Today's real-time intro meeting

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Supplemental Thoughts #2 - Childlike Achilles

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List of Readings and Links

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Supplemental Thoughts #1: Echo and Narcissus

In framing the theme for this summer’s readings as an inquiry into narcissism as it develops in ancient texts, from Homer to Vergil, I found myself focusing on the character of Narcissus without fully appreciating the context in which Ovid places him (Metamorphosis Bk 3.402ff). What I failed to take into account is the importance of the myth of Echo, with which the story of Narcissus is coupled. Echo is politically silenced by Juno: by virtue of her distracting Juno from discovering the infidelities of Zeus, she is made more of a “lackey” than she was in her original form ( “Echo still had a body then and was not merely a voice. But though she was garrulous, she had no other trick of speech than she has now: she can repeat the last words out of many. Juno made her like that, because often when she might have caught the nymphs lying beneath her Jupiter, on the mountain slopes, Echo knowingly held her in long conversations, while the nymphs fled. When Juno realized this she said ‘I shall...
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