Overview

This broadly conceived and enlightening look at how Homer's Odyssey has resonated in the West offers a thematic analysis of the poem's impact on social and political ideas, institutions, and mores from the ancient world through the present day. Proving that the epic poem is timeless, Edith Hall identifies fifteen key themes in the Odyssey and uses them to illustrate the extensive and diverse effect that Homer's work has had on all manner of inquiry, expression, and art. She traces the text's pervasive thread of influence from the tragedies of classical Athens and the burlesque of Aristophanes to its contemporary artistic reinterpretations in literature, theatre, opera, popular music, film, and science fiction. In considering the mark of the Odyssey on the modern global world, Hall looks at how the poem affected colonialism and the frontier mentality in the American West, how it engendered contemporary attitudes toward sex, death, war, philosophy, violence, and race, and the ways in which the Odyssey forms the backbone of modern-day psychology. Accessibly written and timely, The Return of Ulysses establishes the Odyssey as the founding text of Western Civilization and offers a major contribution to the study of Homer's epic poem, as well as modern insight into its cultural reception and continuing imprint on society.

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9780801888694

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Reviews

The book sparkles with the excitement... -- Times Literary Supplement

<p>The Return of Ulysses is a sweeping tour of almost all one could wish to demonstrate about the spell of Homer.--Zbigniew Janowski First Things (01/01/0001)

<p>An extraordinary wide-ranging, clearly written, instructive, and engaging survey of the cultural reception of the poem from antiquity to the early twenty-first century.--Seth L. Schein New England Classical Journal (01/01/0001)

Author Information

Edith Hall is a research professor of Classics and Drama at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of a number of books on classics, myth, and the ancient world, including Agamemnon in Performance, 458 BC to 2005 AD, and Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars.

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