The Odyssey

Literary Responses

gathered by John McIlvain

Pre-Trojan War Odysseus Penelope Telemachus Other Women Elpenor Demodocus Argos Bibliography

Image source: http://www.beloit.edu/~classics/main/courses/classics100/museum2/art_museum2.html

The following are responses to the Odyssey - even though in some cases, Dante's, for instance, it is not clear that the poet had read even a translation of the original. The poems and Eudora Welty's story "Circe" have provided material for a unit on poetry that I have included in a 9th grade curriculum that includes the Odyssey. All the poems included are in the public domain or have been made available with permission. Links are supplied to other poems that are not in the public domain but appropriate for classroom use. When appropriate, notes have been supplied. Bibliographic information is supplied. Most of these poems are available on the Internet, although some postings are possibly in violation of copyright. Fair Use allows teachers to distribute this anthology, including texts, from the Internet to your students if you acknowledge sources. In addition to the poems, images have been either linked to or placed near the appropriate poems. Artistic responses have been rich and varied and you can see how many artists have responded to the story as it unfolds at the enlightening site titled The Odyssey: http://www.calliope.free-online.co.uk/odyssey/books.htm. I recommend concluding the unit by reading aloud a relatively transparent selection from the greatest of all the responses to the Odyssey, Joyce's Ulysses.

Responses, which are largely poems, have been grouped topically.

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