Alternative assignment to Getty Paper

Option only for those who have not signed up for the trip on March 3

Select 1 of the numbered topics below:

1) Find a work of the last hundred years based on or responsive to a work or works we have studied in this class. It can be a painting, a song, a film, a poem, story, novel, or play.

Discuss one or more ways in which the modern work comments upon, interprets, expands or parodies elements in the original ancient work.

Use specific references to texts or details of both works.

Some examples of modern works you might consider:

Woody Allen’s “Mighty Aphrodite”

The Cream’s “Tales of Brave Ulysses”

Marc Chagall’s “Daphnis and Chloe”

Maurice Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe”

1987 film version of Medea

Mrs. Henderson (now at Palm Theatre) and Lysistrata

2. Brokeback Mountain (or any other "serious" movie) is/is not "tragic" by strict Greek standards. Discuss.

3.The Coen brothers claimed that "O Brother Where Art Thou" was based on the Odyssey. Were they kidding, or were they for real? Discuss.

4. Achilles dies young but Odysseus lives to a ripe old age: which do we value more, the young corpse or the old man, and why? (James Dean vs. Dennis Hopper, Keats vs. Wordsworth, Buddy Holly vs. James Brown...) Discuss in reference to the great nekuia in book 11 (and/or the little nekuia in book 24).

5. Odysseus, a hero for our time? Or does our time demand a different kind of hero? Hey, is heroism even possible in the computer age? Discuss.