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Antonio Ferme
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©Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection So, a Homerist, an archaeologist and a dentist walk into a bar.
Fresh from a Thursday night showing of Christopher Nolan‘s “The Odyssey,” a group of 17 spent the evening doing what scholars have done with Homer’s epic for nearly 3,000 years: arguing about it. “We had a really robust debate,” says Joel P. Christensen, editor of “The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer’s Odyssey.” Christensen was accompanied by retired Homer scholars (often referred to as Homerists), editors, professors, historians and various public intellectuals. “And my wife is a dentist,” he adds, “so she was the red herring in the crowd.” The conversation ranged from Nolan’s decision to make Polyphemus (the Cyclops that Matt Damon’s Odysseus stabs in the eye) nonverbal to the film’s depiction of language itself. Each intellectual was fervently dedicated to a different academic discipline, yet Homer’s “The Odyssey” is one of the few works that transcends any single field of literature or history. “I was surprised by how many academics liked it,” Christensen says. “I had to be restrained a few times by my wife. Everybody knows that I’m the worst audience for the film.” After a long pause, he continues, “I’ve been saying to myself: ‘This is not Homer’s “Odyssey.” This is Nolan’s “Odyssey.” And it needs to be judged on different terms.’”
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