Talk:Odyssey/Archive 1

message: I am unsure about the external link:  WHY ODYSSEUS MEANS HATE.  My concerns:
* It is unsigned; I have no idea who/what is the source.
* It is about many things other than the Odyssey.
* It is original research about the Odyssey -- but there are thousands of other essays about these topics, why include this one?
* It is strangely formatted, and IMHO, a difficult read.
I plan to delete if I don't see compelling objections here in a day or so.
Chrisvls 22:02, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: The name of Odysseus

message: After reading the Odyssey, I notice that women seem to have a distinct role in a male patriarchy, influencing almost every man in the story. A section to clarify?Signor Pastrini 03:24, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Robert Graves' novel Homer's Daughter imagines a female author! --Wetman 06:19, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Women in the Odyssey

message: In the section "Influences, Precursors, Models (Gilgamesh)" I recommend (a) changing the citation to a reference, with full details to be given in bibliography at the end of the article; (b) giving a citation that is:
*more recent;
*has full bibliographical details (this one has no date);
*published in English (this is en.wikipedia.org, after all); and
*where we can get access to the author's own words (this appears to be Kordatos cited by Kakridis, rather than Kordatos' own words).
Something like Martin West's 1997 The East Face of Helicon would be a much more suitable work to cite. Petrouchka 05:07, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Influences, Precursors, Models

message: The lead paragraphs are too long and unstructured.  Ideas leap from place to place, and is too difficult to read.
The book-by-book summary is too long.  We've already established many times that for a long book or narrative, we won't go into a book by book or chapter by chapter summary.  Or else books like War and Peace would be far too lengthy.  A detailed long summary is far more helpful, and more enticing to read.  Wikipedia is not Cliff's Notes. Mandel 17:04, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure if I agree with you about removing the book-by-book summaries for this.  Many of these books come from seperate legends, and were only later combined into a single work.  The Odyssey is probably more cohesive then the Iliad, but in general each book stands on its own.  Several later works of Ancient Greek literature will reinterpret a story contained in a single book.  Such as Cyclops by Eurpides is a kind of spoof on book 9 of the Odyssey.  For someone reading that article, a specific book 9 summary would be very useful to them.  Same situation with the play Rhesus, it refers to book 10 of the Iliad.  In general, I think for these very old, very inluential works, its hard to say there is "too much" info on them.  Take the Bible for instance, you wouldn't want to combine each book of that into one summary.  However, like that - what we could do is give each book of the Iliad and the Odyssey it's own page, and link to those.  For the page title, each book does have it's own greek name that it was known by.  Such as book 11 of the Odyssey is the Nekuia.  - Ravenous 01:25, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Not each episode. --Wetman 06:19, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Too long

message: the book summaries sound like a clone from this website: Mythweb, which is copyrighted Mythweb ....
:The summaries have been edited away from the mythweb text, but this still looks like a copyvio to me. The summaries really ought to be eliminated; as is said in the section above, Wikipedia isn't Cliff's Notes. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought the book-by-book summaries were not very "encyclopedic": now I know why. I hadn't seen these comments before. Yes, it's still true that the summaries are largely pasted in from Mythweb (as above). They really ought to be deleted at once, but it would be a pity to leave the page without any plot summary at all. Does anyone else fancy writing a new one, or shall I? Andrew Dalby 12:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have temporarily pasted at User:Andrew Dalby/Plot of the Odyssey a summary which I wrote myself (as part of a book). I could adapt it to some extent (so that the publisher won't object, though the copyright is in fact mine) and then Wikify it and paste it into Odyssey if others think this is a good idea. Feel free to disagree! Andrew Dalby 13:02, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I've taken out the "plot summary" section because of the copyright violation. I should have done this a long time ago, because copyright violation is something that WP needs to be very concerned about. Anyway, Andrew's summary would be a good replacement for the removed material, but I think it might be good if it were made shorter, and if we could break things up a bit by indicating major structural units (Telemachy, Apology, etc.). --Akhilleus (talk) 14:24, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have added this summary, without making many changes yet, but Wikifying it a bit. That's a start, perhaps. There is some slight duplication with the preceding section "Structure". If anyone wants to plunge in, edit, shorten the summary, put in the major structural divisions as Akhilleus suggests, please do. Another possibility, I guess, would be to add book.line references at the beginning or end of each paragraph? Anyway, I'll be back. Andrew Dalby 16:43, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Incidentally, this summary must be shorter than the last one (I don't know by how much), because the warning about the length of the page no longer appears when one opens an edit window. Andrew Dalby 16:50, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  copyright violation? 

message: surely this is vandalism : "The suitors mock Halitherses is a wiener head, who makes the prophecy"
:fixed, thanks for the catch, but feel free to fix it yourself next time... --Akhilleus (talk) 04:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  vandalism? 

message: Just chanced to notice that the Book III summary is missing. I don't know if it never was, or if it was just (inadvertantly) removed at some stage. This is not really of import if the individual book summaries are to be removed, as suggested above, but otherwise the missing summary is surely needed. It has also been suggested above that the book summaries are derived from the mythweb site, in which case the details of  could be rewritten. Please advise best course. Xpi6 17:03, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You can. Just edit the page, and fix the vandalism. In most themes, the appropriate tabs are at the top of the page. Be bold! --Akhilleus (talk) 07:19, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Book III Missing

message: I added this to the article and also to the The Illiad and it was removed by User:Shanes with the dismissive comment that this was "sillyness". Why? I see it as perfectly reasonable.The Illiad and The Odyssey are two of the great seminal works of Western literature, and saying that it doesn't deserve a spoiler warning makes the assumption that no-one will read this works for enjoyment's sake and/or that everyone knows the plot and history. I don't believe that either of these is true. I think we should give the Illiad's and Odyssey's plot proper recognition. These are works of literature, are NOT historical accounts. Compare Richard III (play) and War and Peace which both have spoiler warnings. Bwithh 04:40, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See my comment at Talk:Iliad. In addition to what I've said there, consensus has been that the spoiler warnings aren't necessary. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:55, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Your arguments at Talk:Iliad are not about the Odyssey and the Illiad specifically - you are arguing only against all spoiler warnings in any article in general. That kind of discussion is for the manual of style talk pages not here. I don't see consensus on this talk page about this either - even if one counts the "sniggering" Bwithh 05:02, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A demand to debate a spoiler warning for the Odyssey is uncalled-for. Just move on to something useful. --Wetman 06:19, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

text:  I fully agree with Wetman here, but for the record, there was a debate, at Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning, whether there should be spoiler tags in articles about classical Greek and Latin literature. The consensus was that there should not be spoiler tags. --Akhilleus (talk) 14:17, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Spoiler warning

message: I think Ulysses, Samuel Butler's & Kazantzakis' Odyssey should be first in this section. I think these come first to mind.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.75.77.97 (talk • contribs) .
: Butler wrote a translation, not a derivative work, but I'm inclined to agree that Joyce and Kazantzakis are among the most important; I'd place Tennyson first, though, followed by J. and K.
: However, I wonder about this entry:
::Some of the tales of Sindbad the Sailor from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) were taken from Homer's Odyssey.
: -- I doubt this. Is it demonstrably true? Petrouchka 23:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Derivative Works

message: The following stands in the article:
:Among the most impressive elements of the text are its strikingly modern non-linear plot, and its elevation of the status of women and the lower classes.
I have added the citation request because this claim seems completely off base to me.  How, exactly, does the Odyssey 'elevate' the status of women?  From my reading, and from all the critics I have read, it would seem as the poem only reinforces the roles that women are supposed to play.  Can anyone give me a citation on this proto-feminism comment? CaveatLectorTalk 17:59, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've altered the wording so that it now shows how the Odyssey does this rather than just asserts that it does it. If you still want a citation I can readily add one, but you may think this is now not necessary? Andrew Dalby 18:44, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protofeminism