Talk:The Ancient World (HUM 124 - UNC Asheville)/Texts/Odyssey/Plot and Narration

Plot Discussion
Some summary, but break down and analyze Basic Elements Patterns Plot vs. Timeline

All of the plots that become a plot. Gods, odyssey, at home, lil oddysiuses Greek world tour, and the events of the Iliad that are alluded to.
 * This is good! I'm especially interested in "basic elements." Are you thinking of a kind of classification system? Breaking down a plot into its constituent parts? This would be great. You could pick a particularly interesting scene in one of the books you are covering to demo this. Some candidates for basic elements that come to mind: important events vs. ones that are not as important...defining "important" as something that moves the plot forward. Also: turning points, initiations, conclusions....this is a fun idea.-Joey Cross (discuss • contribs) 15:27, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Sign your posts!
Make sure to sign what you write in the Discuss tab! Do this by typing ~ after your contribution. -Joey Cross (discuss • contribs) 15:14, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Renaming this topic
,, , , , , After our classes on Thursday, I'm going to tweak the name of this topic to "Plot and Narration." I think the two ideas are really closely connected, and thinking about narration and narrators will give groups more to think about. Going to give some examples below.

A few students who are editing this page have not (as far as I can tell) registered an account here or listed their user name on their section page (so I could not @ them and notify them of this change), so would you mind letting them know about this? Thanks all! -Joey Cross (discuss • contribs) 15:21, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Suggesting topics/lines of inquiry

 * When do characters become narrators and tell their own story? Are they reliable narrators? Do they share any techniques with the nameless, omniscience narrator of The Odyssey (i.e. "Homer")?
 * Related: map out the main story vs. substories, keeping track of narrator/storyteller and audience.
 * Are there scenes or sequences of events that are used several times? Can you give a summary of their basic features and maybe name them? If this type of scene is used more than once, can you see any interesting differences in the uses, that the audience might have noticed and found interesting?
 * Are there events in the story that are implied to have happened but are not narrated directly? Why? Because it would be boring, or for another reason (maybe it is conventional to leave out some details)? Is that something that storytellers do in general? Try to think as "locally" as possible (i.e., before you try and think about larger parts of the Odyssey, think about individual books). -Joey Cross (discuss • contribs) 15:14, 11 September 2020 (UTC)