the Iliad of Homer

by The Great Courses

By Professor Elizabeth Vandiver of Uniersity of Maryland

Audio Cassette

Published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Renee]

I love these courses. I get so much more out of reading classics when I also listen to these lectures. This one made me excited to finish the Iliad.

[Steven Scheer]

This survey of the Iliad is everything I hoped it would be. Vandiver summarizes the Iliad story in detail, and does the sort of literature-student analysis (characters and their motivations and how the writing reinforces those) you'd expect. But she also explains a lot you would not get in a literature class: how the characters are influenced by social norms and where they fail to adhere to those norms. And she talks about how this story (and these kinds of stories) came to be and how they were performed and whether Homer was a real person, and whether this work is his work, or perhaps a consolidation of his work. The historical and cultural context made this worth the time, and encouraged me to snag a few of Vandiver's other Great Courses while they were on sale. I'm already in the middle of her survey of The Odyssey.

[Andrea]

The Iliad of Homer Great Courses lecture by Elizabeth Vandiver is an excellent scholarly approach to the Iliad (and a good introduction to The Odyssey course). I wish I had listened to this course before her Odyssey course. They are absolutely companions, though there is no prerequisite. The Iliad course is just the one that includes general information for both epics. Vandiver explains a lot of context up front about the Homeric epics, their significance, the lost epics, the homogenization work in the 2nd and 3rd BCE centuries, and information on the poetic meter and epithets. That is a lot of information in six hours, but Vandiver makes it accessible for non-scholars and general fans (like me!). I really recommend this for anyone who wants more than a retelling. Vandiver is an academic, not an entertainer, but knowing what to expect, I was very happy with this series.

[Chad Sides]

A fantastic look at the Iliad full of details I didn't know I wanted to learn about ancient epics with conflicting views and their arguments.