I may be misremembering but didn’t the derogative “Chad” start in the UK?
I’m in Canada.
I wasn’t taught anything about the Odyssey or Iliad
But I at least know that they’re ancient and Greek.Liam’s a tool. UK schools absolutely do teach the Odyssey, and have done so at least as far back as my youth.
Mine didn’t. We did Buddy, The Crucible, Animal Farm and Shakespeare from what I remember. First I heard of the Odyssey was when I was 19 and DW did a retelling of it on Arthur. When I saw a copy of the story in the shop I worked at, I got it so I could read the actual story.
Were you not aware of it at any point? I don’t necessarily mean as part of the GCSE curriculum. I’ve been aware of the Odyssey and the Iliad from the “Ancient Greeks” part of our primary school curriculum back in year 4. Of course we weren’t analysing texts, but I’d expect any ten year old to be capable of rattling off some major plot points like blinding Polyphemus, or sailors plugging their ears with wax against the sirens and tying Odysseus to the mast.
To be fair, the only people left on Xitter are idiots
I have to admit that I have not read the Illias or the Odyssey in school, either. We were made read books in school intendet to make children shy away from books, so they won’t touch any of them after school ever again.
Luckily I had read loads of good books by that time, so I knew that only a few are as horrible as the ones they made us read in school.
There are basic versions of these stories with big drawings, mostly made for kids. Basically manga. When i was a kid(in Greece), 35 years ago, i had this
https://www.stratikis.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/iliada-nea.jpg
This is Iliad and it was cooler than Odyssey. Badass dudes with almost divine powers fighting other dudes and entire armies on their own, while Gods are taking sides and fucking things up. Isnt that shonen.
Odyssey’s ending was cool though, even if it was a bit sad.
I first read the classic translation by Schwab when I was ten or eleven.
may nigel farage further dumb down the island people.
The Illiad was like the Bible before the Bible.
Only in that it was widely published but there are others too like the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The Illiad was like the ancient Greek Bible because it was used to provide behavioural guidelines and views common to all Greeks. It was a text central to any Greek’s education. How does a leader act? Read the Illiad. How are battles waged? Read the Illiad. What is the relation between humans and gods? Read the Illiad.
Alexander the Great was known to carry a copy of the Illiad with him at all times, and many philosophers routinely used excerpts from it to illustrate their points. And people would reference it like we reference things from the Bible in the west (Judas, turn water into wine, cross to bear, turn the other cheek etc)
Iliad was not a religious text(or even a text for many centuries). It was just a story of a dude trying to get back home.
I know you know this and likely just mistyped, but for clarity, the Iliad is about the war itself. The Odyssey is about the dude trying to get back home.
They weren’t religious texts per se, but they were certainly cultural touchstones which contain important lessons about the human condition, death, love, and what’s truly important in life. They would fill a role similar to histories in the Old Testament, probably, like the book of Ruth.
You are right, i wrote a comment about iliad before and mistyped iliad here too. And you are right, it was a cultural touch stone for ancient Greece.
I have not read the Iliad and I’ve only read a few excerpts from the Odyssey. They available as an audio book anywhere that isn’t Audible?
Wait… some people don’t know the Odyssey?
As an American, I am going to dine on this single example as if it disproves the idea that we are insular and provincial hicks for the next decade.
nah, it just proves that brits are as stupid as you are, which is, tbh, is not a surprise /s
The /s is unnecessary, I can assure you we are stupid and nobody should be surprised.
We had Brexit. We can’t say nothing.
As a layman, i believe you have a stronger private school presence, which tend to specialize in order to differentiate. But I might be wrong because I have limited information on the topic of British education.
We have a strong private school presence, yes. Trouble is it leads to privilege and people get on in life not cause they’re clever, but cause they wear the right school tie.
Certainly stashing it away in the ammo belt.
It’s wild that the U.K. doesn’t teach the Odyssey, I thought their whole thing was stealing other peoples’ culture and pretending they owned it now.
I did study it at school but had to take Classical Civilisation for one of my GCSE options. Our default in English Literature was a Shakespeare work as previously mentioned (Merchant of Venice for me). I also recall studying An Inspector Calls?
Shakespeare invented literature, so clearly there’s no value in teaching anything from before him…
You haven’t experienced Shakespeare unless you read it in the original klingon.
taH pagh taHbe’!
ghu’ qaS wa’DIch’e’, qar’a’!
Fair point.
Just looked it up, the Odyssey can be taught in the UK but it is rarely chosen because Shakespeare is easier to teach and students who pick Shakespeare get better grades on average.
Odd that it’s a choice between them. We learned Shakespeare and Homer where I am in the US.
In the UK secondary students study 3 bits of literature for the exam, modern (20th century+), victorian and classical which is everything before then, I think that’s how it works but that’s just from memory
We don’t like to brag about it but we fought the Brits in the War of 1812, one of the things we took from England was Greek literature. In turn, we Americans lost the definition of jams vs jelly and the superior spelling of “colour”.
I rebel against this fact by being American and using the spelling of “Grey” for the color, autocorrect be damned.
I’ve heard of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, does that count?
That translation has fallen out of favor with contemporary scholars but you get the gist.
Well Greece wasn’t ever a British colony, so they didn’t have as many opportunities to steal artifacts and culture as they did with, say, Egypt or India
I’m sure they had ample opportunity to steal Greek artefacts from when Greeks invaded Egypt and India.
Also see: the Ionian Islands from 1815 to 1862
Is it even taught in the US? 🤔
I didn’t read it for school. I just liked reading and had this gnarly book featuring all the greatest hits of Greek mythology growing up.
I read both The Illiad and a shortened version of The Odyssey in school.
Went to a mediocre high school in the US, and I had an English/writing course where the only materials were the Aeneid, Illiad, Odyssey, and Mythology by Edith Hamilton.
That seems above average, but I don’t have too much to compare it to. I read all of this when I took Latin as my language classes. And the odyssey for fun.
I read it for school
Literally a part of a classical education. As in Classical.
We had to do skits. Broke it down by chapters and each group did like a page or two. I was the son in the scene where he’s working with his dad in disguise right when Odysseus returns home and sees all the other guys trying to bang his wife
That we did do; but for The Lion in Winter. I was Geoffrey.
Definitely was in the rural, redneck school I went to.
My 10th grade English class studied a small section of it, like one self contained story.
This is what we did as well, in AP English. We also did Beowulf. We also had to read the first fucking Harry Potter book because the teacher liked Harry Potter. Imagine a group of the highest achieving 17 and 18 year olds out of 600 students their age writing papers about a book written for 10 year olds.
Such a waste of time. We got college credit for this bullshit. I’m still mad about it.
I feel like there’s a way to do it that doesn’t suck - an examination of the book WRT the hero’s journey, picking out elements borrowed from English literary tradition to see how they’re deployed v. original texts, etc.
Real talk though, I feel it comes from a place of not knowing how to appeal to young people. I ran into the very same thing once when asked about course ideas for first year students coming directly from high school. I had no idea (still don’t) what would appeal to kids, so I thought a course that used Harry Potter as a keystone text (everybody being familiar, using it as a bridge to more traditional lit) could work. But as I said the words I knew 18 year old me would’ve hated that, sooo…
……………I did the odyssey at various points man I think the guy in the tweet is just Polyphemus or smthn like ‘I don’t know who this nobody guy is, ain’t never heard of no odyssey before bro’
Not in secondary school but I did the Illiad, the Anaed, the Odyssey and Ovids Metamorphoses in 6th form college.
The world doesn’t revolve around America, but you’ll see idiots in Bumbfuck, Romania talking about Soros and wokeism. It’s got to be exhausting.
Soros is a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust and moved to America afterwards btw, so when someone from the Balkans is complaining about him it’s not ignorance, it means something very specific.
“The Jews are trying to replace us.” ?
Orban / the party in charge were saying Soros was using his money and power to flood Romania with immigrants.
Even more of a Nazi dog whistle than when the American right does it? I guess that would make it a Nazi Air Horn
More that it’s not just an idiot complaining about things supposedly happening in a different country.
Still exhausting!
I find that people get more ticked off about the woke in non American countries even if it really doesn’t involve them (it should) but even then they increase their hostility because of it
$10 says the dipshit in question did a frantic google, saw ‘ulysses’ and went james joyce.
Still not American though
Getting closer at least
…the US is not closer to the UK than Ireland though…
The Illiad and the Odyssey are classics and hardly American culture. They are western culture as a whole. No idea what the drama is about but some dude not knowing what the Odyssey is, is the same as not knowing any other classic. (There are too many to count, but not knowing the most popular ones are is like not knowing the titanic sank.) (Spoilers)
That’s the joke.
…may we see the tweets?
thankies 💚
Rude tweets? At this time of year?
Yes!
When the only Homer they know is Homer Simpson.
Fun fact: the voice actor for Homer Simpson also voiced Homer (the Greek one) in the Disney Hercules animated series.
Even The Simpsons covered the Odyssey at some point though.
Fox should sue those lazy Greeks for stealing the name.
