The Literary Canon According to the Back Row
December 17, 2013
Just like Homecoming Weekend — Odysseus killing the suitors, Gustav Schwab, Sagen des Klassischen Altertums (1882)
IVAR the MIDWESTERNER, who teaches at a nondescript institution somewhere west of the Mississippi and East of the Left Coast, writes:
For years now I have been collecting the wildest, most desperate statements written by college students in papers and final examinations in various college-level English courses in which students read the classics. The samples below come from three different states and two different decades; a few are recent.
On Homer’s Odyssey: “Athene helps Telemachus and Odysseus to be reunited and restore order to Troy. This all took place around 450 B.C. but it was not written down until 800 B.C.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “Odysseus, the main character, though having the hand of Venus (Venus-Isis) right on his side, is faced with much despair when he has to leave his wife and son’s behind before he goes on many ‘adventures’ and encounters things. He defeats the Cycalopse after barely being eaten and meets Nausicaa while naked then stumbling over Calypso who holds him prisoner and gives him all of the winds.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “Beginning with Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ written down around 800 BC, when infact the events took place in the 4th century. There are many examples of order, tragedy, and some triumph.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “In Homer’s Odyssey while Odyssus is gone for ten years trying to get home from Calypso’s isle about 700 B.C. and enduring the many abstacles he faces along the way, the entire time’s he’s trying to restore order with in his selfs life.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “The Odessy, written down around 800 B.C., its events are said to actually take place around 500 B.C.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “Based on my opinion Homer in the Odyssey would be a man from my opinion that believed the things worth dying for were better to kill for based on his work of the Odyssey.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “The Trojan War Saga is one of the most important wars of the early 1100th century B.C. It changed the entire landscaping of the ancient greek world since the event was recorded initially by Homer in his widely known work, ‘The Odyssey,’ it has been interpreted in many different ways by multiple writers and dramatists. These interpretation [sic] very [sic] greatly, yet most seem to be the same.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “In Homer’s The Odyssey and Aeneid there is a similarity interesting between the two texts in that both man characters are in relationships.”
On Homer’s Odyssey and Vergil’s Aeneid: “Homer’s stance on the Trojan war is different from Vergil’s but just about the same.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “Homer’s Odyssey was a tale about a man named Odysseus who set sail without a ship to fight against the Trojan war in Ithaca, blinding the Cyclopses eye and telling Posidion about his name.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “Telemicus could never really become a man because he was always being run over by the suitors.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “Due to a picture on a vase it is believed that Homer and his men were forced to blind the Cyclops in his right eye.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “The ending of ‘The Odessey’ was alot like homecoming week ending with Odyssues and Athenus killing all of the suitors.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “Even more important than eating Odysseus’s men, the Cyclops didn’t have any ships or laws.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “Some people probably would not have done anything so killing the suitors was more than just Odysseus saying, whatever.”
On Homer’s Odyssey and Vergil’s Aeneid: “The biggest difference between the Odissy and the Aeneus is that one is a story but the other one is more like a poem.”
On Virgil’s Aeneid: “A large wooden horse is brought by Aeneas from Troy, which Queen Dido thinks is a sign of appreciation. When the wooden horse is opened up and a number of Greek soldiers jump out, Dido is in shock. Thankfully, Aeneas and his men show up and promise to restore her disorder.”
On Euripides and Aeschylus (maybe): “In the Trojan women and Aeschylus’s Oresteia, the women manage at last to assassinate the king Agamemnon using the help of Orestious.”
On Elektra (an opera after Euripides) by Richard Strauss: “At the end of the opera Elektra by Strass, Elektra is dancing so hard at the end of the opera she falls to the ground from happiness.”
On Augustine’s Confessions: “Much like Odyssus Augustine, who at one time was reared as a saint in Hippo, is tempted by pretty women as well as by a pear tree. But later he loses his self-control problem and converts into a Christian.”
On The Quest of the Holy Grail: “In ‘The Quest of the Holy Grale’ Galahad, which was by Jean de Joinville of the 17th century, was going around looking for piece of mind. Around this time the enlightenment also occurred.”
On Joinville’s Life of Saint Louis: “The Crusades was a war fought over in the holy land by the Romans, Catholics and Protestants.”
On Camoes’ Lusiads: “About the same time as this there was a renizance in Italy with Greeks, and depth prespective and also numerous changes in moors and the types of thought that was allowed. There costumes were very colorful about this time. One of them, I forgot his name had a telescope.”
— Comments —
Ivar adds:
I should report that any number of students in my recent semester acquitted themselves honorably, showing their grasp of the reading assignment by responding to it intelligently in their written remarks. (I wouldn’t want to give the impression that they’re all like those quoted above!) The “howlers” in my log, while unintentionally hilarious, also point up a universal deficiency in American education at all levels. It’s particularly significant that so many students can’t get their minds around what used to be a bedrock-element of K-12 instruction: That the advent of Christianity established an epoch, so that we count dates in years BC and in years AD, counting them “up” in terms of the Anno Domine and “down” in terms of Before Christ. I guess that the many students who stumble over this important item in the West’s traditional self-description have never heard of it before, which is to say that they have no sense of “their” history.
Laura writes:
Ah, I see. Thank you. Then we will not see these howlers as any reflection on your teaching ability. : – )
