O HOMER, WHERE ART THOU?: TEACHING THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY THROUGH POPULAR CULTURE

Abstract

Like so many of my academic colleagues, I spend an inordinate amount of time lamenting our students’ lack of engagement, discipline, and preparation. The problems are naturally exacerbated when the subject is literature and the literature in question is, by its nature, far removed in time and place from students’ daily lives. At the same time, requirements to study literature have become compressed, if not eliminated entirely. Ancient Greek works, in particular, seem to pose special problems for unmotivated or unprepared students. As our students become less likely to have a prior context from which to approach ancient texts, the challenge of introducing those texts in a one or two-semester Western literature course becomes greater. And yet, how can we omit foundational works like the Iliad and the Odyssey from a general education? If we do include them, how do we remain true to the works while spending only two or three weeks considering them? Even after decades of teaching, I have not, I admit, fully managed to answer that question to my satisfaction. But I will share two approaches – one to the Iliad, the other to the Odyssey – that can be used successfully, I believe, in undergraduate survey courses on Western literature and culture. The two interpretive strategies, while different, share two central elements: each is based on a single theoretical framework that is easily accessible to lower-level undergraduate students, and both incorporate popular culture. In the case of the Iliad, I have used the twentieth-century lens of the Vietnam War provided through Jonathan Shay’s study, Achilles in Vietnam. For the Odyssey, I have drawn on two contrasting movies, each focused on an Odysseus-like character placed in a twentieth-century setting: Ulee’s Gold and O Brother, Where Art Thou?