The Odyssey in Space Series Bible

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The Odyssey in Space Series Bible © Freshly Squeezed Pulp The Odyssey in Space Series Bible Developed by: Nicole Lindbergh Jonathan Sandohval Pranav Athimuthu Victoria Wang Shreya Hurli Lily el Naccash In association with Freshly Squeezed Pulp © Freshly Squeezed Pulp 2 Table of Contents General Series Concepts Introduction Major Motifs Surpassing, Heroism, and Greatness Success through Anonymity Techno-Anxiety Divine Vs. Human Nature Imperialism and Colonialism Fatherhood Sensitivity Warning Women and Sexism Writing Style and Structure Humor Guidelines Universe History Mechanics Technology Magic Major Settings NOT INTENDED FOR OUTSIDE CIRCULATION LAST UPDATED 09/09/2020 © Freshly Squeezed Pulp 3 The Ithacan Confederation The Greek Constellation Trojan Star System Nestor’s Palace The Planet Sparta The Chaos Dimension The Planet Gaea Character Biographies Main Characters Point of View (POV) Characters Odysseus Penelope Telemachus Oracle of Delphi Supporting Main Characters Athena Pisistratus Antagonists Antinous Poseidon Minor Characters Pantheon Zeus Ares Dionysius Hermes Non-Olympian Deities Gaea Episode By Episode Summaries NOT INTENDED FOR OUTSIDE CIRCULATION LAST UPDATED 09/09/2020 © Freshly Squeezed Pulp 4 General Series Concepts The adventures of Odysseus, space warrior, will incorporate the essential overarching plot of Homer’s iconic Odyssey in a far-future ​ ​ galactic science fiction setting to better explore its timeless themes. Our 10-episode series of half-hour radio plays will have a light and comedic feel with deep and occasionally dark themes involving generational trauma and healing. Introduction Homer’s Odyssey, initially told through the oral tradition, predates forms of media we now take for granted: the bound book, the radio drama, the movie, the television show. Even applying a historical lens to the epic is comparatively a new innovation; Homer predates Herodotus, the first historian, and Aristotle, the first true orator and father of rhetoric itself, by at least three centuries. All storytelling mechanisms we use today--sarcasm, irony, and even rhetoric itself--did not exist at the time of Homer’s writing. At the time of its inception, Homer relied on only two major storytelling mediums available to him: the spoken word and song. In that sense, our attempt to create an audio drama of Odyssey returns the Homeric epic to a medium that it is most familiar with, albeit with key distinctions. Homer’s Odyssey is meant to be heard ​ ​ aloud, and a podcast format liberates the story from both its ill-suited, difficult to understand medium--the book--and its antiquated diction for a new audience of casual listeners. What has changed, then, for the Odyssey Project as opposed to Homer’s iconic epic is the diction and the setting. We consider this project as a type of translation: Homer’s plot, story, and theme integrated into a contemporary American sci-fi. Homer’s Odyssey was written in a time of great anxiety and confusion for the Greek people. The so-called Age of Heroes occurred during a time of great social restructuring in between the four centuries between the collapse of the Mycenaean and Minoan empires NOT INTENDED FOR OUTSIDE CIRCULATION LAST UPDATED 09/09/2020 © Freshly Squeezed Pulp 5 and the beginning of the Greek Golden Age. Heroes were great because ​ ​ civilizations were not; with no knowledge of the next generations of ​ Greek greats--Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato among them--there was the overwhelming sense in Homer’s time that society would continue to decay. Athena articulates this dismay in her early assurance to Telemachus in Book Two: “Sons are rarely equal to their fathers. Most worse--few better.” Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad are preoccupied with what it means to be great, how greatness can be achieved, and how it is translated through fatherhood (fatherhood being the nexus of Greek society, patriarchal as that may be). Young men wanted to surpass ​ their fathers, and generally felt they couldn’t; this is exemplified in Telemachus’s storyline. In that sense, Homer’s anxiety painfully resembles our own societal turmoil today. Americans in the 21st century are uniquely pessimistic about their futures; the American Dream of surpassing our ​ ​ own parents (having a better livelihood than the ones who came before us), while certainly more unisex than the ancient Greek concept of surpassing, bears the stain of decay. What does it mean to be a great ​ ​ person in the 21st century? In a world where success can be measured in views and downloads but minimum wage stays the same, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and nothing is done about climate change, racial inequality, or the erosion of democracy itself, Americans and particularly our generation feel impotent, frustrated, and scared. It would be a mistake to call this an adaptation of the Odyssey. Our writer’s room instead is attempting a translation, not ​ ​ from Ancient Greek to contemporary American English, but from Antiquity to modern U.S.A. We are Gen Z writers trying to explore what ​ it is like to be alive in a tumultuous 21st century through these established and well-loved characters. While on the surface the ​ stories of Odysseus, Telemachus, and Penelope may seem irrelevant, they are actually more timely than ever: Odysseus is a soldier who after a decade of fighting a superfluous war returns to a largely civilian world he does not recognize; Telemachus is a fatherless young man in a society where the newly rich ignore and redefine the rules of success; Penelope struggles with her own identity, her family, and her femininity. NOT INTENDED FOR OUTSIDE CIRCULATION LAST UPDATED 09/09/2020 © Freshly Squeezed Pulp 6 Major Motifs Surpassing, Heroism, and Greatness Our most important ongoing motif is centered around the idea of what it means to be great, good, and proper, qualifications all set by a society that is always changing. Each of the main characters struggle with these qualifications in different ways. In less formal terms, Odysseus and Penelope are both boomers; they grew up in a fundamentally different society pre-Trojan War than Telemachus’s generation, which includes the suitors. As such, they have extremely rigid, extremely conservative, and dated ideas of what is morally right, even if both sacrifice these views from time to time in order to achieve their own goals. The great arc of our first season is for Telemachus to shed this conservatism while adopting a new cynicism as he explores the Greek constellations looking for his father, eventually discovering the Crystal Conspiracy that started the Trojan War. For Telemachus, “surpassing his father” actually means rejecting him ideologically altogether. Odysseus likewise undergoes a change in that he is forced to accept his own shortcomings as a hero. See: The Suitors, Pisistratus ​ ​ ​ For additional insight into this theme of heroism and greatness. Success through Anonymity In keeping with the question of greatness, Odysseus’s dual identities of king and beggar frequently come up throughout Homer’s Odyssey. While Odysseus is known as a hero, he is often most successful disguised as a beggar. His identity as “Nobody”, most famously associated with Polyphemus, facilitates his return to his identity as Odysseus. Odysseus disguises as a beggar in Troy, in front of the suitors, to Polyphemus, to Arete, and throughout his travels; Athena makes a point to disguise him as often as possible. Greek heroes, however, are immortalized as such only when they put their name on it; it is Odysseus’s desire to boast (“Tell them it was Odysseus that blinded your eye!”) that frequently impedes his journey home. NOT INTENDED FOR OUTSIDE CIRCULATION LAST UPDATED 09/09/2020 © Freshly Squeezed Pulp 7 Other scholars have written better about this subject; for our purposes, it is important to know that we continue Homer’s juxtaposition of the seen and celebrated versus the unseen and effective to further explore the nature of heroism and the concept of surpassing. Techno-Anxiety As a society that has developed space travel, the Odysseus of our story has a wealth of technologies available to him than the original, technologies that continue to develop at an advanced pace, resulting in generational clashes. In some ways, the effects are benign, like when Queen Arete, who hosts her own Dr. Phil-style TV show, doesn’t understand her daughter Nausicaa’s ClikClok live streams; in other ways, the misunderstandings between generations are more severe. In our story, the techno-anxiety currently experienced in the 21st century is especially reflected through the gods, particularly in Athena, who is an Artificial Intelligence unit among flesh-and-blood gods. See: Athena for more on the conflict between AI and divinity. ​ ​ See: Primordial History for more context on the gods ​ ​ themselves. Divine Vs. Human Nature In continuing our question of what makes a good versus a great person, we compare divine versus human nature to explore the consequences of ambition. See: Supporting Characters ​ See: Antagonists ​ Imperialism and Colonialism Bluntly, the Trojan War for our purposes is an allegory for the Iraq War; as a postbellum story, the Odyssey allows us to explore the consequences of this conflict on families. We’ve added features to NOT INTENDED FOR OUTSIDE CIRCULATION LAST UPDATED 09/09/2020 © Freshly Squeezed Pulp 8 our Iliad that go beyond the scope of Homer’s, including a bid for natural resources of Troy to strengthen this comparison. See: Trojan War for more detail. ​ ​ Fatherhood See: Penelope, Telemachus ​ ​ ​ Writing Style and Structure A radio drama has no visuals to rely on. Any and all information has to be carried through actors delivering lines, and the usual maxim “Show, Don’t Tell” presents a unique challenge to radio playwrights. As it stands, The Odyssey Project aims to center its exposition with relatable, witty characters and snappy, exploratory dialogue that can showcase a complex, and diverse universe in a natural and organic way.
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  • Odyssey Glossary of Names
    GLOSSARY OF NAMES GLOSSARY OF NAMES [Note, the following is raw output from OCR software, and is otherwise unedited.] (First appearance noted by book and line number.) Achaeans (A-kee'-unz): General term used by Homer to reFer to Greeks. 2.139 Acheron (A'-ker-on): River in the Underworld, land of the dead. 10.537 Achilles (A-kil'-eez): Son of Peleus and Thetis. He is the heroic leader of the Myrmidons in the Trojan War and is slain by Paris. Odysseus consults him in the Underworld. 3.117 Aeaea (Ee-ee'-a): Island on which Circe lives. 9.34 Aegisthus (Ee-jis'-thus): Son of Thyestes and Pelopia. He seduces Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon, while Agamemnon is away fighting the Trojan War and helps her slay Agamemnon when he returns. Orestes avenges this action years later by murdering both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. 1.35 GLOSSARY OF NAMES Aegyptus (Ee-jip'-tus): The Nile River. 4.511 Aeolus (Ee'-oh-lus): King of the island Aeolia and keeper of the winds. 10.2 Aeson (Ee'-son): Son oF Cretheus and Tyro; father of Jason, leader oF the Argonauts. 11.262 Aethon (Ee'-thon): One oF Odysseus' aliases used in his conversation with Penelope. 19.199 Agamemnon (A-ga-mem'-non): Son oF Atreus and Aerope; brother of Menelaus; husband oF Clytemnestra. He commands the Greek Forces in the Trojan War. He is killed by his wiFe and her lover when he returns home; his son, Orestes, avenges this murder. 1.36 Agelaus (A-je-lay'-us): One oF Penelope's suitors; son oF Damastor; killed by Odysseus.
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  • Sophocles, Ajax, Lines 1-171
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  • From the Odyssey, Part 1: the Adventures of Odysseus
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  • A Level Classical Civilisation Candidate Style Answers
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  • The Odyssey Homer Translated Lv Robert Fitzç’Erald
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  • Djebar's Scheherazade & Atwood's Penelope
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  • Year of Ulysses
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  • THE ODYSSEY of HOMER Translated by WILLIAM COWPER LONDON: PUBLISHED by J·M·DENT·&·SONS·LTD and in NEW YORK by E·P·DUTTON & CO to the RIGHT HONOURABLE
    THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER Translated by WILLIAM COWPER LONDON: PUBLISHED by J·M·DENT·&·SONS·LTD AND IN NEW YORK BY E·P·DUTTON & CO TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE COUNTESS DOWAGER SPENCER THE FOLLOWING TRANSLATION OF THE ODYSSEY, A POEM THAT EXHIBITS IN THE CHARACTER OF ITS HEROINE AN EXAMPLE OF ALL DOMESTIC VIRTUE, IS WITH EQUAL PROPRIETY AND RESPECT INSCRIBED BY HER LADYSHIP’S MOST DEVOTED SERVANT, THE AUTHOR. THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE BOOK I ARGUMENT In a council of the Gods, Minerva calls their attention to Ulysses, still a wanderer. They resolve to grant him a safe return to Ithaca. Minerva descends to encourage Telemachus, and in the form of Mentes directs him in what manner to proceed. Throughout this book the extravagance and profligacy of the suitors are occasionally suggested. Muse make the man thy theme, for shrewdness famedAnd genius versatile, who far and wideA Wand’rer, after Ilium overthrown,Discover’d various cities, and the mindAnd manners learn’d of men, in lands remote.He num’rous woes on Ocean toss’d, endured,Anxious to save himself, and to conductHis followers to their home; yet all his carePreserved them not; they perish’d self-destroy’dBy their own fault; infatuate! who devoured10The oxen of the all-o’erseeing Sun,And, punish’d for that crime, return’d no more.Daughter divine of Jove, these things record,As it may please thee, even in our ears.The rest, all those who had perdition ’scapedBy war or on the Deep, dwelt now at home;Him only, of his country and his wifeAlike desirous, in her hollow grotsCalypso, Goddess beautiful, detainedWooing him to her arms.
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  • The Untold Death of Laertes. Revaluating Odysseus's Meeting
    The untold death of Laertes. Revaluating Odysseus’s meeting with his father Abstract This article discusses the narrative function and symbolism of the Laertes scene in the twenty- fourth book of the Odyssey. By pointing out the scene’s connections to other passages (the story of Penelope’s web, the first and second nekuia , the farewellto the Phaeaceans, the Argus scene, but also the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad) and by tackling some of the textualproblems that it poses (the apparent cruelty of Odysseus’s lies to his father, the double layers of meaning in his fictions, the significance of the sèma of the trees), this article aims to point out how the Laertes scene is tightly woven into the larger thematic and symbolicaltissue of the Odyssey. Odysseus’s reunion with his father is conclusive to the treatment of some important themes such as death and burial, reciprocalsense of love and duty and the succession of generations. It willbe argued that the untold death of Laertes becomes paradigmatic for the fate Odysseus himself chooses, and for the way in which the epic as a whole deals with the problem of mortality. Keywords Odyssey, Laertes, symbolism, mortality, burial, reciprocity Laertes, the old father of Odysseus, is a somewhat forgotten character. He is mostly considered to be of minor importance to the plot of the Odyssey, and his reunion with his son in the twenty-fourth book is often seen as a more or less dispensable addendum to the realclimax, the recognition scene with Penelope. In this article, I aim to readjust this view by exploring the context and significance of this final meeting.
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  • 23 Hero-Without-Nostos.Pdf
    1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self- archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Int class trad DOI 10.1007/s12138-014-0367-6 ARTICLE A Hero Without Nostos: Ulysses’ Last Voyage in Twentieth-Century Italy Francesca Schironi © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 Abstract The article reviews the reception of Ulysses’ last voyage in twentieth- century Italy. Ulysses’ last voyage is used by Italian authors to discuss different and often opposing views of the ideal human life as well as the intellectual and exis- tential angsts of the twentieth century. In addition, the Italian twentieth-century Ulysses becomes part of a metapoetic discourse, as going back to the Homeric and Dantesque myths of Ulysses for an artist also means interrogating oneself on the possibility of creating something new within a long tradition. This metaliterary dimension adds to the modern Italian reception of Ulysses, making it a unique case of the intersection of many different layers of reception both in chronological and thematic terms.
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  • Death and the Female Body in Homer, Vergil, and Ovid
    DEATH AND THE FEMALE BODY IN HOMER, VERGIL, AND OVID Katherine De Boer Simons A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Depart- ment of Classics. Chapel Hill 2016 Approved by: Sharon L. James James J. O’Hara William H. Race Alison Keith Laurel Fulkerson © 2016 Katherine De Boer Simons ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT KATHERINE DE BOER SIMONS: Death and the Female Body in Homer, Vergil, and Ovid (Under the direction of Sharon L. James) This study investigates the treatment of women and death in three major epic poems of the classical world: Homer’s Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I rely on recent work in the areas of embodiment and media studies to consider dead and dying female bodies as representations of a sexual politics that figures women as threatening and even mon- strous. I argue that the Odyssey initiates a program of linking female death to women’s sexual status and social class that is recapitulated and intensified by Vergil. Both the Odyssey and the Aeneid punish transgressive women with suffering in death, but Vergil further spectacularizes violent female deaths, narrating them in “carnographic” detail. The Metamorphoses, on the other hand, subverts the Homeric and Vergilian model of female sexuality to present the female body as endangered rather than dangerous, and threatened rather than threatening. In Ovid’s poem, women are overwhelmingly depicted as brutalized victims regardless of their sexual status, and the female body is consistently represented as bloodied in death and twisted in metamorphosis.
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  • Homer's Odyssey
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