COURSERA'S COURSE ON GREEK MYTHOLOGY (REVISED)

N C Wyeth did a good job on the Odyssey. I wonder why none of the translations I've seen use these pictures?

These are oil paintings, approximately 4' X 3'.

Anyway, what I really want to talk about is Coursera's currently offered course in Greek and Roman Mythology.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, a word about Coursera....

Coursera provides free college-level courses on the internet. You can audit the courses by simply watching the videos, or you can participate at a higher level by reading the assigned texts, taking tests, writing papers graded mostly by peers, and participating in class discussion on the net.

The only fee is optional...if you pass the course you might want to pay $30 or so for a certificate verifying that fact. Selected courses are accepted for full credit by over 2,000 American colleges. You can drop out at any time and the drop won't be held against you. Records are only kept on courses the student has successfully completed. And it's all free, did I mention that?

I know what you're thinking, that no internet course can compete with live teaching. My answer to that is...well, of course not. There's obviously no substitute for live give and take and for the role model offered by a gifted teacher. This is for people who can't do that, or who want to audit a difficult course like calculus before taking it again for credit in a live class.



My family (minus me) is taking Peter Struck's 10 week course on Greek and Roman mythology right now, and they're loving it. This morning they were telling me about the way different critics interpreted the The Odyssey through the ages. A classical Greek critic interpreted it as an allegory of the way the gods work on us through different parts and artifacts of the body like bile or the spleen. Hume thought the book was nonsense and ought to be forgotten. Heine (the 19th Century romantic) thought the story was a door into what would later be called the subconscious. Fascinating!

Here's (below) the reading list for the class.

I didn't take the course because only Homer and Virgil and possibly Hesiod really interest me, but Struck looks like a good teacher and it might have been fun to see what he had to say about the others.



There's an introduction to English Common Law course coming up that I have my eye on. It's an odd subject for a cartoonist to take, and I have no intention of ever being a lawyer, but I love the parts I've read of Blackstone's commentaries, and I'm curious to know more. Besides, if the class doesn't keep my interest I can drop it, with no penalty.

BTW: Struck is using the Fagles translation of The Odyssey, which he defended on a video. Some of the students pushed for the newer Lombardo version. See what you think...

 

MY FAVORITE BOOK

I'm embarrassed to say that my all-time favorite book is one that I still haven't finished, Homer's "Odyssey." I first encountered it in an old-fashioned literature anthology that we used in 3rd or 4th grade. I was impressed by the earnestness with which the stories were told. The author really seemed to believe that reading about Ulysses was the most important thing you could do, and of course he was right.


My favorite character was the cyclops. He seemed oddly human and appealing but these qualities didn't prevent him from being single-minded about eating the Greeks. I remember thinking how strange it was that the cyclops could think and speak but still have no mercy on his fellow creatures (sounds like animation writers, doesn't it?). It was the first inkling I had that the world contains some puzzling characters whose motives can never be understood but who must nevertheless be resisted.


Years went by without any thought of The Odyssey then I saw "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad" in a theater. Wow! My kid heart almost jumped out of my chest! I instantly recognized my old friend the cyclops, made even more terrifying by Harryhausen and Bernard Herriman...Sinbad was from Iraq but the feel of the story was unmistakably Homeric...minus the cheesy Hollywood touches. I began to think of the Greeks as the storytellers who delivered the goods, who could explain life to me better than anyone else.

Still later I saw "Jason and the Argonauts" and that firmed it up. There again was the Homeric sensibility even though the story was written by someone else. I loved the ideal that permeated the film: manliness, intellect, courage and a thirst for adventure. Isn't that what we all crave? I don't claim to possess any of these Homeric qualities but having them in front of me as distant ideals changed the course of my life.

I don't think the picture above is of Homer but it's the way I like to think of him so it gets a place here. I mentioned earlier that I never finished The Odyssey (I listened to an unabridged tape set of it a couple of times but maybe that doesn't count). Maybe I never will finish it. I have a taste for modern stories now and the Odyssey's way of telling a story seems too old-fashioned to me. The really odd thing is that I can still say with complete sincerity that it was and is the most influential book I've ever read. It's amazing how even a small dose of Homer goes a very long way.