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In Our Time
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PROGRAMME INFO |
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The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. |
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PRESENTER |
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BIOGRAPHY
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| "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
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PROGRAMME DETAILS |
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THE ODYSSEY
The Odyssey by Homer is often claimed as the great founding work of Western Literature. It's an epic that has entertained its audience for nearly three thousand years: it's got shipwrecks, it's got monsters, it's got brave heroes and seductive sex goddesses. It's got revenge and it's also got love. The story follows on from Homer's The Iliad, and essentially it is a tale of the Greek hero Odysseus and his long attempt to get home to Ithaca after the Trojan Wars.
What has given it such a fundamental position in the history of western ideas? What are the meanings behind the trials and tribulations that befall Odysseus on his way? And who really wrote The Odyssey?
Contributors
Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek at King's College, Cambridge
Edith Hall, Leverhulme Professor of Greek Cultural History at Durham University
Oliver Taplin, Classics Scholar and Translator at Oxford University
Further reading
All the guests recommend the OUP World's Classics translation of The Odyssey by Walter Shewring. Oliver Taplin also recommended Robert Fitzgerald's translation for Everyman's Library Classics.
For a beginner's guide Oliver recommends Jasper Griffin's Homer: The Odyssey (Cambridge 2004). On a more scholarly note is a collection of essays edited by Seth Schein called Reading the Odyssey (Princeton 96). Oliver himself has published An Odyssey Round Odysseus which is now out of print but can be picked up second-hand quite easily.
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