Lecture 'Comparative Readings of the Odyssey/Second Odyssey and Faust I: Enigma, Language of Fire, Images'

Having returned to Ithaca, bringing Homer’s Odyssey to an end, Ulysses leaves again on an unexpected second voyage that often proves his last. According to Dante’s Inferno, canto 26, Ulysses never returned to Ithaca but inflames his companions into seeking another world. Likewise Goethe’s Faust wagers with Mephistopheles on unfulfilled desire and a gratified moment suspending time. All three pursue a task infringing a boundary (in space, time, even the work itself). All three structure long, complex and daunting literary works that grant rich and layered meaning but are difficult to grasp.

This lecture will discuss how comparative readings may inventively engage us with such established texts and help us to consider them creatively within cultural history. It will address Tiresias’s obscure words in the Odyssey, Ulysses’s awe-inspiring punishment within a gigantic flame in Dante’s Inferno, and approach Goethe’s grand Faust I through reading books and prints as cultural objects.