Anthology Odyssey

Two and a half years into my program at university, I transferred schools.  It was the right decision to make at the time because I hated living on campus and the university I transferred to was only a few miles from where I live.  But academically, I think it was one of the worst decisions I've ever made.  I was constantly underwhelmed with the program at my new university because what I had been learning previously was more rigorous.  Yester-day I finally graduated from university, but I'm not sure that I actually deserve my English degree.  At the very least, I feel like I should know more about literature than I do.

So, in an effort to really earn it, I'm going to read all of the literature anthologies that I have.  I have almost three times as many as I actually needed for my classes because I kept finding them for relatively cheap prices at Half Price Books.  I am going to read all of them, but only one at a time and incrementally.  Even before I transferred universities, I didn't like the speed at which material was covered.  It all went by too quickly.  For this project, I'm going to read only one selection a day - a paradigm that I've used for many books of letters and books of poetry.  It seems to work well for me.

I'll be starting with the three anthologies that my advisor generously gave me when I transferred and then jumping back and forth among American, world, and English/British literature, saving until the end the anthologies that I actually used for classes.  I may also be adding some new anthologies to the listing if I get some more.

My current collection of literature anthologies

1. The Norton Introduction to Literature, 5th edition
2. The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume One, 2nd edition
3. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume C, 2nd edition
4. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume C, 8th edition
5. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume D, 6th edition
6. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume B, 2nd edition
7. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume F, 8th edition
8. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume A, 7th edition
9. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B, 7th edition
10. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, 7th edition
11. The Norton Introduction to Literature, 10th edition
12. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume 1, shorter 2nd edition
13. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume 2, shorter 2nd edition
14. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume B, second compact edition
15. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume A, 8th edition
16. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B, 8th edition

I'm sure that I'll encounter some material more than once, but spreading out the various types of literature (American, world, and English/British) will allow some time between reading them, so a second time through might be more enlightening.

I do realize that there's more to earning an English degree than just reading all of the required materials.  I'm glad to have gotten rid of paper writing, so I won't be doing that again.  However, I will write a few posts now and then, but only if I actually have sometime to say about the literature.  An-other thing I didn't like about university was trying to force myself to have an opinion about a work just so that I could write a paper about it or discuss it.

Like this project's title suggests, this might take about twenty years, but I'm fine with that, as long as it continues to be interesting and illuminating.

The Hobbit or The Odyssey

I recently re-read The Hobbit.  The first time I read it (in fall 2012), I hadn't read The Odyssey.  But now that I'm somewhat familiar with The Odyssey after reading it in spring 2013, I found a lot of elements in The Hobbit that resemble The Odyssey.  (It's been over a year since I last read The Odyssey, so I might be a bit vague in describing some of these connections.)

There's the obvious connection between Bilbo's journey and Odysseus' (although the same could be said for any number of adventure stories).  After all, the subtitle to The Hobbit is There and Back Again.  So, in the same way that Odysseus travels from Ithaca to the Trojan War and the back again, Bilbo travels from Bag End to the Lonely Mountain and then back again.  However, Thorin also bears some resemblance to Odysseus in that he's a king trying to regain his former position.  Additionally, both Thorin and Odysseus are trying to regain their treasure - Thorin's treasure in the actual definition, and Odysseus' more figuratively, as he's trying to get back to his wife Penelope.

Thorin is also cast in the rôle of Odysseus when he stabs one of the trolls in the eye in Chapter II.  "He caught up a big branch all on fire at one end; and Bert got that end in his eye before he could step aside."  In The Odyssey, Odysseus (with the help of his men) stabs Polyphemus in the eye with a flaming stick.

There's also a slight connection between the Lotus Eaters and the river that Bombur falls into in Chapter VIII.  After falling in, he "slept on with a smile on his fat face, as if he no longer cared for all the trouble that vexed them."  Later, in Chapter XVI, it's noted that "ever since the adventure in the forest he was always trying to recapture the beautiful dreams he had."  In The Odyssey, those who ate the lotus no longer cared about returning home.  It's not exactly the same in The Hobbit, but there is a certain similarity.

It's not surprising that Tolkien used various elements from The Odyssey in writing The Hobbit because not only was he trying to write an adventure but he was also interested in those old adventures and myths (I also have his The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún, which is based on mythology).  Naturally, parts of them would make their way into his own writing.