Tea at Trianon: Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ Is About Duty, Loyalty, and Family

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, July 18, 2026

Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ Is About Duty, Loyalty, and Family

From Victor Davis Hanson at The Daily Signal:

Christopher Nolan, the renowned British director, has a new film coming out, another remake of “The Odyssey” by Homer. It’s supposed to come out July 17.

Everybody’s been talking about it, not because they know what’s in it or they’re trying to guess how he treats this age-old epic, but because one of the stars, Lupita Nyong’o, and forgive me if I mispronounced her name, has been very vocal that, as she views the script and Homer’s work himself, there’s a matter of feminism that Homer did not highlight women sufficiently.

Homer wrote “The Odyssey,” remember, around 700 to 650 BC at the dawn of the Greek city-state. It’s the second of his two epics, "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey", and it’s a much different epic than "The Iliad", which takes place in about 11 weeks on the plain of Troy.

This is a panoramic view of the Mediterranean and traces the 20-year odyssey of the hero Odysseus to get back from Troy to the northeastern island off the coast of Greece, Ithaca.

What she said was that there was not a sufficient portrayal of women or they were not powerful enough. I couldn’t understand that. I taught “The Odyssey” for 20 years in English at the California State University system to a variety of students, probably 2,000 students in humanities courses, as well as a much smaller number in Greek.

And one thing one comes away with is that there’s no literature anywhere in the world at that time that has been more deferential or more interested in women. (Read more.)