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.