![]() ![]() ![]() Prior to this fixing of the poems into the forms that remain recognizable today almost 3,000 years later, there were undoubtedly many variable renditions of the stories surrounding the Trojan War circulating. When they were committed to writing the particular versions of the stories they contain-the Iliad treats the last year of the Trojan War and the Odyssey covers Odysseus’ ten-year journey home-became relatively fixed in time. ![]() Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were written down sometime in the eighth century Bce, though they were the products of a much earlier history of oral composition. When he asks that she sing it “for us too,” he further points to the fluidity of the poem by asking for, as it were, the latest version of the poem, the one that is most appropriate for the particular audience hearing the poem at a specific moment in time. In doing so he acknowledges that the poem could open in many ways. After it opens with the deliberately ambiguous identification of its hero, it offers a quick synopsis of Odysseus’ and his companions’ experiences since Troy and then calls on the Muse again, this time to implore her to find her own way into the story: “From any place, then, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sing the song for us too.” The poet leaves up to the Muse the decision as to where to begin the song. The Odyssey is self-conscious about the versatility of its subject matter and even celebrates it. Is he the loyal husband who rejects an offer of immortality from the goddess Kalypso so that he can return home to Penelope? the roving warrior always interested in new journeys and new opportunities to accumulate wealth? or the deceitful trickster who brings his poor father Laertes close to death when he tests him in Odyssey 24? In fact, he is, as readers of Homer’s poem know well, all of these things, though as the poem has traveled through time each, era has inevitably found both the traits that it wants to celebrate and those it wants to obscure. He’s a hero who is as hard to pin down as are those stories to classify. The multiple turns of the adjectives used to describe Odysseus point both to the variability of the poem’s hero and to the shifting and versatile nature of the stories told about him. A survey of several of the options used in the 400 years of the poem’s history in English, the focus of our exhibit, reveals just how different one Odysseus can be from another: Ogilby’s (1669) is “prudent,” Bryant’s (1871) “sagacious,” Morris’ (1879) “shifty,” Butler’s (1900) “ingenious,” Lawrence’s (1932) “various-minded,” Fitzgerald’s (1961) “skilled in all ways of contending,” Fagles’ (1996) “the man of twists and turns,” Lombardo’s (2000) “cunning,” and Wilson’s (2017) “complicated.” It is formed from the adjective polu, which means “many,” and the noun tropē, which means “turn.” We might well wonder what it means to speak of a man of “many turns.” The challenges posed by this adjective speak both to the elusiveness of our hero and to the many forms that the stories about him have taken in the almost 3,000-year history of the Odyssey. The adjective that I have here translated as “of many turns” is polutropos. Sing into me, Muse, of the man of many turns who wandered far and wide after he sacked the holy city of Troy: he saw the cities of many men and learned their minds but suffered greatly at sea. Homer’s Odyssey begins not by naming its hero, which doesn’t happen until line 11, but by describing him with an adjective and a four-line relative clause: Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.Home Exhibition Highlights 2016-2020 Homer's Odyssey “Sing the song for us too.” The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Shifty Eyes. This article "Shifty Eyes" is from Wikipedia. ↑ Staff, AA Hip Hop (November 21, 2017)."Shifty Eyes's single "Beast" circulating on BET Jams, Power 105.1 and more". "SHIFTY EYES DROPS HIS "BEAST" VIDEO IN ANTICIPATION OF THE RELEASE OF HIS UPCOMING EP". "Canadian Rapper Shifty Eyes Single "BEAST" Breaks The Industries Chains". "Shifty Eyes Lets Nothing Stop Him From Success, Exclusive Q&A".
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