“Then they laid the child of wonder, Fatherless, the magic infant, In the cradle of attention, To be rocked, and fed, and guarded; But he rocked himself at pleasure, Rocked until his locks stood endwise; Rocked one day, and then a second, Rocked the third from morn till noontide; But before the third day ended, Kicks the boy with might of magic, Forwards, backwards, upwards, downwards, Kicks in miracles of… Read more
We were excited to welcome Joel Christensen for an Open House entitled “Epic Narrative and Toxic Heroism.” The event took place on Friday, May 13 at 12:00 p.m. EDT and was recorded. To get ready for the event you might like to read: The Last Mythic Hero You can watch the video down below or on our YouTube channel. For further videos please visit the Watch page. Joel Christensen Joel… Read more
We were excited to welcome Kevin McGrath for an 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. To get ready for the event you can read the passages below from the Homeric Odyssey which are also included in the first of the two handouts, “Moral Odysseus”: Handouts: Moral Odysseus (PDF) Homeric Odysseus (PDF) You… Read more
In part 1 we looked at divine mothers in epic. Now in part 2 we see the difficulty of being a mortal mother of a hero. Unlike some of the examples we looked at featuring divine mothers, these sons do not rely on their mothers or ask them for help, and the mothers seem to have no control over events or their sons’ lives. But as with the divine mothers,… Read more
In these posts we are looking at the way the relationship between mothers and sons is portrayed in Homeric epic. In this first post we look at some divine mothers: Aphrodite, mother of Aeneas, and Thetis, mother of Achilles; Hera and Hephaistos, and the role Thetis played in caring for Hephaistos. Because Aphrodite’s and Thetis’ sons have mortal fathers, their sons are also mortal, and will die. Both these mothers… Read more