exists as a human activity. The article could be read in conjunction with a prior set of two articles by myself (in Afrikaans), "Hans Blumenberg's philosophical anthropology" and "Hans Blumenberg's model for the evolution of thought". Blumenberg posited that a strong connection exists between the earliest existential anxiety and the development of self-consciousness in humans and that this sets the human apart from the natural animal. My article looks at the evolution of thinking about art in the European human being, the way it occurred in various historical times, against the backdrop of the first thinking responses in primordial times. Art originated as a form of wishful thinking, as part of a survival response, which compensated for the early human's sudden lack of belonging in the world. This sudden lack occurred when the creature accidently strayed from its earliest natural habitat - that of being enclosed by primordial forests - and ended up on the open grasslands exposed to all kinds of dangers. As a result of this catastrophe, the early creature was confronted by the "absolutism of reality", as Blumenberg calls it, i.e. a near total lack of control over his own destiny in the face of overpowering factors of reality. The creation of art had a direct connection to this abysmal existential anxiety because it featured forms of imaging that assuaged the anxiety. Through the ages and to this day art plays a pacifying role in human culture. Blumenberg points out that the earliest developed forms of thinking were mostly of a mythical nature, i.e. of a wished-for or dreamt-up nature, such as the creation of the gods, and art in its first forms was part of this response. The primordial humans placed the gods between themselves and the absolutism of reality. They could approach the gods for favours or at least ascribe their sufferings to the wilful actions of these all-powerful beings. The humans made art as a form of assuaging their anxieties but as makers they had to make sure that they did not transgress on the gods' primary right of creation. Move on now from primordial time to historical time. Especially in the Middle Ages, the human being found itself in a position of intense negotiation with Christian theology and with God as the Creator to make sure that while they created things they still could rely on the favour of the Creator. My article looks at Blumenberg's analyses of historical epochs, defined as such by him, that preceded the Modern Epoch and how this diachronic historical process eventually opened up the space for modern art to make its appearance. According to Blumenberg, the nature of the epochs and the reality concepts that govern these epochs, as well as their intermediary junctures, can only become apparent in retrospect. It is Modernity and the phenomenological ability that comes with modern times that enables this retrospective awareness in people. Blumenberg believes that the shapes of knowledge - be it philosophy, religion, culture or art - exist in particular ways within the broad machinations of an epoch - a way that pertains to that epoch alone. Knowledge has certain functions that may change in a follow-up epoch. Every epoch's institutions and traditions have the primary goal to ensure the survival of the human being as a social being (i.e. a failed natural creature). Aristotle's idea of "art as mimesis of nature" was the conception of art that reigned from European Antiquity through the Renaissance to early modernity. It was an idea designed to keep the favour of Providence while humankind slowly, and hidden to itself, expanded human autonomy in its self-expression. The Aristotelian God was the maker of things, based on the Forms of Plato, through the influence of Neoplatonism, and people did not exist as anything else but a subsidiary part of God's creation. The article traces several reoccupations within the Aristotelian scheme towards the eventually fully autonomous modern artist. All the reoccupations happened within reigning Christian theology, including the last vital one, the freeing of the human will on account of the expanding influence of Augustine's free-will thesis. It was theology that governed all knowing and its possibilities. But the changing of the guard in the reoccupation process leading to the meanings of modern art was laborious and slow. The "logic" of a particular threshold-period, namely the Renaissance of Leonardo da Vinci, was still bound up with the idea of a privileged viewpoint within the Aristotelian mimesis structure, much comparable in structure to the scientific observations of Copernicus. Both thinkers were still coming to terms with the unseating of the centrality of the given world. Blumenberg's critique of Paul Valèry's wished-for analysis of Leonardo in Valery's own modern terms, argues that premodern art can only be understood for what it says if judged within the function of its own epochal frame. However, Blumenberg admires Valèry's terms for modern art, especially the term objet ambigu, which finally leaves behind the privileged window image of art that reigned supreme during the Renaissance. The objet ambigu is an art product that has full spacial dexterity and movement. My article argues that the hard-earned freedoms that characterise the objet ambigu bring new securities as well as insecurities to the human being's world concept. One of the great gains for the modern mind is that it can consciously view meanings in terms of phenomenology, that is in a distanced way as if he is in the other time despite being in his own time. The earliest patterns of meaning that were devised by a primordial mind are mythical. These are so basic to thinking that they are imperishable, and still very instrumental in the communication modes of modern art, as my analysis of a Robert Frost poem shows. But the metaphorology underlying these "significance structures" has now been rendered self-conscious in the human, compared to the human of premodern and primordial art. In conclusion, it is postulated that certain shifts in late modernity are bringing about new forms of the absolutism of reality and existential anxiety, and that these have definite implications for the art product. Blumenberg's reality concept (Wirklichkeitsbegriff) of Widerstand ("withstanding") - of a world utterly traumatised by its freedoms and divisions - seems particularly apt, and my article cautions that the late modern state of affairs holds a threat to the freedom and intentional dimensionality of the objet ambigu. The reason for this, I propose, is that a world disunited in its attempts to save its rhetorical bulwark - i.e. the broad range of human mind activities that sets him apart as a social being - will be inclined to demand simplicity and partisan allegiance from the late modern artist, which amounts to an anti-modern and retrogressive stance despite all our means available to the contrary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the paper, the authors offer preliminary insights about leadership and the reasons why looking at the Odysseus myth might not be a good idea. The focus of the paper is on the distinction between heroic behaviors and leadership behaviors and how misalignment between the two undermines the organizational mission (Nostoi). Quality of leadership is still today judged by focusing on the leader’s behavior rather than the success of the mission and the effect on their followers. This leads to various possibly wrong ends such as confusion about the importance of charisma, erosion of trust, and minimizing the importance of the overall mission compared to the personal goals of leaders.

This article addresses the use of Latin accounts of Homer's archetypal sorceress, Circe, in visual narratives constructed to embellish quattrocento marriage chests (cassoni). I argue that Apollonio di Giovanni employed the writings of both ancient (Virgil) and late medieval (Boccaccio) Latin authors to construct a characterization of Circe that rendered her power to transform men into beasts relevant to the functioning of Early Renaissance homes and societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that Judith can be read as imitating book 9 of Homer's Odyssey , the story of Odysseus and Polyphemus the Cyclops, in a way that compliments its use of other literary models (e.g., Genesis 34; Judges 4–5; 1 Kingdoms 17; and Homer, Iliad 14). Such an imitation can be read as reinforcing the narrative's explicit themes, especially that of violent opposition to foreign invaders, and as contributing to its characterizations of Judith (who compares favorably to Odysseus) and Holofernes (who is stigmatized by association with Polyphemus). In the process, I situate Judith among other imitations of Odyssey 9 in antiquity and observe how especially Jewish writings in the Hellenistic and Roman eras appear to use it as a resource for opposing foreign subjugation, including to Greek empires. Accordingly, Judith further attests to the participation of Jews in the contestation over the Greek canonical past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opposition between reason and nature has been one of the fundamental criteria that has shaped the dominant conceptions of humanity throughout cultural history. Nietzsche believes that the fundamental fallacy of the West is its fixation with the idea that there is something that dichotomies humanity and nature. This idea, for Nietzsche, originates from the Platonic binary oppositions. For Adorno and Horkheimer, the history of individual has been grounded in its ethical stance in relation to this dichotomy. They argue that Homer's Odysseus is one of the earliest exemplars of the culture-nature dichotomy that represents the aforementioned tradition engrained in the vital codes of the Western civilization. Odysseus's cunningness, his belief that any action will be legitimate if it grants victory and his reductive view of nature based on the absolute benefit for humans is the first exemplar of the Western enlightened individual. For Horkheimer, Nietzsche yearns for an approach to reason that goes beyond the nature-human dialectics, and his hope points to a cultural sphere other than the Homeric culture shaped by 'the established realities of the West'. Such sphere of culture belongs to a different intellectual and social world where reason is not considered as a moment of nature-culture dichotomy. We can find a similar conception in the Thirteenth Epic Story of the Book of Dede Korkut, Salur Kazan Kills the Seven Headed Dragon, which was introduced by Professor Metin Ekici in 2019. This story offers a philosophical position and is in deep opposition to the Platonist tradition dominated the Western Enlightenment thought. This study claims that Salur Kazan can be exempt from the criticism of the enlightened reason and put in opposition to Odysseus. Salur Kazan, the beylerbeyi in the Book of Dede Korkut, is a kind of hero who can be used to reevaluate the chaos-cosmos and nature-appearance dichotomies. Therefore, Salur Kazan makes it possible to imagine a totally different tradition of thought in contrast with the dominant patterns of the Enlightenment thought. In this paper, the theoretical basis of the contrast between Odysseus and Salur Kazan stems from the criticism of the enlightened individual. The findings show that Salur Kazan stands in opposition to Odysseus, through whom Adorno and Horkheimer discuss topics such as labour exploitation, the abuse of nature and cultural corruption. In this story, whilst confronting extraordinary events, Salur Kazan acts virtuously to promote the benefit of community and takes a peculiar stance on the culturenature dichotomy. Thus, Salur Kazan embodies a new possibility to assess the concept of reason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comparative Literature / Primerjalna Književnost is the property of Slovenian Comparative Literature Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This text departs from a contradictory claim in deaf studies and sound studies: both disciplines describe a hierarchical regime of the sensible – visuocentrism and audiocentrism – which they try to counter with conceptualisations as “acoustemology” or “deaf gain.” However, as we argue, they both thereby erect what they claim to overcome: a sensual regime that privileges one sense over another and a restricted conception of subjectivity deriving from it. First, we draw a philosophical line in the critique of sensual regimes. Then we propose a figure for the transcendence of the separation of the sensible: in re-reading of the myth of Odysseus and the sirens, we engage various examples from literature, art, and acoustics to describe sirens as a mythological and technical archetype of the transcendence of the sensual regime, as well as reified subjectivity. The question, then, is not how to escape the sirens, but how they can be approached. It is necessary, we argue, for sound studies to develop a critical self-consciousness of its own restricted concepts in order to move from sonic thinking towards a sirenic thinking.

In this paper, I analyze the presence of fire and light imagery in the Odyssey, especially in book 18, against the backdrop of Achilles’ return to the battlefield in the Iliad, where the motif of fire plays a pivotal role. Approaching the Homeric poems from an intertextual perspective, I argue that the poet of the Odyssey uses a typically Achillean imagery of fire to foreshadow Odysseus as an implacable Iliadic warrior. As a case-study, I propose a reading of Od. 18.354–6 in the light of Il. 18.206–14, aiming to show how fire-related elements in the description of Odysseus disguised as a beggar clearly allude to Achilles’ appearance against the Trojans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the formulaic system of the catalogue of men in Odyssey 11. The discursive means at work whenever a catalogue entry is introduced, rest on vision and kinetics. These are two cardinal notions that establish themselves in narrative contexts of male catalogue poetry in the Iliad. Scrutinising the formula-based linguistic register pertaining to visual perception and movement/stasis shows that entry introductory formulas serve as mechanisms of meticulous inner structuring and co-ordination of the narrative material and of outer framing with regard to the preceding free-floating entries and the catalogue of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The common 4th century B.C. view according to which Homer was regarded as a poet and a wise man, the leading and most honorable, to the point of being considered “the educator of Greece” (Pl. Resp. 606e-607a), is strongly supported by the Platonic dialogues. The works of Plato are the main available source to get to know not only the great pedagogical esteem for Homer, but also the several educational traditions that used or relied on Homeric poetry in Classical Athens. We are certainly used to thinking of Socrates as standing out for contesting or blaming such customs and methods provided by rhapsodes, sophists and common people (Pl. Resp.; Ion; Hp. mi.). But conversely, he is also often depicted quoting, alluding to or remaking on Homeric passages when presenting his own views. Socrates even claims to feel a certain friendship or reverence for the poet and declares to be charmed by contemplating things through him, whom he considers to be amongst the few deserving to be called “philosophers” (Pl. Resp. 595b; 607c-d; Phdr. 278b-279b). The puzzling twofold nature of the Socratic attitude towards Homer, coupled with the fact that Plato would become a figure as honored as the poet was, led ancient literary criticism to focus on the Platonic use and sharing of material and techniques proper to Homeric poetry. Works like those of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Maximus of Tyre, Longinus and above all Proclus, not only pointed out the philosopher’s debt to the poet, but even considered him to be an admirer of the Homeric genius unlike anyone else, and whose emulation basically attempted to reach and outperform the pedagogical power that the legendary poet had (Dion. Hal. Pomp. I, 13; Max. Tyr. Or. 26; [Longinus]; Subl. XIII, 2-3; Procl., In R. VI, 163.13-164.7; 202.7-205.23). With an analogous spirit, studies of contemporary Platonists suggest that the dialogues were shaped using the Homeric text, especially the Odyssey, as a template, and making Socrates appear as going through equivalent experiences to those of Odysseus’ “νόστος”. With respect to Protagoras, previous attempts focused on explicit references to books X and XI, placing the dispute with the sophist and the events at Callias’ house in the symbolic context of Odysseus’ encounter with Circe and the following journey into the underworld. I attempt to bring that reading one step further, paying special attention to the narrated character and the dramatic context for the singing of those episodes and the parallel ones in Protagoras. In first place, I consider the whole dialogue refiguring the episode in the Odyssey that works as a dramatic frame for the singing of Odysseus’ past adventures, the arrival at Phaeacia and the reception at Alcinous’ court. I regard Odysseus’ need to sing the Apologue as a call for hospitality to secure a safe passage home, working as a pattern for Socrates’ need of a tale at his own appearance in Athens to fulfill and secure a philosophical education in the city. In second place, I take into consideration the metanarrative dimension of such remaking. Since Socrates’ narration comes in response to a certain “Ὁμήρου ἐπαινέτης”, a “praiser of Homer” (Pl. Prt. 309b1), as Odysseus’ Apologue is to Demodocus the “ἀοιδὸς”, I examine how the dialogue could evince a dispute for pedagogical primacy amongst the different narratives and uses of poetry in Athens, a dispute that the Platonic narrative would attempt to surpass precisely by imitating Homer.

This article addresses the use of Latin accounts of Homer’s archetypal sorceress, Circe, in visual narratives constructed to embellish quattrocento marriage chests (cassoni). I argue that Apollonio di Giovanni employed the writings of both ancient (Virgil) and late medieval (Boccaccio) Latin authors to construct a characterization of Circe that rendered her power to transform men into beasts relevant to the functioning of Early Renaissance homes and societies.

In Iliad 10, Odysseus claims that 'more night has passed | than two parts, but still a third part remains' (252–253). This gave rise to a Homeric problem, which received a great deal of attention from ancient scholars: If more than two parts of the night have passed, how can a third part remain? The main source for a variety of solutions to it is a lengthy discussion written along the perimeter of three pages of Venetus B, an important manuscript of the Iliad. The source of this text is almost certainly Porphyry's Homeric Questions. Porphyry presents six different solutions, including those of Apion, Chrysippus and Aristotle (this last a fragment from his lost Homeric Problems), as well as a discussion of Odysseus as astronomer. The present paper includes: a critical edition of this text based on a fresh inspection of the manuscript, yielding new readings; an English translation; notes to the text; and an interpretive essay. The paper demonstrates the limitations of earlier editors of the text, and the hope is that it will serve as an example of how properly to approach and present the fragments of Porphyry's Homeric Questions. It also turns out that, for quotations from the Iliad and Odyssey, Porphyry often does not provide the text attributed to him in the recent Homer editions of West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Darbai ir Dienos is the property of Vytautas Magnus University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article applies materialist rhetoric to Christopher Nolan's 2000 neo-noir film Memento and positions its protagonist Leonard Shelby, a man with a brain injury that prevents him from making new memories, as a figure of mētis: a classical concept addressing the cunning ability to respond to the contingent,kairotic moment by engaging situations through a reciprocal process of change. As evidence for its assertion, the article examines Leonard's relationship to his shifting bodily archive of tattoos, handwritten notes, and annotated Polaroid pictures. It also aligns him with the ancient hero Odysseus and the sophistic rhetorician Gorgias, two classical exemplars of mētis. Leonard's mētic existence informs how contemporary selves emerge from networks of objects both physical and virtual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long noticed a similarity of motifs between Catullus' Carmen 63 and the fifth book of the Odyssey, where the story of Odysseus' captivity on Ogygia is narrated. A detailed analysis of the poems shows that Catullus wanted the reader to see in this Homeric episode a kind of matrix for the interpretation of Attis' sojourn at Cybele. The discovery of this dependence casts a light on some of the hitherto proposed interpretations of Carmen 63. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I offer a new interpretation of the puzzling phrase ἀµύµονος Αἰγίσθοιο at Od. 1.29 by focusing on the context of Od. 1.29-31. A closer analysis of the passage within the narrative logic of the proem strongly suggests that Zeus, after the departure of Poseidon, should think of Odysseus. While Zeus' opening speech is to be understood as a covert signal to Athena, Homer's audience is invited to recognize the speech's direct relevance to Odysseus: the narrator deliberately utilizes the apparent incongruity of the phrase 'blameless Aegisthus' to alert the audience to its significance. Not only is the epithet ἀµύµων most frequently attributed to Odysseus in the Odyssean tradition, but also the formulaic combination between Zeus (ἴστω νῦν Ζεύς) and 'blameless Odysseus' (Ὀδυσῆος ἀµύµονος) helps the audience to reflect upon the epic hero's fate and deeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing principally from Édouard Glissant's conceptions of detour and délire verbal (verbal delirium) and Frantz Fanon's notion of the physical and psychological salience of violence, this article explores Odysseus' nostos, or homecoming, in Derek Walcott's re-envisioning of the Greek epic poem in The Odyssey: A Stage Version (1993). It examines the alienation experienced by Odysseus on his return to his homeland and the nature of his attempts to reorient himself with 'home'. It argues that violence and delirium serve as a poetics that helps Walcott's Odysseus reclaim home from the usurpation of the suitors and achieve nostos. It demonstrates how, through the errant figure of Odysseus and his circuitous journey homeward, Walcott turns the trope of nostos, with its emphasis on disguise and opacity, into a strategy that dismantles the fixed spatial and temporal boundaries between the Old World and the New, coloniser and colonised, putting Ithaca and Homer in dialogue with Walcott and the postcolonial Caribbean. It is hoped that the elucidation of Glissant and Fanon's ideas in the Ithacan context and quest for home will contribute to new conceptions of home and homecoming in Walcott's works and in Caribbean literature as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we intend to trace Homeric references within Xenophon's Anabasis, in order to prove the Historian constructs an Epic text in which he immortalizes his own exploits among Persians and compares himself with the hero Odysseus. I also consider other works of Xenophon as Banquet, Memorabilia and Apology, since there he describes the poems of Homer as an essential part of his own Greek culture in iv Century. Among the main sources I have consulted, ancient and modern, are Homer, Christos Tsagalis and Emerson Cerdas. And while Naoko Yamagata founds only one Homeric reference in Anabasis, I find two direct references and several indirect references which allude to the hero and to certain situations in Odisea Xenophon similarly faced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A personal reminiscence of Lloyd deMause and his contributions to psychohistory. It examines deMause's ideas about the tasks and domains of psychohistory, as well as his conceptions of childrearing, group-fantasy, wars, and leaders as poison containers. His career is compared with the journey of the mythical Greek hero Odysseus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The “Etruscan peoples” relief found at Caere and held in the Museo Etrusco Gregoriano combines images of different nature. While the Tarquinienses and Vulcentani are evoked by statues on imposing bases, an “epic” image is used for the Vetulonienses. It is a naked male figure holding an oar over his shoulder and plucking something off a tree. The many accurately rendered acorns on the tree allow us to recognize it as an oak. The oar and oak identify the character as Odysseus. The relief thus proposes for this hero the unprecedented role of oecist of Vetulonia. Testing this hypothesis requires a reexamination of epic traditions in the foundation myths of the early cities of Etruria and Latium, and thus calls for the competence of the historian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reconstruction of the Latin and Roman legends of Odysseus and his sons in Tyrrhenian Italy is proposed, although the information is contrasting, discussing the literary evidence on the traveling hero and his sons. Generally, they are more attested with reference to Etruscan and Latin cities, even in competition with the Trojan legend and Aeneas. The legends of Tusculum and Mamilii are historically relevant and help to understand the function of the use of this myth, between the will to classify the Other, self-representation, family stories, political choice, erudition and pleasures of myth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shows that Odysseus in Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes is at the centre of a redefinition of the concept of “nobility”. This figure has been seen to promote a new definition of the concept, but previous analyses tended to focus only on one or the other of the two plays, as Odysseus appeared too dissimilar to be considered from the same viewpoint. A closer analysis reveals that he defends the same values and is endowed with the same non-élite features in both plays. Among those values is the idea that nobility has nothing to do with descent, but with the ability at proving helpful to the whole social group. The perception other characters have of Odysseus, however, changes between the first and the second play. This change can be linked to the evolution of Athenian society. With the development of democracy, non-élite citizens redefined concepts such as eugeneia.

The expression ψυχαγωγεῖ Σωκράτης used by Aristophanes in Birds has been interpreted in different ways. However, the fact that the comediographer compares the action of invoking the souls of the dead to Odysseus, ὥσπερ Οὑδυσσεύς, suggests that book 11 of the Odyssey was the model that inspired the scene. Many platonic passages from Protagoras, Republic, Gorgias, Phaedo and Apology explain which could have been the cause of the aristophanic parody: Socrates’ propensity to mention Odysseus in his descriptions of what is awaiting for the souls in Hades after the death.

We read The Odyssey as a lesson in “goodwill”. This is an indispensable con-cept, because it allows us to overcome the limitations resulting from the assumptions made by Carl Schmitt when he made the distinction between friends and enemies the original experience of the world. The “Greekness” of the attitude of goodwill, whose deficit has painfully affected us in Europe, consists in a religiousness transformed by the lesson of enlightenment, which in a secular world means the conviction that wisdom and the ability to survive, often granted to Homer’s protagonists by gods who are in conflict, may now be given to us through those who come to us from a world which is not ours. Since it is an alien that allows us to find out what we are like, it is worth cultivating the tradition of “hospitality”, which Derrida gives a new dimension seen from the point of view of contemporary migratory movements.

ere are in the Euripides' Hecuba, scattered throughout the tragedy and in the mouths of different characters, numerous arguments of an ethical-philosophical nature. ese arguments better capture the speculation of 5th century sophistry than the way of thinking of characters who belong to an archaic historical period and whose actions and evaluations were collected by the Homeric epic. Even these arguments are oen contradictory to each other. We want to focus our attention of some of them, as a way of deepening the poet's creative modality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been recognized in recent scholarship that the Greek translation of Sirach is subtle in its use of word-play and inner-Greek allusion. One such case, the story of the wandering man in Sir (31)34:9-13, can be shown to be a narration of two types of person, the one who wanders for positive learning and the one who errs and is in danger of death. It is thus not the personal experience of the author who has the freedom to travel in the new Hellenistic empires, but a moral tale modelled upon the two types of Odysseus that developed in the Greek tradition. This demonstrates the crafting of the source by the translator on the discourse level and hints at his educational background. It also has consequences for the larger structure of the unit in Sirach and further undermines the idea of a personal biography of Ben Sira. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Greek epic tradition associated with the Trojan cycle, the protagonists are played by Achilles and Odysseus, two heroes with contrasting characteristics. The Homeric poems endeavor to approximate the character of Odysseus to Achilles. They cannot, however, break with his traditional image in which he represents the trickster type. Both preservation of the traditional image and its reinterpretation is typical of the oral tradition. Comparison with other traditions of the oral epic reveals a connection between the trickster character and the antagonist of the hero-protagonist. Both polarized characters represent two types of behavior assessed by the listening audience in terms of their usefulness for the survival of the community. In his readiness for sacrifice, the hero represents an altruistic attitude, positively valorized as moral behavior. The trickster's egoistic behavior moves away from moral principles, but it can also ultimately bring benefit to the whole community. Similarly to the behavior of the trickster-antagonist, that of the hero-protagonist is also ambivalent, as it brings harm to the community, which -- though temporary -- often takes on the dimension of a disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers a thorough re-examination of the claim that the Doloneia is a major interpolation in the Iliad, since the horses of Rhesus stolen by the two Achaean spies in Iliad 10 are not used by Diomedes to win the chariot race in the Funeral Games in honor of Patroclus in Iliad 23. It is argued that this claim is wrong. Diomedes wins with the semi-divine Trojan horses he has stolen from Aeneas in Iliad 5, i. e. with the best horses after Achilles' divine horses which are not used in the chariot race. Aeneas' horses are the only ones that can defeat Eumelus' excellent mares, which have been called the second-best Achaean horses in Il. 2.763–764. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Mörike's poem has been neglected, for various possible reasons, and often misread. The poem's three time layers are distinct. It has some echoes of Goethe and Voss, uses some Homeric devices, and claims links to Hebel and to Theocritus. The central character is problematic, recalling Odysseus. Despite its title the poem has an elegiac quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]