Homer's Iliad: More than just an epic

As part of my Classics major I have to take Humanities 101 this semester. To put it bluntly, I did NOT want to take this class. It's a gen ed like class and I do not like them. I specifically chose Grinnell College because Grinnell does not have any gen ed requirements, it is a completely open, student picked curriculum and that is how I like it. But nonetheless, here I am in Humanities 101, a very gen ed class. The first day of class did nothing to reassure me that I would like the class either. If I was going to be forced to take this class I at least hoped it would be easy. I could really do with an easy A class. HA! Not the case with this particular Hum 101 class. I should have know, the professor is a Classics professor. That really says it all. There is nothing quite like a Classics professor when it comes to intensity, expectations and rigor.

We started with Homer's Iliad. I had tried to read both the Iliad and the Odyssey many years back and the poems waere too difficult and boring for me to get very far in them. But now, I had no choice. I'll admit, there were moments in reading the Iliad where I was pretty captivated. Once you get past the style of the writing and the formatting of poetry you can actually read through it pretty quickly. One student in class today (the last day of the Iliad) said that the book was like reading a movie for her, and I think that's a pretty fair way to describe a lot of the poem. It does kind of read like a movie (no surpise really, can you say Troy http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332452/ ). But some parts of the poem were just plain dry and agonizing to get through. When Homer lists off the names of 30 something sea nymphs I was particularly enthralled. But, like most "masterpieces" the Iliad gets a lot better in retrospective. Thinking back about the poem I can see the connections, the meaning, the flow of events, the recycling of ideas and motifs and it is all pretty cool. We read an article by David Denby http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Denby_(film_critic) , http://books.google.com/books/about/Great_books.html?id=DKomUUnxmaQC for class today to wrap up our reading of the Iliad. Though this article has a lot of plot spoilers in it I really wish our professor would have assigned it the first day. Denby has a very unique was of writing and a very fun style. The way he writes about the Iliad leaves you absolutely dying to read it, again and again and again. I have only just finished all 497 pages (and it was an uphill battle) but after reading Denby's article I seriously find myself longing to read it again. Denby is an miracle writer no doubt and I realize now that I must give Homer the respect he deserves as a true master of the epic poem.