Homer Archives - Public Seminar

Literature

Very Far From the Homeland

On contemporary readings from Etel Adnan, Mahmoud Darwish, and Alice Oswald exile in the Iliad

September 4, 2024 • by Lyndsey Stonebridge

One of the cruelties of the Iliad is how alive each person is made to appear just before they are killed. That is the point of Homer's long, detailed lists of Greeks and Trojans: names, deeds, parents, brothers, spouses, children, lovers, skills, bad hair, swift feet, words, and weapons. The poem about ...

A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears

Stories of speaking with animals are as old as human history

November 3, 2022 • by Karen Bakker

Human ambivalence about animal language persists and is linked with our uncertainty about human status: Are we one animal among others, or does something truly set us apart? Debates over animal language are a touchstone for human uncertainties about our role in the cosmos....

“God Is Dead”

And other memories of coming of age gay and Catholic in the sixties

October 12, 2022 • by John D’Emilio

I was flabbergasted. The idea that someone not only didn’t believe in God but also had grown up without God was something I couldn’t take in. All I could think was, “Wow. Without God, he’d never have to worry about whether he was going to hell, whether he’d make it ...