Interesting essay. Recording thoughts after reading a book is a useful discipline to order and crystallise understanding and appreciation. Re The Iliad and The Odyssey: Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida is a very engaging response to these extraordinary epics. Their homage to war, honour, love, death, and destruction is tested thoroughly and entertainingly, perhaps even contested, with quite brutal reenactments. Thersites, a minor character in The Iliad, becomes in Shakespeare’s version a bitter cynic commenting on the war. He sums up the action: ‘Here is such patchery, such juggling and such knavery! all the argument is a cuckold and a whore; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon.’ I sometimes think Shakespeare’s dramatisation of the events in The Iliad is underrated. Achilles murder of Hector in T&C is a savage deployment of deception and exploitation. Ulysses’s great speech on Time (111 iii) is magnificent manipulation of Achilles. Looking forward to your further reactions as you journey through The Odyssey.
there is a deep ancient context to this text, i’ve only just learned about the Pelasgians and what this broadly meant. I’ve never tackled this text but it became of interest to me when i took the surname of a contested people who linguistically have been from pre pelasgian period. what version/edition/translation are you reading?
I’ve failed to read it four times so shall I screenshot this
Try different translations or audio recordings.
Good idea
I read Emily Wilson's translation several years ago and thought it was very very good.
The history that surrounds the Dardenelles is mind-boggling isn't it?
I can’t access that translation online, reading the Richmond Lattimore one - really enjoying it
Interesting essay. Recording thoughts after reading a book is a useful discipline to order and crystallise understanding and appreciation. Re The Iliad and The Odyssey: Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida is a very engaging response to these extraordinary epics. Their homage to war, honour, love, death, and destruction is tested thoroughly and entertainingly, perhaps even contested, with quite brutal reenactments. Thersites, a minor character in The Iliad, becomes in Shakespeare’s version a bitter cynic commenting on the war. He sums up the action: ‘Here is such patchery, such juggling and such knavery! all the argument is a cuckold and a whore; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon.’ I sometimes think Shakespeare’s dramatisation of the events in The Iliad is underrated. Achilles murder of Hector in T&C is a savage deployment of deception and exploitation. Ulysses’s great speech on Time (111 iii) is magnificent manipulation of Achilles. Looking forward to your further reactions as you journey through The Odyssey.
Nice to see you reading the Odyssey. I hope you enjoy it.
Yeah man
there is a deep ancient context to this text, i’ve only just learned about the Pelasgians and what this broadly meant. I’ve never tackled this text but it became of interest to me when i took the surname of a contested people who linguistically have been from pre pelasgian period. what version/edition/translation are you reading?
I'm going through the Richmond Lattimore version which is supposed to be super faithful to the original, and it's available online as pdf