The Odyssey

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Odyssey by Homer, 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 has shipwrecks, Cyclops, brave heroes and seductive sex goddesses. But it’s also got revenge, true love and existential angst. The story follows on from Homer’s Iliad, and tells of the Greek hero Odysseus and his long attempt to get home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what has given the Odyssey such a fundamental position in the history of western ideas, what are the meanings behind the trials and tribulations that befall Odysseus and how the Odyssey was composed and by whom.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Simon Goldhill 8 episodes
  Professor of Greek at King's College, Cambridge
• Edith Hall 19 episodes
  Leverhulme Professor of Greek Cultural History at Durham University
• Oliver Taplin 3 episodes
  Classics Scholar and Translator at Oxford University

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Programme ID: p004y297

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y297

Auto-category: 880 (Hellenic literatures; Classical Greek)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. The Odyssey by Homer is often claimed as one of the two great founding works of Western literature.