|
Article on Homer in WOOL-GATHERER 1:
‘Rites of Passage’: the coming-of-age of Telemachus in Homer’s The Odyssey.
Extract:
"... I think of Homer as a croupier: he deals the audience cards, which accumulate into a hand which gives you a complete story. Many of the cards are a bit dog-eared and faded – these are the formulaic building-blocks which do so much of the narrative donkey-work, the oft-handled devices of the ancient oral tradition with which he worked. But then, from time to time, he slips in a pristine card which takes your breath away when you turn it over, so fresh are its colours, so subtle the design...."
FULL CONTENTS OF WOOL-GATHERER 1:
‘‘Cast Sorrow to the Cock’: the mental breakdown and recovery of Thomas Hoccleve.
‘Confounding Elysium’: the geography of the afterlife – Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.
‘Monsters in Cupid’s Pageant’: the tentative courtship of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.
‘And are there Neanderthals still in Scotland?’: Samuel Johnson’s journey to the Western Isles.
‘Transvestism and the Pursuit of Happiness’: cross-dressing themes in Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters.
‘Oh to be in England (or perhaps somewhere much nicer)’: mixed messages about the relative merits of home and abroad from Robert Browning.
‘Women’s Page’: poems by women writers – Maura Dooley, Fleur Adcock, Mary Alcock.
‘And now – a Commercial Break’: poems by Hugh Parry; short stories by Margaret Wakefield.
‘Roll over, Beethoven’: musical aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
‘George Herbert and “The Forerunners”’: does literary skill in a religious poem dignify the subject or feed the writer’s vanity?
‘Apolonius and Silla’: the stories of Barnabe Riche; Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and its source; the Elizabethan treatment of lunacy; ambiguous punctuation.
‘Publish and be Cuckolded’: translations of Ovid’s Amores compared.
‘Rites of Passage’: the coming-of-age of Telemachus in Homer’s The Odyssey.
To purchase WOOL-GATHERER 1, please send a cheque for £2.50 (UK destinations – for overseas postage rates please enquire) to:
D.H. Parry
Bryniau
Uwchmynydd
Pwllheli
Gwynedd LL53 8BY
Visit the homepage to see contents of other WOOL-GATHERERS and miscellaneous pamphlets.
| 
Authors G-H 
