My reflections on the meaning of Homer’s gods “The Odyssey.”
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Tag Archives: Homer
Odysseus’s Emasculation Anxieties
“The Odyssey” is obsessed with a fear of emasculation.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged emasculation anxieties, Feminism, monsters, Odyssey Comments closed
What Do Odysseus’s Monsters Mean?
My explanation for the monsters in “The Odyssey.”
The World Will End in Fire AND Ice
When Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice,” it now appears (judging by Australia and Greenland) that everyone is right.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Fire and Ice", Australian wildfires, C. S. Lewis, climate change, Iliad, Last Battle, Robert Frost Comments closed
Mentor: Rare for Sons to Be Like Fathers
Homer explores the difficulty of a young man living up to his famous father. It’s a problem that continues with fathers and sons.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alfred Lord Tennyson, fathers and sons, Odyssey, Ulysses Comments closed
Welcoming the Stranger
In Homeric terms, Trump, in his treatment of immigrants, is akin to barbarians like the Cyclops and the Laestrygonians.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged border separations, Donald Trump, immigrant border crisis, Odyssey, Stephen Miller, strangers Comments closed
To Avoid War, Look to The Iliad
As we once again hear war’s drum beat, it’s good to return to “The Iliad” and its vision of peace: the Achilles-Priam truce.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Donald Trump, Iliad, Iran, Middle East, oil strike, Saudi Arabia, war Comments closed
Calvino on Reading the Classics
In a famous essay, Calvino gives us multiple reasons to read the classics.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Why Read the Classics", classics, Emil Cioran, Franz Kafka, Italo Calvino, Odyssey Comments closed
Homer, Anti-War Poet
Tuesday One of my most satisfying reads in recent years is Caroline Alexander’s The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s Iliad and The Trojan War. Alexander is the kind of writer that I aspire to be: an academic who taps into the meticulous research of other scholars to write for a popular […]