120: Odyssey Book 11 and 12 – The Hero as Bard II

We have now entered the four books with the apologoi (Greek for "stories" or "tales"). These are Books 9–12, where Odysseus narrates his adventures directly to the Phaeacians. This "story within a story" covers his journey from Troy to Calypso’s island, including the Cyclops, Circe, and the Underworld, acting as a centerpiece for his character as a clever, often manipulative, storyteller.

Read Books 11 and 12 in the Mendelsohn translation of the poem. If you can find a quiet space read it outloud, imagine yourself to be a bard.

As you read, mark passages you would like to discuss together. Practise reading selected sections aloud so you are ready to contribute and can help one another appreciate the poem more fully during discussion. Prepare interpretive questions for the group.

Book 11 – The Dead Speak
Sailing to the edge of Ocean, Odysseus performs libations and sacrifices to summon the dead. The ghost of Elpênor begs burial. Teiresias appears, drinking blood to prophesy: Odysseus will reach home, but if his men harm Helios’ cattle, disaster follows. Odysseus must later placate Poseidon inland. He then meets his mother Antíkleia, learning of Ithaca’s misery and Penelope’s constancy. A parade of heroines follows. Later, he converses with Agamemnon, who warns against trusting even a faithful wife, and Achilles, who laments death. Other shades—Aías, Minos, Herakles—appear before Odysseus, frightened by the thickening dead, abruptly departs.

Book 12 – – Sirens, Scylla, and the Cattle of the Sun
Back on Aiaíê, Odysseus buries Elpênor and receives detailed warnings from Circe. First, the Sirens: he plugs his crew’s ears with wax and has himself bound to the mast to hear their seductive song safely. Then the narrow strait where monstrous Skylla snatches six men as they row past, while Kharybdis churns a deadly whirlpool on the other side. On Thrinakía, despite strict orders, the crew slaughter Helios’ sacred cattle during a storm-enforced stay. Once they sail, Zeus destroys the ship with a thunderbolt. Odysseus alone survives, drifting to Calypso’s island, where his narrative catches up.

****
For this series on Homer's Odyssey we will be using the new translation by Daniel Mendelsohn: Homer: The Odyssey. Translated, with Introduction and Notes. University of Chicago Press, April 9th, 2025.

Sessions devoted to Daniel Mendelsohn’s translation will alternate with meetings focused on a broader range of “Odysseiana,” materials that illuminate the transmission, reception, and interpretation of Homer’s poem across time. These companion materials will include ancient textual witnesses, archaeological and visual evidence, and modern thematic and analytical work that together situate the Odyssey within its cultural, historical, and performative contexts.

Textual materials
• Early manuscripts on papyrus and parchment from as early as the third century BCE, along with later medieval codices, show how the text of the Odyssey was copied, stabilized, and annotated over many centuries.
• A clay tablet from Roman-era Olympia, inscribed with verses from Book 14, offers one of the earliest substantial epigraphic attestations of the poem and illustrates its circulation in public and sacred spaces.
• Later printed editions, informed by Alexandrian scholarship and modern textual criticism, will serve as points of comparison for issues of wording, lineation, and commentary.

Archaeological and visual materials
• Vase paintings and other images from Greek pottery that depict scenes associated with the Odyssey—such as shipwrecks, supplication, or women at the loom—will be used to explore how ancient artists visualized narrative moments and social practices found in the poem.
• Museum collections, such as those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, provide objects like armor, textiles, and domestic furnishings that help reconstruct the material world of Odysseus and his contemporaries.
• These artifacts will help connect specific passages in Mendelsohn’s translation to ancient views of the gods, warfare, hospitality, and poetic performance.

Thematic and analytical materials
• Scholarly discussions of themes such as cunning and intelligence, homecoming and estrangement, and the tension between order and disorder will frame close readings of selected episodes.
• Attention to the Odyssey’s origins in oral performance, including formulaic language, meter, and narrative framing, will complement Mendelsohn’s effort to reproduce the poem’s formal features in English.
• Companion texts from later epic and narrative traditions will be brought in to show how Homeric patterns are adapted, challenged, or echoed in subsequent literature.

Mendelsohn’s translation is also available on Kindle and as an Audible audio book. About Daniel Mendelsohn read here.