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Summary OCR Classical Civilisation A Level: Themed Notes on The Odyssey
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Used for Summer 2024 exams
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OdysseyWhy is the Odyssey called an epic?
^ links entertaining too
Must have hero, be long, epithets
- Presentation of a hero – include superhuman feats of strength and endurance
o Suffering
- The involvement of the gods
o Hostility and help
o Fighting of the gods (Poseidon & Athena hinted)
- Life threatening situations/combat (underworld marks hero and typical epic,
katabasis = going down to underworld)
- Moral instruction:
o Obey the gods
o Council seen/Hubris/xenia issue
- Oral Composition (multiple authorship, formulae/reptetition, epithets) – aid to
composition and remembering
o power of oral traditions (their role in composition: repetitions, epithets and
formulae. Important for success of epic as much as plot, flashbacks,
digressions, shift in narrator, direct speeches and characterisation are; music
and delivery by bard also contributory factors
o ‘bright-eyed’ Athene
o Daxtylic hexameter metre
o Epithets used often as they form phrases which fit inro the metre of the
poetry and can be slotted in during composition.
o formulae: typical for stock scenes (sacrifice, going to bed)
- Language of epic – big words, unchanging language, speeches, sound effects
o 8000 of 12,000 lines of Odyssey are direct speech aka dialogue
- Narrative techniques – epic similies & digressions (2 levels narration/flashback)
- Bards: Phemuis and Demodocus – Odysseus becomes the bard (epic is apart of
society)
- Muse in the proem
- Use of fantasy and supernatural occurrences
Speeches, similies, digressions - flashbacks, epithets, formulae
Similes:
Start in media res – and then use flashbacks
Clustering similies at moments of high drama – creates suspense
Hermes – skiming close to waves – like a seagull
Raft – when he breaks O’s raft its described as breaking apart like the north wind going
through harvest
Athene intervention in spa treatment compares his hair to thick as the petals of a hyacinth in
bloom
P grabs O’s men as if he had been puppies
Pole - hisses like hot iron in water
,When he spins the pole its like a shipbuilder with a drill (links to audience who would’ve
been sailors and Phaeacians)
Laestrogonians carried his men off like fish on a spear.
Scylla is compared in a similie to do with fishing.
Telemachus and Odysseus reunion – cries compared to be louder than birds.
Suitors compared to a herd of cattle.
Maids die – like birds flapping.
Lyre and bow similie.
Seth Schein reverse.
- Some stories are his lying tales.
- Digression: 9-12, boar, bow Ipithus.
Speeches
- Show rhetorical skill of a character (O, E)
- Conveys character (E – sneaky, cowardly, Polyphemus xenia present is eating and
doesn’t care Zeus)
- Creates atmosphere (shouted or whispered) (O leaving P or T&Abk1 and E&O)
- For O shows his ability to spin a convincing tale/twist language to his advantage
(metis)
Descriptions
- 5 senses (phonic, sound effects, visual, olfactory hear)
fantasy and supernatural
- Book 9 cicones, lotus-eaters polyphemus
- Book 10 lastrogonians, Aeolus, Circe
- Book 11 underworld
- Book 12 sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, sun-god
- The Gods
- The Phaeacians
- Fantasy enhances the epic
o Appeals to imagination
o Stirs up terror, giving the excitement of a horror film
o Portrays a world beyond the experience of the audience, and
may prompt questions. Does this fantasy world exist? Might it
have been seen by travellers?
o Images of barbarian habits which perhaps unite Greeks in
their civilised codes of behaviour
o Enhances Odysseus' reputation as a hero as he takes on and survives these
extreme dangers.
concepts, values and behaviour of a Greek and Roman hero
- Noble birth, relationship with immortals, physical strength, excellence in war
- Kleos – glory and fame:
o Telemachus wishes that he would’ve been able to build his father a tomb
o When Poseidon sees O on his way back from Ethiopians he raised a storm: O
wishes he had died at Troy so that he could be buried and have a tomb
, o Odysseus’ kleos:
o Demodocus’ 3 songs: Trojan War (quarrel between O and Achilles)
o 3 out of 4 bard songs about the war – popular
o Book 9 ‘the world talks of my stratagems’ ‘my fame has reached the heavens’
o Achilles in Underworld: (sees Agamemmon, Ajax the greater who they fought
for A’s armour, Achilles
o Achilles says he would have rather worked as a landless impoverished
peasant than be a king of all the dead/died early and had his kleos
- Time – honour:
o Economic/material prize
o Wants presents from Polyphemus
o ^ Phaeacians
- Nostos:
o Odysseus is the last of the Greeks to receive nostos
o Book 5: O is sitting by the shore crying – looking for ships
o He rejects calyspo’s immortality
o ‘And I, for one, know of no sweeter sight for a man's eyes than his own
country’
o Lotus Eaters: three of Odysseus's men eat the lotus flower, lose their memory
of home and family, (nostos) and want nothing more than to stay on the
island getting high
o Polyphemus’ curse about O getting home (He prays that Odysseus will never
get home, or if he does, that he will lose all his companions in the journey)
o After being with Circe for a year it is his men which tell him that they wish to
go home
o Crew don’t receive nostos as ate sun gods cattle/cicones stayed/opened bag
of winds
o Sirens: no homecoming for a man who hears their voices
o 13: Athene hide Odysseus from Ithaca while he sleep - when he wakes,
Odysseus doesn't recognize his home and has no idea where he is. He thinks
the Phaeacians have deceived him.
o When Athene reaffirms that this land is Ithaca. She lifts the protective cloud
so he can see clearly that this is indeed his beloved homeland.
o O ‘kissed the fertile soil’ – nostos
how different societies are depicted in the Odyssey are characterised and portrayed
Phaeacians
- live on Scheria
- had once been the neighbours of the Cyclopes – but had taken
advantage of their greater strength to ravage their land
- They had fled to Scheria, a land far from ordinary people.
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