Department of Classics
Macalester College

In this class, which is the fourth semester in the Greek language sequence, students will read roughly one thousand lines of Homer’s Odyssey.  The reading will cover major scenes in the great narrative of the wanderings of Odysseus during his return to Ithaca from Troy, including the encounters with Nausicaa and the Cyclops.  Assignments and classwork will involve translation and close study of language and meter.  Intermittent topical discussion and select assignments will also address the major questions of the authorship and composition of Homeric epic, its literary texture and design, its religious and social world, conceptions of Mediterranean space, and its relation to Greek history.