Expanding Eyes: A Visionary Education

Possible mythical patterns of death and rebirth to a new identity underlying the Odyssey , especially in the Wanderings, patterns that are universally human and not limited to exceptional heroes.

A brief recap of the first six episodes of the Wanderings: the Kikones, the Lotus Eaters, the Cyclops, Aeolus (god of the winds), the Lestrygonians, Circe. The central episode of the Wanderings, the descent to Hades. Meetings with Elpenor, the seer Tiresias, Odysseus’ mother Antiklea, Agamemnon.

For the four books of the Wanderings, Odysseus acts as his own bard and recounts retroactively his ten years of trial and adventure since the fall of Troy. Recurrent themes tie together these seemingly disparate episodes, including resistance to temptation, the virtue of active striving, and the contrast between civilization and savagery.

The ideal society of the Phaiakians throws a party in honor of their guest, in which Odysseus outperforms the younger men, and the blind bard Demodokos sings three times, making Odysseus weep for the past.

Book 6, a wonderful comic interlude in which Odysseus, naked from the storm and wearing only an olive bush, has to befriend and get help from Nausikaa, the young princess of the Phaiakians.

Odysseus’ 7 years captive on Calypso’s island. Sexual politics in the Odyssey . Odysseus’ most heroic act: choosing life and its trials over immortality.

Telemachus finds that there is more to becoming a man than being a warrior. The Odyssey is a peacetime epic, and during his visits to Nestor in Pylos and Menelaus and Helen in Lakedaimon that it is necessary to learn the skills of social interaction. He is also given a lesson on the complexities of marriage.

The psychology of masculinity. Manhood is not merely chronological, but has to be achieved. The suitors and the complicated question of the rules of succession to the kingship in Homeric times.

The complex structure of the Odyssey . “Who has known his own engendering?” Telemachus’s troubled search for his own identity in relationship to his unknown parent, a timeless human dilemma.

The fascinating mysteries of Troy and Homer. The Odyssey as a comic epic. Odysseus as Trickster, the polytropos , or man of many turnings.

A series of emblematic visions, each expanding beyond the limits of the last, culminating in Dante’s ultimate vision of God as the circumference of all things, binding the universe together in beautiful order and all-embracing love, whose symbol is the circle.

In the sphere of Jupiter, Dante is lectured by the Eagle of Justice about predestination, the mystery of why God saves some people and damns others by giving or withholding his grace.

Dante and Beatrice rise into the spiritual realm. Beatrice lectures Dante on the nature of that realm. Intellect and love as God’s twofold image in both nature and human nature.

Reunion in the Garden of Eden and Beatrice’s anger over Dante’s “infidelity.” Ways of imagining Heaven, an experience beyond time.

The theme of reunion begins, as Dante meets his dead friend Casella. Casella, a musician, performs a poem by Dante that he has set to music, until they are interrupted by Cato, who tells them to stop wasting time. Art can be redemptive or escapist depending on how it is used. At the top of the mountain, Virgil tells Dante he has achieved the only true freedom, which is internal and disciplined, no...

Recreation as the real promise of Christianity: we can change; we can be recreated through trial, an insight not dependent on literal belief in Christian doctrine. The role of education in the purgatorial or recreative process, and the role of the arts in education.

Easter Sunday, 1300: the 7-story mountain of Purgatory, and image of the human hope of transformation through trial and suffering, whether in this life or the next.

Why is betrayal the worst of all sins, far worse than murder? The psychological nature of evil, the rending of the bonds of human interconnection, the essence of damnation.

The thrilling famous speech of Ulysses, questing for experience and knowledge. What is forbidden knowledge? Knowledge sought for selfish reasons, including power. The real forbidden knowledge is of our true motives, about which we lie not only to others but to ourselves.

Canto 5, continued: The tension between romantic and spiritual love in Dante. Canto 15: The mutual affection and respect between Dante and his former teacher (and father figure) Brunetto Latini, punished for homosexuality.

A psychological speculation on the motive for human evil that does not depend on religious commitment. The damnation of unbaptized infants and virtuous pagans: the acceptance of tragedy within the divine comedy.

The problems of ideal romantic love, which we still wrestle with. The issue of commitment, of taking a stand, which we also still wrestle with.

Canto 2 of The Divine Comedy , in which Dante, as reluctant as any hobbit, is induced by Virgil to embark upon his quest by speaking of Dante’s love Beatrice Portinari, a real woman, though loved according to the new conventions called Courtly Love, from which descend our ideas that romantic love can save you when nothing else can.

Canto 1 of The Divine Comedy : in mid-life, we suddenly realize we are “lost in the woods,” and no longer know “the way.”

Introduction to the “Expanding Eyes” podcast series and to its first subject, Dante’s Divine Comedy , completed exactly 700 years ago in 1321.