COURSE DESCRIPTION
Put down your phone! Pick up your colored pens, notebooks, and highlighters! Remember the joy of reading! We are going to read The Odyssey. This will be "part class, part book club." The Odyssey was written by Homer (we think) around 850 B.C., but the myths and stories surrounding it date back to the late Bronze Age. It is an epic poem, but don't let that scare you: It reads like a story. The story takes place 10 years after the Trojan War. The great warrior King Odysseus has been away from his home for twenty years and must make it home to his wife and son before it is too late. If you have not read serious literature in a long time, you will receive lots of help in the form of a Study Guide and lectures that will help to explain the historical and literary background. We'll meet online once a week. Ellen Finnigan will give a short presentation each week followed by live discussion.
COURSE SCHEDULE & LOGISTICS
Course Duration:
- Seven weeks
Weekly work:
- About 50 pages of reading
- 20-30 minutes of optional video lectures
Live Discussion Schedule:
- Tuesdays, March 17 - April 28
- First class on March 17 will be 60 minutes long; all other classes will be 75 minutes long
- 5 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Mountain, 7 p.m. Central, 8 p.m. Eastern
- Live meetings happen in an online classroom -- not on Zoom!
**Bonus Discussion**
- Join us this summer for a bonus discussion after Christopher Nolan's new film The Odyssey comes out. We can compare and contrast the film with the book and discuss whether it did it justice!
Questions?
Email Ms. Finnigan
Course Text
The Odyssey by Homer
translated by Richmond Lattimore
(not included with purchase)
Study Guide
Let's Read The Odyssey!
study guide
created by Ms. Finnigan
free shipping
Hi, I'm Ms. Finnigan
I received my B.A. in English from Boston College and my M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. I like to say "I was teaching online before it was cool." I taught high school at Kolbe Academy Online for nine years, and before that at a hybrid school called St. John Bosco in Atlanta.
I've been teaching The Odyssey online for over 13 years. Rather I should say I've been studying The Odyssey alongside my high school students. I never grow tired of it. The thing about poetry is: There's always something new to discover. I hope my Study Guide and lectures, informed by a decade of teaching, will help students not only understand but appreciate this ancient classic.
A Note About Religion
The Study Guide is "Catholic and Classical". It deals with moral, spiritual, and philosophical questions from a Christian perspective, and it draws on the 2,000-year-old intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church to articulate and present that perspective. However, this is not a theology course. The religious content is very general and should be acceptable to any Christian, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant.
Not a believer? Perhaps, you will find the religious content interesting from a cultural or historical perspective. After all, the pagans who told these stories for hundreds of years were religious people: They believed in divine beings, they engaged in religious rituals, they worshipped, they prayed. Most of them eventually converted to Christianity. This Study Guide will sometimes ask you to think about differing concepts of the divine, make connections with Sacred Scripture, or engage in introspection and spiritual reflection. If these exercises are not valuable to you, you can easily skip them, because they are clearly labeled, and you will still get a lot out of this study!
EXTRA CREDIT
Read The Iliad on your own before the class starts!
Check out our self-paced course. It has everything you need to dive in!
