Before watching Nolan’s The Odyssey, here are three podcasts and articles that helped me understand Homer’s epic.
Unless you’ve hidden under a rock for the past six weeks, you cannot have missed it: the latest adaptation of The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan. Its release took me straight back to my high school days of studying (Western) classical literature and Greek mythology, and while I did recall some of the most memorable details (read: that bit about the cyclops), I wanted to be a little more prepared before watching the movie. Because one must not forget: The Odyssey is an epic, non-chronological narrative set in a historical context we can hardly understand nowadays without some background knowledge – or at least, I couldn’t.
So if, like me, you’d like to understand this epic story and its latest adaptation a little bit better, here are three podcasts and articles that will help you with just that (while being fantastically entertaining):
1. The Rest is History podcast: Their two-part episode summarizes Homer’s Odyssey both comprehensively and hilariously (I chuckled audibly on the subway more than once). Hosts Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook provide lots of helpful historical context without getting lost in the details.
2. This article on What to Know Before Seeing Nolan’s “The Odyssey” elaborates on recurring themes in The Odyssey and its significance for Western literature.
3. This article on the modern-English controversy: In case you were wondering why Nolan’s adaptation features modern-day English rather than sounding what we’d consider as classically ancient, this article delivers the answer. It also sheds light on other controversies (or should I say: mostly racism disguised as criticism) and why much of it is unfounded. As Prof. Daniel Mendelsohn brilliantly put it, the piece reflects on “all of these bros suddenly worrying about Greek literature.”
I hope these pieces help you as much as they helped me dive into The Odyssey more deeply without necessarily having to read the entire epic. If you only check out one, let it be The Rest is History Podcast. It’s truly entertaining.
Bonus article: Why rapper Travis Scott plays the bard in Ithaca – a brilliant reference to the origin of The Odyssey and the similarities between ancient Greece and modern-day culture.
If you’ve seen it already: What do you think about the movie?
Love,
Carola
Image Source: Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
