Approaches to Teaching Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
Editor(s): Kostas Myrsiades
Pages: x & 158 pp.
Published: 1987
ISBN: 9780873525008
"This lively and extremely informative volume will be welcomed by anyone who has faced the sometimes bewildering task of teaching Homer in translation to undergraduates.... Highly recommended as a teaching and learning aid for faculty and graduate students alike."
Choice
The casebound edition of this title is out of print.
Homer's epics usually appear first in anthologies used for the general literature courses required of most college and high school students throughout the country. His influence extends beyond the confines of English and classics departments into seminars offered in comparative literature, history, philosophy, and the social sciences. This volume in the Approaches to Teaching World Literature series describes how teachers present Homer in the classroom and convey to students the importance of his epics in Western culture.
Like other books in the series, this one is divided into two parts. The first part, "Materials," reviews editions and translations of the Iliad and Odyssey and surveys secondary readings and audiovisual materials for both students and instructors. The second part, "Approaches," consists of seventeen essays by specialists and nonspecialists on teaching Homer in upper-division literature seminars, in undergraduate surveys, in composition courses, and in disciplines other than English and classics. The essays discuss backgrounds, influences, and themes and describe specific approaches, such as using the Iliad as a springboard for teaching literary history, examining what the Odyssey offers modern readers, and reading Aristotles's Poetics to glean insights into Homer's achievement.
Table of Contents
Approaches to Teaching Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
PART 1: MATERIALS
Kostas Myrsiades
- Editions and Translations
- Greek Editions
- Translations
- Anthologies
Required and Recommended Student Readings
- Aids to Teaching
- Audiovisual Materials
- Homer and Computers
Critical and Reference Works: Survey Results
- The Instructor's Library
- Bibliographies
- Translations
- Guides
- Journals
- Reference Works and Background Studies
- Critical Studies
PART 2: APPROACHES
Introduction
Teaching Homer and the Homeric Epics
The Iliad and the Odyssey as Great Literature
W. McLeod
On Recovering Homer
Robert Zaslavsky
Focusing on Homeric Values
J. Frank Papovich
Homeric Epic and the Social Order
Michael N. Nagler
Homeric Icons
Norman Austin
The Concept of the Hero
John E. Rexine
Homer in Art
Howard Clarke
Teaching Homer in Honors Composition
George D. Economou
Teaching Homer as History
Ronald P. Legon
Teaching Specific Epics
Teaching the Iliad in a Literature Survey Course
Mitzi M. Brunsdale
Homer as the Door to Critical Theory
Sally MacEwen
What the Iliad Might Be Like
George E. Dimock
Actively Engaging Students with Homer's Poetry
Barbara Apstein
The Study Question: An Avenue to Understanding Homer
Elizabeth A. Fisher
Odysseus: A Matter of Identity
Robert L. Tener
Teaching Homer from the Top Down: The Telemachy
William C. Scott
The Aristotelian Unity of Odysseus's Wanderings
Rick M. Newton
Works Cited
Index
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