Daniel Mendelsohn

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599 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 16 Jul

Daniel Mendelsohn’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The History of Literature · 817 The Odyssey - Getting Ready for a Summer Blockbuster | My Last Book with Mary Beard · 16 Jul 2026 podcast

His mission is to infiltrate his own palace in disguise and eventually kill all the suitors and reclaim his family.

And as he passes by the gates of the palace, his faithful old dog.

Argos, uh, whom he had trained when he was just a puppy twenty years earlier and hasn't seen in all that time.

somehow recognizes Odysseus even beneath the disguise he's wearing, and he sort of pricks up his ears, and you get a little backstory about what a wonderful dog he had been, but now he's been neglected because nobody cares for him anymore.

And he pricks up his ears, but is so weak that he can't approach Odysseus.

And Odysseus can't.

indicate that he knows who this dog is because of course he's in disguise and he has to protect his cover.

So it's an anguishing and poignant moment, the dog sort of too weak to run up to the master and Odysseus tearing up but not able to react.

And

I've had kids literally weep in class when we get to this, when we talk about this passage.

And I may say not only kids, not only students.

So I that's a fairly predictable one.

One thing I've seen over the

I guess all thirty five years I've been teaching undergraduates is

There is, and this is a I think a very welcome thing.

I I I think for a long time, you know, uh uh uh the Odyssey was sort of claimed, so to speak, by the male students because the protagonist is a man.

The secondary protagonist is his son.

A lot of emphasis is on the father-son relationship, but largely because of the wonderful work of

feminist scholars who have over the past fifty-five, sixty years drawing attention to the various female characters, I think the

The women in my classes are much more involved in the Odyssey, maybe, than they were 30 years ago.

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