Components of the epic

	memory and recollection ~ temporality
	the monument  (including the writing of epic itself)
	contexts of profound cultural change

located bodies – one the heroic body

Hades

	how are the shades of the dead described in this place?
	family
	where they came from
	what they did or what happened to them
	Achilles rejoices in the deeds of his son
	(the epic itself announces its topic of the deeds of men and gods 1.338)
	real death is silence, obscurity, amnesia

Phaeacia

	Odysseus confronts his own fame
	his glorious deeds immortalized in song
	in an aristocratic household where he reveals his family and lineage
	proves himself in the games
	and receives the goods appropriate to his rank
	to enable his return home

the monsters

	the Cyclops - wholly asocial
	the Sirens – the duplicity of language (and women)
	Scylla and Charybdis – wholly ‘other’, consuming the self without grace or burial
	Calypso – divine but holding only the promise of being alone and forgotten
	Proteos (Book 4)
	these are the means also by which the hero becomes himself

the hero

	agathos – head of the household/oikos
	a man of arete – position, wealth, excellence, the privilege of leisure
	a man of time – honor and the wealth owing to position, the goods possessed
	a man of philoi – those people and things held dear

the agon

	good intentions are irrelevant to the loser or the dead
	the compensation for the agathos fighting in the front rank is kudos – success and its renown
	and kleos – fame
	the culture of the agathos is a public one of results and fame or shame – hero and actions are identical

the heroic body what is its location?

	outside itself
	to be found in what others say
	confronting otherness and death
	‘in a beautiful death excellence no longer has to be measured indefinitely against others and keep proving itself in confrontation; it is realized at one stroke and forever in the exploit that puts an end to the life of the hero’ Vernant

Slide 9