ENGL 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Narrative Poetry, Odysseus, Narrative Structure
13 Sep 2018
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Document Summary
The odyssey is the oldest ancient greek piece of writing, and is essentially a very long narrative epic poem. It details many legends and events (like the war of troy), which took place long before it was written. Athenian culture, hundreds of years after it was written, make the odyssey (500-100 bce) a very important part of their culture and classical greek culture, and from there it fed into european literary tradition. This is essentially how it became an important text outside of greek literature: we know virtually nothing about homer. Genre = a distinct kind or category of literature, whether a kind of form (e. g. the novel, the sonnet) or a kind of subject matter (e. g. science fiction, or lyric poetry) Often genre refers more specifically to a conventional combination of form and content (e. g. detective novel, love sonnet).
