This volume assembles sixteen authoritative articles on Homer's Odyssey that have appeared over the last thirty years. A wide variety of interpretative strategies are represented, including, in addition to traditional close readings, the approaches of comparative anthropology, narratology, feminism, and audience-oriented criticism. Papers have been selected for their clarity and accessibility, and each is informed by close attention to philological and textual detail. A full glossary and list of abbreviations have been included, and a specially written introduction puts the selections in a wider context by giving an overview of major strands in the interpretation of Homer in the second half of the twentieth century.

An exciting series that provides students with direct access to the ancient world by offering new translations of extracts from its key texts.

A fresh and exciting approach to this great work of classical literature, which brings it alive for today's students and gives them the tools to appreciate and explore the work themselves.

Finalist for the 2020 PROSE Awards, Classics section Homer’s Odyssey is the first great travel narrative in Western culture. A compelling tale about the consequences of war, and about redemption, transformation, and the search for home, the Odyssey continues to be studied in universities and schools, and to be read and referred to by ordinary readers. Reading Homer’s Odyssey offers a book-by-book commentary on the epic’s themes that informs the non-specialist and engages the seasoned reader in new perspectives. Among the themes discussed are hospitality, survival, wealth, reputation and immortality, the Olympian gods, self-reliance and community, civility, behavior, etiquette and technology, ease, inactivity and stagnation, Penelope’s relationship with Odysseus, Telemachus’ journey, Odysseus’ rejection of Calypso’s offer of immortality, Odysseus’ lies, Homer’s use of the House of Atreus and other myths, the cinematic qualities of the epic’s structure, women’s role in the epic, and the Odyssey’s true ending. Footnotes clarify and elaborate upon myths that Homer leaves unfinished, explain terms and phrases, and provide background information. The volume concludes with a general bibliography of work on the Odyssey, in addition to the bibliographies that accompany each book’s commentary. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

This three volume commentary also includes an introduction discussing previous research on the Odyssey, its relation to the Iliad, the epic dialect, and the transmission of the text.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Times; color: #ffffff} For George Chapman (1559-1634) his translation of Homer was ‘the work that I was born to do’. The publication of his Iliad and Odyssey together in 1616 was a landmark in English literature, but until now there has been no edition which modernises his spelling and punctuation and also provides detailed help in grasping his often obscure language, and in understanding how and why he translated Homer in the particular way he did. This edition of the Odyssey, a companion to Robert Miola’s edition of the Iliad, aims to bring Chapman’s rendering alive for the modern reader. Its literary, philosophical, and religious context is explained in an Introduction and in footnotes, and side- and end-glosses clarify Chapman’s English. His Odyssey is not only a stylistic masterpiece of seventeenth-century English: it constitutes a profound and moving interpretation – still relevant after four hundred years – of Homer’s story of the suffering and grace implicit in the human condition. Through its teeming diversity of events, settings, and characters Homer and his first English translator explore the question of what it means to be human in a complex and threatening world.

The Odyssey's larger plot is composed of a number of distinct genres of myth, all of which are extant in various Near Eastern cultures (Mesopotamian, West Semitic, and Egyptian). Unexpectedly, the Near Eastern culture with which the Odyssey has the most parallels is the Old Testament. Consideration of how much of the Odyssey focuses on non-heroic episodes - hosts receiving guests, a king disguised as a beggar, recognition scenes between long-separated family members - reaffirms the Odyssey's parallels with the Bible. In particular the book argues that the Odyssey is in a dialogic relationship with Genesis, which features the same three types of myth that comprise the majority of the Odyssey: theoxeny, romance (Joseph in Egypt), and Argonautic myth (Jacob winning Rachel from Laban). The Odyssey also offers intriguing parallels to the Book of Jonah, and Odysseus' treatment by the suitors offers close parallels to the Gospels' depiction of Christ in Jerusalem.