The Odyssey

Ethopoeia is a Greek word that means, roughly, character-making—ethos (character) plus poesis (making). It names a practice that dates back to the beginnings of the art of rhetoric: the making of a character in speech. In Aphthonius’sProgymnasmata, a fourth-century Greek manual of rhetoric that remained an influential classroom text for more than a millennium, ethopoeia assumed a central role: the manual provided scripts of passionate speeches from Greek poetry and myth, which students were expected to imitate. To imitate them well, they had to understand the emotions they encountered: they had to put themselves in the shoes of Niobe or Hecuba or Penelope, and imagine what it was like to be them.
For this assignment, you will do the same thing. You’ll choose a character from The Odyssey—any character except Telemachus or Odysseus—and a moment in which that character experiences powerful emotions, or in which you suspect they might (even if Homer doesn’t make a big deal of it). You’ll then have to reimagine that moment from their perspective, writing an extended speech (what would later be called a “dramatic monologue”) in their voice. This task is partly interpretive—you’ll have to think hard about what is unspoken in the epic, and about the experience of a fictional being—but it’s partly creative: you’ll be reimagining (a small part of) The Odyssey from a different point of view. In the process, you’ll be able to think about what perspectives The Odyssey gives us and which it effaces, and you’ll be able to think about how the poem would be different if someone other than Odysseus were its protagonist.
Here’s what to do:
Think of a character from The Odyssey who captures your imagination. It can be anyone other than Odysseus, Telemachus, or Penelope (since we have such vivid examples of reimagining Penelope from Ovid and Margaret Atwood). Then find a moment where they find themselves in a moment of heightened emotion. Perhaps there’s a crisis; a poignant goodbye; a joyful reunion; a bitter memory, or a happy one. Make that moment the focus of your dramatic monologue.
Write a monologue of approximately three pages, double-spaced, in Times New Roman 12pt. It should be in the first-person, in the voice of the character you’re inhabiting. You’ll have to think about what they’re experiencing in the charged moment you’ve chosen, about how they would speak, about what would matter to them, about what they would want or fear.
Write a reflection of one or two pages on what you’ve learned in the process. What are the challenges of assuming another person’s voice? What did you learn about the character you chose to impersonate? Do you see this moment in The Odyssey differently, and if so how?
4-5pp. total, double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman or similar font

Last Completed Projects