I’ve heard that there are some European authors, e.g. Shakespeare or Dostoevsky, who are pretty canonical in the USA as well. I’m wondering if the Greek poet Homer is among those? Are the Odyssey and the Iliad taught in high schools, or only in universities? And in university courses, are they taught broadly, or only to students who specialize in Ancient Greek literature? Are they considered very important among the classics, or are they sort of “just another classic”?
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Homer was featured in my English classes in high school. But the US is enormous, so you will get many different answers. Can’t speak to university as I didn’t do all that many literature courses.
I studied both of those, albeit in abridged versions, in middle school and high school.
Shakespeare is covered as his works are a cornerstone of the English language and writing.
Dostoevsky was not discussed during my K-12 education. *Crime and Punishment* and other works will likely come up in literature classes in college, but if you study something unrelated to literature as your major, you probably won’t get exposed to his works.
Most foreign authors we study tend to write in English.
I was required to read both.
I believe the Iliad and/or Odyssey was taught in AP (Advanced Placement) Literature at my high school, but I don’t know for sure.
In movies and TV I’ve seen it discussed, so I’m sure at least in some US schools it’s taught.
I read the Odyssey in 7th, 9th, and 10th grade as well as a college lit class. I think Odysseus dies at the end or something.
I remember studying some Homer in high school. Not a huge deep dive, but it was covered.
I read them both in high school in English class
Odyssey more often than Illiad, but both are common.
There will generally be a section of high school dedicated to Greek mythology in general since a working knowledge of it is extremely helpful in understanding the references and tropes prominent in English language literature. That’s when one or both tend to come up as an example piece to work with, in whole or in excerpts.
I read both of these in my high school English class, although we spent more time on the *Odyssey*.
I read both, also Antigone. This was 10-12 years ago. Went to a sub-par public school.
I read the Odyssey freshman year in high school maybe 20 years ago.
I had to study both in 8th grade (ages 14-15) and read the entire Odyssey in 12th (17-18).
There is no national curriculum in the USA.
I learned about the Iliad and Odyssey in a senior elective.
My sons school studies them in second grade where they study all things Greece.
So I learned about them when I was 18, he is learning about them at age 8. You will find everything in between in just a single city, so across the country there will be even more variance.
I didn’t read either in school but I know some of my friends read the Odyssey in a different literature class in high school. I took AP (advanced) literature my senior year of high school and had to read one ancient drama, but I got to choose from a list. I read Euripides’ *Medea*.
I read the Iliad on my own as an adult.
I am not sure how to answer your final question, I’d say they are well-known classics that many people read and the stories are well-known. Even though I’ve never read the Odyssey, I am familiar with the storyline from cultural osmosis, that Odysseus is trying to get back home to his wife and has adventures, meets sirens, etc.
I would say most Americans know “Man of Constant Sorrow” so yeah it’s pretty important here
I do recall reading the Odyssey and other works by Homer in either early high school or later middle school. I don’t remember much, but definitely some vague familiarity.
There were some works that we studied in high school that were from Europe, like a few Shakespeare plays and Les Miserables, but the focus was generally more on American literature, books like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, Tom Sawyer, Of Mice and Men, Huckleberry Finn, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Crucible are some of the works I remember quite well from high school.
I went to a really excellent private high school with a great English/literature department, and I never had to read Homer. I didn’t read any Dostoyevsky in high school either.
We read them in high school and were taught that they are considered foundational to western literature.
We read The Odyssey my freshman year of high school but only briefly mentioned The Iliad. Their importance was discussed. I’ve since read The Iliad on my own.
We also read Oedipus Rex a few years later.
I’ve never read any of them in school. Almost all of the books I was required to read in school dealt with either The Holocaust, American Frontier, or Civil Rights Era.
The only European “classics” I was required to read/study were Beowulf, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and The Divine Comedy.
I have never been made to read either – not in high school and not in college. But I’m also not a classics major
I’m almost certain we’ve all read The Iliad and Odyssey in school.
We did both in English class, and I also did the Aeneid in Latin class.
It’s possible to find both in high school and college curriculums
While the decentralized nature of the American education system makes it hard to generalize, it’s very likely Americans will have been exposed to the Iliad and the Odyssey (at least one) in high school. We are taught that they are important, and it wouldn’t surprise me of they’re the only classical works that a majority of American high school students encounter. That doesn’t mean you can assume a typical American adult know them well – they aren’t necessarily interesting enough to everyone to “stick”.
In Alabama, we had to read the Odyssey, but not so much the Iliad. It was generally mixed in with things like Dostoevsky (*Crime and Punishment*), Dickens (*Great Expectations*), Swift (*A Modest Proposal*), Lewis (*Out of the Silent Planet*/*Till We Have Faces*), Shakespeare (*Othello*), Wilde (*The Importance of Being Earnest*) etc. along with the more American fare: Lee (*To Kill a Mocking Bird*), Edwards (*Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God*), Hansberry (*A Raisin in the Sun*), Twain (*Huckleberry Finn*), Poe (*The Tell-Tale Heart*), O’Connor (*The Lame Shall Enter First*), etc. Poetry gets tossed in to, so a lot of Dickenson, Poe, Frost, Billy Collins, etc. The most memorable one for me as a kid was “Bedtime Story” by George MacBeth.
That said, earlier grades tend to be more book reports where the kid gets a bit more choice (sometimes its a free for all, but other times its from a list). I remember doing a presentation on Watson’s *The Double Helix* back in elementary school and drawing up all the bases and all.
I read both in school. I also had to translate the Aeneid from Latin, which sucked.
I somehow got through a high school and university education without reading either the Iliad or the Odyssey in their entirety, only excerpts. I know others who read the whole Odyssey in high school. My wife got an English degree, so she read Homer along with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
Even without studying Homer in detail, almost all high school students will learn *about* him between studying literature and world history. My education didn’t treat the Iliad and Odyssey as “just other classics” but as foundational to Western culture. (I’m reading the Iliad for the first time now, for fun. It’s very good.)
Shakespeare is broadly taught in high schools. Every school and teacher is different, but I think it’s fair to say most high school students read at least one Shakespeare play, often 2 or 3 of them. Dostoevsky is less commonly taught. I don’t have a source to back myself up here, but I’d bet Tolstoy is a little more popular with teachers.