Join us on Saturday, June 27 from 9 AM to Noon for a special morning seminar on Homer's timeless epic, "The Odyssey". Our event offers acedmically motivated high school and college students an opportunity to explore the original work, appreciate its lessons, and understand how it might be reimagined on the big screen by Christopher Nolan, when his much anticipated film is released on July 17.

"The Odyssey" tells the story of Odysseus, King of Ithaca and his long journey home after the Trojan war. Having fought for 10 years, he faces another 10 years of perilous wandering at sea. He and his crew encounter a series of incredible mythical dangers. Eventually all of his companions perish, leaving him alone. Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, his faithful wife Penelope is besieged by arrogant suitors who overrun his palace, consume his resources and pressure her to remarry. Their son Telemachus, now a young man, feels powerless until the goddess Athena inspires him to search for news of his father. Eventually, Odysseus returns disguised as a beggar. With help of Telemachus and the gods, he reveals his identity, slaughters the intruders and reunites with Penelope, at last reclaiming his crown and restoring order to his kingdom.

Historians and scholars date “The Odyssey” to sometime between 750-650 BC, emerging from a long oral tradition of Greek epic poetry. Hundreds of papyrus fragments from Egypt dating from the third century BC onward show that the poem was extremely popular in education and daily culture. The poem survived Antiquity through continued hand-copying in the Byzantine empire, where scribes transferred texts from papyri to more durable parchment. The earliest nearly complete medieval manuscripts of "The Odyssey" date to the 10th Century AD. From there, the texts passed from the Renaissance, when printed editions appeared, to modern critical editions based on careful comparison of manuscripts, papyri and ancient quotations.

Can there be any better way to spend a summer Saturday morning than learning about the greatest work of literature ever, a story that has thrilled audiences for thousands of years.