Can the Odyssey end? The strange epilogue at the end of the poem and much later European poets' interpretation of it, beginning with Dante, complicate the conclusion of the epic.

1. CAN THE ODYSSEY END?
She sang beyond the genius of the sea. / The water never formed to mind or voice, / … and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, / That was not ours although we understood, / Inhuman, of the
veritable ocean.

2. Europe
Africa

3. WHAT LIES BEYOND?
WHERE ELSE CAN ONE GO?
“Licence my roving hands, and let them go”
—John Donne, ELEGY XX “To His Mistress Going to Bed”

4. HOME AT LAST?
Is the long-awaited reunion of Penelope and Odysseus final?
Why is it so postponed?

5. RECOGNITION AND REST

6. SIGNS - SÊMA
…THE PROPHET SAID
that I must rove through towns on towns of men,
that I must carry a well-planed oar until
I come to a people who know nothing of the sea,
whose food is never seasoned with salt, strangers all
to ships with their crimson prows and long slim oars,
wings that make ships fly. And here is my sign,
he told me, clear, so clear I cannot miss it,
and I will share with you now. . .
When another traveler falls in with me and calls
that weight across my shoulder a fan to winnow grain,
then, he told me, I must plant my oar in the earth
and sacrifice fine beasts to the lord god of the sea,
Poseidon- a ram, a bull and a ramping wild boar-then
journey home and render noble offerings up
to the deathless gods who rule the vaulting skies,
to all the gods in order.
And at last my own death will steal upon me. . .
a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes
to take me down, borne down with the years in ripe old
age
with all my people here in blessed peace around me.
(XXIII 304-324) / (Cf. XI 79-89 & XI 136-157)

7. THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
The Pillars of Hercules
The Rock of Gibraltar
Textual voyages beyond the
pillars of Hercules: early
literary encounters with the
unknown (Maria Salenius)

8. Francis Bacon, 1620
Instauratio Magna (“Great Renewal” -
Novum)
LIMITS OF
KNOWLEDGE
FEARING LIMITS
SEEKING LIMITS

9. Francis Bacon, 1620
Instauratio Magna (“Great Renewal” -
Novum)
“MULTI
PERTRANSIBUNT
ET AUGEBITUR
SCIENTIA"
("MANY WILL
PASS THROUGH
AND
KNOWLEDGE
WILL BE THE
GREATER”)

10. “Ithaca,” Cavafy
“Ulysses,” Tennyson
“Odysseus,” Merwin