We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

You’ll be hearing a lot about Homer’s The Odyssey in the coming weeks and months. Christopher Nolan is scheduled to film and release a new IMAX adaptation of the epic poem with big-name stars like Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson and Charlize Theron, according to Variety.

Advertisement

Another Odyssey-based film, Uberto Pasolini’s ‘The Return’ is also in theaters. It stars Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche as Odysseus and his wife Penelope; it’s a hyper-focused take on what happens after Odysseus returns to Ithaca (without the mythos of the gods and goddesses).

There is also a new translation of The Odyssey, by Emily Wilson. Who is Emily Wilson?  She’s a British American classicist, author, translator, and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Probably not a Trump voter, for sure.

Except her views on one of the major themes of The Odyssey — heroism — is, well, interesting:

The post reads:

“There’s an idea that Homer has to sound heroic and ancient,” Wilson told me, but that idea comes with a value system attached, one that includes “endorsing this very hierarchical kind of society as if that’s what heroism is.”

Heroism is hierarchical because heroes are better than other people. Flawed and human, yes, but the also go above and beyond.

All of this.

Yeah, she does.

Recommended

Advertisement

It is not supposed to be bouncy.

Great translation. This writer read it in high school.

That’s awful. Absolutely awful.

The longer version makes it even worse.

Egads.

They understand this.

Advertisement

They hate it, which is why they seek to destroy it.

Always are.

Bingo!

That language doesn’t sing.

Yes, it is.