Actual Dialogue at the Drout House This Evening
Dad: Time for bedtime reading.
Daughter: Now we can start Life, the Universe, and Everything. It's going to be awesome.
Dad: Yes, well, about that, sweetie: the print in Life, the Universe, and Everything is really small.
Daughter: So?
Dad: I can't find my reading glasses. We'll have to read the Iliad until they turn up.
Daughter: This is so not fair...
Dad: Sing in me, O Muse, the wrath of Achilles...
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My life among the invertebrates
About Me
- Michael
- I am Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval at Wheaton College, Norton, Mass., where I teach Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, medieval literature, fantasy, science fiction and writing. I am also a Millicent C. McIntosh Fellow. My scholarship is focused on tenth-century English literature and culture, meme-based theories of culture, and the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.
8 comments:
Hee hee. Life with a professor-dad. I think even I, lit prof that I am, would be disappointed if I got The Illiad instead of Douglas Adams. Talk about very different moods!
Were there "Like" buttons next to each line of dialogue, they would all be worth clicking. :)
I hope she's not disappointed by Life, the Universe and Everything when I finally find my glasses. I remember not liking it nearly as much as the first two books, but Yvette Kisor told me it reads aloud really well, so I'm giving it a shot.
The opening of the Iliad did go well, though. Daughter and I are in agreement that Agamemnon in an ass.
Life, the Universe and Everything ought to be fun. The problem is that it inevitably leads to So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, which, while a fine book, does have a section or two that goes to the PG-13/R zone, which depending on you and your daughter, might require a conversation that you might not otherwise rely on Douglas Adams to introduce.
Agamemnon clearly needed a better press agent than Homer. Despite being High King, he constantly gets the "also ran" notices. I wonder if he just gets to be the achetype of the jerk King, or if there ever were stories where he came off better.
Given the seeming devotion of his children as portrayed by Euripides, you would think he perhaps was a better guy shows up in the Iliad.
I don't have the background in the Classics to really know what I am talking about, but it has always seemed like Agamemnon could not have maintained his position as high king and lead general for so long if he really was such an ass as he appears throughout the Illiad.
Don't Panic.
I wish that all problems/disappointments were this enjoyable.
Good for you for introducing her to all the classics. Your daughter is going to be one very well-read young woman.
Yes, Agamemnon as portrayed in The Illiad is a *complete* ass!
Well, Agamemnon came from a sticky family tree, let us remember. His father killed his own brother's children and fed them to his brother.
And then, of course, Agamemnon himself sacrificed his own daughter so they could sail to Troy.
And Agamemnon was the one who made all the suitors of Helen (kings all of them) pledge to support his brother if anyone snatched Helen (he himself having been one of the losing suitors). Manipulative and craft, that was Agamemnon.
Well, Agamemnon came from a sticky family tree, let us remember. His father killed his own brother's children and fed them to his brother.
And then, of course, Agamemnon himself sacrificed his own daughter so they could sail to Troy.
And Agamemnon was the one who made all the suitors of Helen (kings all of them) pledge to support his brother if anyone snatched Helen (he himself having been one of the losing suitors). Manipulative and craft, that was Agamemnon.
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