How are you supposed to enjoy the music of Civilisation 7 without knowing The Odyssey?
On a similar note, you’d think the guy on the right would counter with Beowulf
I learned what it is when I played oddworld: abe’s oddysey (and as a bonus I appreciated the deliberate misspelling to insert the word “odd” into the title, which they did again in the sequel, abe’s exodus)
Meanwhile on tiktok British people are apparently mad at Americans for not knowing or caring about Robbie Williams
Robbie Williams designed his career around not being famous in the US so he could live there without being recognized.
instead we studied useful things
Have you ever seen any British television quiz game shows? The amount of world geography and history most contestants seem to know is abismal, makes me scratch my head and seriously wonder what many of these people are doing there, in a game show about knowledge. What are they even doing there, in the delusion that they have a shot.
“What is the capital of Denmark?”
“Erm… pass.”This person’s comment is just another drop in the bucket in the sorry state of things.
Its not even that great of a mini van. You can get better for cheaper!
Liam’s a tool. UK schools absolutely do teach the Odyssey, and have done so at least as far back as my youth.
most of the time someone says something wasnt taught in school its because that person straight up didnt pay attention in class
I suspect there is significant overlap between the kids who were complaining in math class that what they were learning was useless along with the adults who claim math class didn’t teach them “how to do taxes”. (As if you do anything other than fill out a form, anyways.)
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.
Nope, I don’t think I’d ever heard of it prior to the Arthur version.
We did the fall of Icarus in Year 3. My little sister learned Theseus and the Minotaur when she was around the same age, which is how I knew about it. Other than that, I don’t remember studying Ancient Greek anything, not even Heracles. Your school was obviously better than mine.
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.To be fair, the only people left on Xitter are idiots
EDIT: I HATE
TAYLOR SWIFTGIFS!!! https://tenor.com/nB52SeZoYP1.gifI 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.
It does feel a lot like that, doesn’t it? Why else would the Bronte sisters be on the curriculum if not to snuff out any interest in literature?
Only boring kids would find Wuthering Heights & Jane Eyre boring. Both books would be excellent choices in any curriculum. If you wanna talk boring early 19th century authors, Jane Austen is the name you’re looking for.
It could be worse. We read Brecht and Kafka. Several works of them. I’ve never encountered worse waste of paper and ink than those idiots. And the rest was not much better.
Just because it was wasted on you doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea, Kafka’s short stories especially (Die Verwandlung, Ein Landarzt etc) are accessible for teenagers and a good gateway drug to get interested in other things. Which is really important for kids that don’t have natural access to literature at home.
Sorry, but I experienced “Die Verwandlung” as written diarrhea of a person with severe mental problems. “Der Prozess” didn’t improve my opition of him, either.
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.
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)
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?
If you are going to delve into that, you could also try the book “Circe” by Madelleine Miller. Loved it.
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.
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.
it’s /s because someone could’ve implied that i consider americans and brits as the winners in this competition, when in fact, the only competition they’re winning is the one for the most villanous politic actions. USA is a leaéer here at the first glance, but brits literally created USA, so that kinda makes all of the USA villainy into a subset of the british one
edit: i was wrong, the best villains are the french, bc William the Conquerror is the reason brits exist, and therefore also the reason usa does
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.
People often choose the easier path, which in this case means choosing status over knowledge.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
I read both The Illiad and a shortened version of The Odyssey in school.
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.
I may be misremembering but didn’t the derogative “Chad” start in the UK?
I think you’re thinking of chav
may nigel farage further dumb down the island people.
