“Epic Worlds / Worlds of the Epic”

In response to one of the following prompts, construct a coherent, nuanced argument supported with well-analyzed evidence from the text.

Your paper should be three to four pages in length and written in clear, grammatically and orthographically correct sentences. Remember that written work should be titled, typed, paginated, and double-spaced with 1-inch margins all around. Use a 12-point, legible font (Times if possible).

PROMPTS:

  1. At the end of book 21 in the Odyssey we are told that, “like an expert singer skilled at lyre and song— / who strains a string to a new peg with ease, / making the pliant sheep gut fast at either end— / so with his virtuoso ease Odysseus strung his mighty bow” (21.453-6). The deliberate comparison between the bow and the lyre implies that stories can be powerful tools in the hands of a skilled storyteller or bard. Using one or a few well-considered specific examples, explain how storytelling might function in this way in the Odyssey.
  2. There are many moments throughout the Odyssey in which characters grieve. Consider one (or possibly two) examples of grief and its (their) significance in the epic.
  3. The Odyssey covers a vast amount of time, and is replete with delays and postponements, and long periods of waiting. Select a passage, no more than twenty lines, and discuss how time is represented and to what effect.
  4. In the beginning of the Odyssey, Athena rails at Zeus for seeming to forget Odysseus; in the end of the Odyssey, Zeus makes an attractive case for forgetting. Construct an argument that addresses the related roles of memory and forgetting in the Odyssey. Focus your argument on other specific instances in which memory, forgetting, impermanence, or loss is vital to the scene.

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