Talk:Odyssey

UC

I'll reiterate what I said before about this article -- it's a good piece of work. Fully agreed that GAR would be a bad move: the bar below which the article has to fall before removing GA status is low indeed, and really as long as it's fully cited I wouldn't say there's any good reason to talk about that.

With that said, you're right that improvements can be made. I think everything you've suggested above is entirely sensible. A couple of other observations:

• In the Composition section -- I think we could do with extending this story into Hellenistic Alexandria -- particularly around the formalisation of the book divisions and the early scholarship to establish a "correct" text.
• In the same section, we boldly say The Odyssey as it exists today is likely not significantly different [from "the original"?] This has been debated over time -- Milman Parry, in particular, thought that the Homeric poems were best compared with jazz pieces and likely to have been substantially different every time they were performed. It might be worth expanding on this debate a little. At any rate, it's almost certainly the case that some parts of the Odyssey are older than others (we make this point nicely for Book 24 later -- conversely, stories like the Blinding of Polyphemus and the Cattle of the Sun go back a very long way), but it then becomes a matter of taste as to whether we say that these older poems "count" as the Odyssey or should be considered something else.
• On that topic -- we could do something about the idea of Neoanalyst criticism here, and the idea of the Odyssey as an accretion of much older stories, not originally tied to a single character. For example, The "Returning Husband" and "Waiting Wife" are ancient folktales, while the Polyphemus episode adapts a much older tale-type about escaping from and blinding a giant. This is particularly visible in the Wanderings, and there are basically two compatible ways of looking at those -- one is to see them as a collection of "universal" stories that get loosely bound together as an episodic narrative around Odysseus (in other words, to highlight the disunity of the narrative), and the other is to focus on Odysseus's telling of the tale to the Phaeacians and to emphasise the unity of the narrative via interlocking motifs, key themes (particularly xenia), and foreshadowing of the events on Ithaca.
• On that topic, the big book currently missing is Irene de Jong's commentary, which has been massively influential on the study of the Homeric poems. De Jong's main focus is the study of narrative -- how the story is told. This would help to fill out the section currently labelled "Narrative", which is currently entirely about prosodic features (metre and an important poetic technique). On epithets, there is a lot of scholarship and debate as to what these "do" (Parry and Lord saw them as basically meaningless mnemonic devices; most more recent scholars think that they can be extremely meaningful) that would be worth including. Again, see De Jong on this point.
• Personally, I think the Themes section is pretty good in concept, though it could probably be more comprehensive and take the discussion a level further -- I would agree with pushing it further down the priority list.
• The Legacy section certainly needs a bit of work -- at the moment, its priorities are a bit odd (it spends a lot of time on Chapman and Wilson, but doesn't mention that the poem has been translated into anything other than English). Without wishing to blow my own trumpet, you might have a look at Homeric Hymns for one way to approach a section like this.

Pinging Caeciliusinhorto, who is very knowledgeable on classical topics, an excellent writer, and active around the GAN/GAR space -- I am sure they will have some thoughts. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 09:35, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

This brilliant and very helpful. Some thoughts:

• There are several very straightforward upgrades presented here, so I'll likely start with those. This includes textual changes over time – you're right about The Odyssey as it exists today is likely not significantly different, especially because it's later contradicted by the article: Beginning in the 19th century, papyri containing Odyssey fragments were found in Egypt, preserved by the country's dry climate; these date back as early as the third century and have content that differs from medieval versions
• Hellenistic Alexandria makes sense. Would you agree that this would be best placed as the second paragraph of Reception#Classical antiquity? Edit: I see now that you said this belongs in #Composition. That makes sense to me. I'd like to diversify #Composition into #Composition and performance – at least, that is my current thinking. Perhaps a new subheading could be added, something like #Canonical text? Or simply calling it #Textual history again (which I ripped out and moved into #Reception).

• Yes, I think that's sensible. We haven't really talked about when, by whom and how it was actually performed yet, which is another interesting area. This could include the role of music, for example. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:17, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

• Earlier progenitor tales/predecessors – big stuff. For now, I'll likely continue to add this to #Influences, but it may make sense for it to get its own heading later. For Dracula#Inspiration, I found that there was simply so much scholarship that the best way was to provide a simple overview and flavour of the discussions rather than go into every particular theory. Would you see that as appropriate here? For instance, there's currently several sentences dedicated to Polyphemus; scholarly fictions around him; possible predecessor stories. If we scale up that level of content across, say, Circe; Odysseus himself; the divine cattle... I think it becomes very problematic very quickly.

• Usually, my advice in this situation is to consider writing the "daughter" article first -- in other words, knock together (if only in draft form) something like Antecedents of the Odyssey and do the "proper" treatment, and then work out how best to boil it down into a condensed form here. That helps you make sure that the balance is right even if the quantity has to be reduced significantly. Very few people take me up on that advice, mind. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:17, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

It's not bad advice at all. Scholarship on this topic is quite easy to find. I'll pick up on this after the translations piece and drag myself back, probably dragging a skeleton of some variety. — ImaginesTigers 15:54, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

• I didn't know about de Jong's work – thank you!
• Concerning Legacy & translations – My original thought was that this is the English Wikipedia. I am wondering if this is flawed. I have no knowledge whatsoever on, say, Latin translations; or German; minimal on French (beyond what is already included). I think translation is an important topic, particularly into Latin, but I don't even know where to start looking. I'll start with the Cambridge Guide to Homer. Most of the famous essays on translation do focus inordinately on English, but that's because I'm biased attention to English writers and translators. Any further advice on that is welcome.

• You could also have a look in this volume -- I came across the chapter on Anne Dacier's French translation, and she's noteworthy (as Wilson often points out) for being the first woman we know about to translate Homer. In general, we shouldn't limit ourselves to the importance of a topic in English-language works or scholarship -- notice that WP:DUEWEIGHT (Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources) makes no concession for sources in non-English languages. However, I think Latin is really the big missing piece here -- we have a hatnote to Virgil, for example, but no direct mention of him -- or indeed Livius Andronicus, who translated it in the C3rd BCE and is possibly the first known literary translator of anything. See here, pp. 91ff. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:17, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

There is a bit on Dacier in at the moment, but I've included her in Odyssey#Early modern as part of the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns. What might be sensible is to change the subheading from being specific to English to being about translation more broadly.

I like the new opening paragraph there about the complexities of English translation, but it may just be too much detail (and could be translocated into English translations of Homer).

I'll try and write this section approximately chronological, providing the first translators of each language – that seems like the best way to do it in summary style. I do think providing a list of every single time Odyssey was translated into English for the first time feels a little silly, though. I'll likely pick this up first and it seems quite straightforward and my attention span is generally quite fractured. — ImaginesTigers 15:52, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

When doing Homeric Hymns, I handled translations alongside adaptations (partly because the line between the two isn't always so sharp). Agreed that talking about the first major translations into major or otherwise interesting languages is a good step, and perhaps it would be useful to give some sense of how many languages it's been translated into -- it'll be a lot! UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:42, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

Medium is the current method for splitting them, but time period may make more sense. I am not particularly fond of the idea, honestly, but once I circle back to adaptations more broadly, I'm content to let existing scholarship dictate the structure. I do think there is merit to translation having its own section rather than slotting them elsewhere, and I think the sourcing supports that it is a standalone topic worthy of its own subheading. At the moment, for now I shall just get things down on the page. — ImaginesTigers 17:11, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

@UndercoverClassicist: I'm restraining myself on the level of detail I include, but our lack of dedicated coverage for some topics makes me think I should be writing 100–150 word explanatory footnotes with more context virtually every other sentence. What do you think about the translations section now? I struggle to conceive of what comprehensive means with this context. — ImaginesTigers 13:56, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. Again, this might be an area where drafting Translations of the Odyssey might be a good sounding-board: essentially, the lead of that article would become the body section of this one. You might want to look through the contents of this companion to the translation of classical epic -- perhaps one way to look at it would be that if it gets a chapter there, it should probably get a mention here? These sections are really difficult to write: somehow, we have to find a thread through the mass of information that avoids making the article into a hodgepodge of facts but also avoids major omissions or overwhelming the reader with information. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:23, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

That text is completely inaccessible to me, regretfully. I wish it wasn't. The preview is really insufficient, too. A huge shame that it's so prohibitively expensive, but nothing new there for academic publishing, I suppose! Seeing that work was out of my grasp demoralised me a bit, so I've moved on. I'm more or less satisfied it meets "broad", at least. My goal now is to get the other deficient sections to that same level. Here is our status quaestionis:

• I followed up on your request to expand #Composition with material about the division. I found all sorts of competing theories, and a few good overviews.
• There is a high chance my work on influences kickstarts Antecedents of the Odyssey draft, as you suggest; I look forward to diving into neoclassical analysis.
• Themes will be easier to tidy up. I am not sure how to approach an "Interpretation" section. Strong "Reception" and "Themes" sections may mitigate the need for it at all.
• I'd like to bring the "Style" section up to the "broad" criterion now. I've made some progress on this today, but not enough.

— ImaginesTigers 21:23, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

Are you sure it's inaccessible -- it's a Wiley publication, and so on TWL (proxy link here). On the other sections -- it's probably no surprise that I have Thoughts as to some of the content, but that can probably wait until it's more-or-less beaten into shape! As will be no surprise, just about everything in this topic area is open to "well, yes, but actually it's a bit more complicated..." UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 21:31, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

Oh, woah. I did search TWL but didn't find it. I'm possibly not very good at searching TWL – I didn't find it via the search bar – but that changes things. I'll return to translation. Thank you!

Additionally, I'm grateful to hear your Thoughts at any point, particularly if they can mitigate me looking like a dolt any lost time. This is, frankly, a particularly stupid ambitious undertaking for my academic background (Victorian literature). I took it on expecting it will take months, so I'm strapped in for the long haul. It'd be brilliant to get it through FAC before the Nolan film is released. — ImaginesTigers 21:58, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

It begins: Draft:Translations of the Odyssey. — ImaginesTigers 23:17, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

@ImaginesTigers I just happened to notice this discussion. If you still have not been able to access this book, you might be able to get it via WP:Resource support pilot. RoySmith (talk) 01:15, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

Thank you very much for all these thoughts. I look forward to implementing them. — ImaginesTigers 10:38, 30 July 2025 (UTC).

@UndercoverClassicist: It's a little crowded on the PR so I hope you don't mind me pinging you here. I'd very much like some input from you. I read Homeric Hymns last night—a fine piece of work.

I'm somewhat torn. Having read tens of thousands of words of scholarship at this point, reception and translation are deeply intertwined; many sources acknowledge this quite explicitly. I do believe Odyssey needs a dedicated section on translation, but I am more open to the idea that some of the material belongs under Reception now. I am struggling a little with the overlap. What do you think about the following approach:

• I work on this article more with the explicit goal of mainspacing it. I do as you suggest: create a lead designed to be replicated on Odyssey.
• I minimise details provided on individual translations on Odyssey (e.g., metre; who was first in each language) unless necessary (i.e., Dacier and La Motte's translations as part of the quarrel).
• I use only general information about translational tradition for the #Translation section (i.e., "It was translated in antiquity"; "these were used as school texts"; "[Byzantium material]"; "Ancient Greek scholarship practically vanished from Europe for almost a thousand years").
• I translocate material on The Divine Comedy from #Legacy into #Reception—this would affect the placement of, say, material on Aeneid.
• I migrate some of the interpretative material from Reception into a new #Interpretation section.

There are contradictions and problems with what I've described above. For example, I think the articles becomes very bloated. The only way I can think of to do this comprehensively would involve multiple sections that use historical periods as subheadings. I would very much like to avoid this for, say, the Interpretation section.

It would be helpful to have some input as I do feel just a bit loss and I'm struggling to see my own vision! – ImaginesTigers 11:58, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

All very tricky problems. I think one of the issues here is defining terms -- for instance, what's the difference between "Legacy" and "Reception"? One approach might be to track three major strands:

• The study and interpretation of the poem -- which would largely be textual history, scholiasts, Analysts, Unitarians and so on, leading into the debates over orality in the early decades of the C20th.
• How the poem has been translated and adapted -- here I would endorse Caeciliusinhorto's advice about being fairly strict with chronology but fairly loose with medium, and therefore to keep poems, novels, operas and paintings together. In Homeric Hymns, I used subheadings for those chronological periods, which seemed to work well.
• How the poem has been thought of and rated -- which would be the place for the various "this is the greatest piece of literature ever" comments, and perhaps things like e.g. the debates you'll read about in Wilson's intro over the portrayal of women in the poem, and elsewhere in regard to colonialism, psychology (here Jonathan Shay might be rescued from his little island at the bottom), and so on.

One approach, if you feel a section is becoming too dense with minutiae, is to write a paragraph to serve as a mini-lead at the top -- essentially, the answer to "so, what footprint has the Odyssey left on later culture?" that you'd roll out if you were asked it by a curious person in a lift, your grandmother, or so on. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 14:14, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Makes sense. Lots for me to think about here. I'll play around with the structure in my sandbox a little. – ImaginesTigers 16:32, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

@UndercoverClassicist:, Caeciliusinhorto: I've (brutally) merged the translation information I've collected so far with the content on the main page. You can see it in this sandbox. There is a fair amount of detail concerning the translations that can be straightforwardly condensed or consigned to footnotes. Still, these are beefy paragraphs, and I'm confident some sections are missing some vital information. But as a proof of concept, what do you think? – ImaginesTigers 17:04, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

MSincccc

I’m not an expert on the topic, but my age makes it easier for me to explore it in depth. I expect to leave some constructive suggestions over the weekend (and perhaps a few in the coming hours). MSincccc (talk) 15:23, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

@MSincccc: Being honest, my plate is a little full from UC's suggestions right now, and in all likelihood you'd be examining a moving target. You are bound to find literally thousands of words on virtually any topic, but what I really need is some people familiar with the material who can tell me what matters. This PR isn't closing any time soon, so perhaps it might be worth holding off for a week or two? — ImaginesTigers 15:58, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

@ImaginesTigers Fine by me. Feel free to ping me whenever you think it’s a good time to jump in. MSincccc (talk) 17:09, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

🫡 I shall. — ImaginesTigers 17:12, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

caeciliusinhorto

Thanks for the ping, UndercoverClassicist. At a quick glance, I certainly agree with UC that no matter your dissatisfaction with the article as it is now, there's no point putting it to GAR.

Without reading through the article thoroughly (I suspect you have enough to be going on with from UC's usual thorough commentary, though I'm certainly happy to give it another pass when you have digested all of that!), the one thing which immediately strikes me is the legacy section: in the section §Literature, the article discusses several important examples of poems and novels influenced by the Odyssey and why they matter (e.g. Joyce is foundational to 20th century literature; late 20th/early 21st century feminist reimaginings); this is followed by sections on §Film and television, §Opera and music, and §Science which just list seemingly random examples with no narrative throughline. Is Ulysses 31 an important example of the Odyssey's legacy? I don't know, and the article doesn't tell me. I also am surprised to see that we discuss the Odyssey's reception in science but not the visual arts: no Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses, no The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis, no Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus?

My inclination, from having written reception sections for other classical topics, is that in fact dividing up by medium is a trap: it makes more sense in my experience to divide chronologically/thematically: for instance, one paragraph might discuss the renaissance and how, for instance, the increased knowledge of Greek and accessibility of the printing press allowed more people to engage directly with Homer, rather than having it be mediated through Roman interpretation, while another could cover the increase in feminist/gender theory in classics since the 1960s and how that shaped approaches to the Odyssey, Emily Wilson's translation, feminist retellings such as the Penelopiad and Miller's Circe, and the gender-swapped ODY-C. (To give some purely illustrative examples; you might in fact decide that neither of those strands of reception are so important that they require covering in this article!) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:25, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto: Thank you very much for the feedback! With Legacy, it's the part I worked on least. I wrote the sections on Literature, but I'm in total agreement with you on how it should be tackled. A representative example of another legacy section I worked on would be Dracula#Legacy (which obviously has a much shorter life!). I intend to leave Legacy to be the very last thing I return to for a few reasons, but I'm in firm agreement that most of the current material should go. Concerning the increase in feminist/gendered readings, there's a bit of me what wonders if that would be more suitable for a few sentences in Reception. One of the great challenges of covering adaptations, as UC notes above, is that the Venn circle of "Reception" largely includes "Translation". Definitely a lot for me to think about there, so I'm sort of putting it off. Once I've worked through the material I need to bring up to par, I'll absolutely ping you back for a more thorough inspection—cheers for giving me some stuff to think about. Best — ImaginesTigers 20:39, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

Reception

This section is probably going to cause me a stroke in the near future. Here is how the Cambridge Guide to Homer breaks up Reception:

• Homer in Antiquity
• Homer and the Latin West in the Middle Ages
• Homer in Greece from the End of Antiquity: The Byzantine Reception of Homer and his Export to Other Cultures
• Homer in Greece from the End of Antiquity: Homer after Byzantium, from the Early Ottoman Period to the Age of Nationalisms
• Homer in Renaissance Europe
• Homer in Early Modern Europe
• The Reception of Homer since 1900
• Homer and War since 1900
• Gendered Reception of Homer
• Homer in Social Thought
• Homer in Greece: The Inevitable and Impossible Nostos
• Postcolonial Perceptions of Homeric Epic
• Homer and Homerics on Screen
• From the Cinema to Beyond: Homer in Comics, Television, Apps, and New Media
• Homer in Twentieth (and Twenty-First) Century Scholarship

I have tried toying around with suggestions from UC with difficulty. At present, I am leaning towards building the dedicated translations article further, then providing a simple one-paragraph summary of translations and removing all other translation content from the article. I don't listing every adaptation in chronological order with no supporting analysis is feasible now. While I lean towards the idea of grouping reception thematically instead of chronologically, this would preclude a significant amount of important writing.

Consequently, I am leaning towards:

1. Reception as including a straightforward summary of views about Odyssey by time period.
2. An Interpretation section exploring material outlined in the chapters above (e.g., the Odyssey as the feminine epic, compared to Iliad as masculine; Odyssey and social theories, e.g., postcolonial, psychological, modern Greece).

But there is a significant volume of writing concerning film adaptations. There is the above, but there's also a lot of film material in Edith Hall (2008). Consequently, I am considering the same approach as what I outline for translations: create Adaptations of the Odyssey, get it to a passably broad standard, and then provide a few mentions overview of major adaptations within the "modern" subheading of reception. I am open to feedback, and apologies for being a nuisance about this. Tearing my hair out a little. – ImaginesTigers 19:36, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

You have to keep in mind what you have available right now. The article is currently 5,500 words; I'd say you can get up to 10,000 words without anyone moaning about splitting. You already have a "Themes and patterns" section; currently it is almost didactic in tone (and oddly seems to mostly cite 1970s literature?). I would incorporate the material you were going to use in "Interpretation" into that section, make it less instructional and more encyclopedic. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:55, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29: Appreciate your feedback. Originally I considered Themes and Interpretation as being required to co-exist alongside one another, but changing the shape of themes entirely could make sense. One issue we might run into there is due weight—a significant volume of scholarship explores nostos, xenia, wandering, as the epic's well-documented themes. Some of these themes have been emphasised by some writers during some times (e.g., Renaissance readers loved wandering, which many modern scholars connect to colonialism).

Placing these alongside interpretive strands (e.g., gender) might look a little strange. It isn't impossible. The shape of The Great Gatsby#Critical analysis has always looked a little strange to me. But a similar approach might work here (L2 major themes subheading, themes underneath; L2 interpretative subheading e.g., allegory and gender). Ultimately I want this to be useful for students, so retaining the themes in some form feels important. I didn't write these paragraphs, so I'm likely to leave them till last. Thanks for giving me some stuff to noodle. – ImaginesTigers 09:34, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

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