We were excited to welcome Kevin McGrath for an Online Open House entitled "The Narrative Form of the Odyssey." The event took place on Friday, August 14 at 11:00 a.m. EDT and was recorded. You can download handouts associated with this event. Read more
We were pleased to welcome Kevin McGrath for an Open House discussion about Indo-European Epic Poetry. Before the event you might like to read and think carefully about Odyssey 8.487–491: "Demodokos, I admire and pointedly praise you, more than any other human. Either the Muse, child of Zeus, taught you, or Apollo. All too well, in accord with its kosmos, do you sing the fate of the Achaeans—all the things… Read more
As you well know the first word of the poem, mēnis, indicates ‘anger’, as both Greg and Lenny have so carefully discussed. This first word establishes a tone or mode for the complete work as anger is exchanged through an economy of metaphors with violence, death, grief, lamentation, and ultimately with kleos itself as the final price of an heroic life: that is, the poetic medium of this narrative song.… Read more
We were pleased to welcome Kevin McGrath, Associate in the Department of South Asian Studies at Harvard University, to discuss how charioteering and charioteers are emblematic—if not signal—of warrior song and culture in the Mahābhārata. Our discussion included reference to focus passages from the Iliad and Mahābhārata noted below, as well… Read more
