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Ulysses/Odysseus Are Amongst the Most Durable in Human Culture

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Ulysses/Odysseus Are Amongst the Most Durable in Human Culture EDIT hether they focus on the bewitching song of Wthe Sirens, his cunning escape from the cave of the terrifying one-eyed Cyclops, or the vengeful H slaying of the suitors of his beautiful wife Penelope, H the stirring adventures of Ulysses/Odysseus are amongst the most durable in human culture. The A famously cerebral hero of Homer’s epic has thrilled LL countless generations of readers and listeners, who for almost three millennia have breathlessly followed his voyage from the ‘ringing plains of windy Troy’ to his triumphant return to the fragrant isle of Ithaca. The picaresque return of the wandering pirate-king is one of the most ubiquitous texts of all time, crossing East-West divides and inspiring poets and film-makers worldwide: from the Inuit Edith Hall is Professor of Classics and Drama Only Edith Hall could have written this richly engaging and distinctive and the Maoris to artistic interpreters as widely CULTUR A RE THE at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is book. She covers a breathtaking range of material, from the highest dispersed as India, Uganda and Japan. Sung by the author and editor of several books – including of high culture to the camp, cartoonish, and frankly weird; from minstrels, read out loud, projected on to cinema the Penguin Classics’ translation of Sophocles’ Europe to the USA to Africa and the Far East; and from literature to screens or acted on the stage, Odysseus’ story, film and opera. Throughout this tour of the huge variety of responses Antigone, Oedipus the King and Electra – and regularly perhaps more than any other tale, forms the that there have been to the Odyssey, a powerful argument emerges backdrop to our own narratives of love, loss contributes to TV, radio and professional theatre. about the appeal and longevity of the text which reveals all the critical and political flair that we have come to expect of this author. It is and meaning. But why has the Odyssey’s appeal all conveyed with the infectious excitement and clarity of a brilliant proved so remarkably resilient and long-lasting? performer. The Return of Ulysses represents a major contribution to A Edith Hall explains the enduring fascination how we assess the continuing influence of Homer in modern culture. L HISTORY OF L HISTORY of Homer’s epic in terms of its extraordinary Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek Literature and Culture, T University of Cambridge susceptibility to adaptation. Not only has the U narrative reflected a myriad of intellectual and Edith Hall’s The Return of Ulysses undertakes the formidable task of aesthetic agendas, but it has seemed perhaps surveying the cultural reception of the Odyssey from late antiquity R uniquely fertile in generating new kinds of artistic to the present. By tracing echoes of the poem in literature, painting media. Art forms created in direct response to and music, noting its impact upon discourses of race, class, gender, N OF N and colonization, and identifying reflections of the myth in modern the Odyssey include the tragedies of classical systems of philosophical and psychological thought, the author shows THE RETURN OF Athens and the burlesque of Aristophanes, as that it is arguably the founding text of Western civilization. Today, well as more recent genres such as travelogue, the Odyssey has lost none of its cultural power or resonance. Having science fiction, the novel, opera, film, children’s found a new home in popular culture and contemporary media, it HOMER’s books and detective stories. The author explores speaks with especial urgency to non-Western émigrés in a culturally fifteen key themes in theO dyssey which illuminate fragmented world. Hall’s rich appraisal will be greeted as the definitive the innumerable ways it has impacted on the cultural investigation of a fascinating and many-sided phenomenon. ULYSSES imagination. Cultural texts as diverse as Joyce’s Marilyn B Skinner, Professor of Classics, University of Arizona Ulysses, Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, In The Return of Ulysses, Edith Hall has given us a brilliant, cultured, Suzanne Vega’s Calypso, the Coen Brothers’ O and far-reaching tool for interpreting the Odyssey, and for reading, Brother Where Art Thou?, Daniel Vigne’s Le Retour O ULYSSES watching, and listening to the words, images and music that have A CULTURAL HISTORY OF HOMER’s ODYSSEY de Martin Guerre, Jon Amiel’s Sommersby, Anthony come into being in the refracted light of the Homeric poem. Taking DYSSEY Minghella’s Cold Mountain, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: us from Virgil to Cavafy, Circe to Dorothy – the first female quester – A Space Odyssey and Theo Angelopoulos’ Ulysses’ and Polyphemus to Batman, Hall’s work ranges in masterful ways among the times, places, ideologies, and theoretical frameworks that constitute Gaze all show that Odysseus is truly a versatile the reception world of the epic to which all later epics are generically hero. The travels of this charismatic wayfarer most connected. The book is written in a lively, witty, and hip style, across the waters of the wine-dark Aegean are wearing with impressive ease its enormous learning and cultural breadth. journeys not just into the mind of one of the most Front: View of Ithaca from Cephalonia at dusk Edith Hall points the way, sometimes with elaboration, often with brilliantly creative and inspiring of all the ancient © Gail Mooney/CORBIS. suggestive brevity, to the many pathways leading from and back to Greek poets. They are as much a voyage beyond the Back: Ulysses at sea with his crew. Illustration, by this familiar but always changing poem. The Return of Ulysses does not boundaries of a narrative which, perhaps more than Charles Buchel, on the cover of the original programme disappoint, and has much to offer that will both teach and delight. any other, can lay claim to being the quintessential for Stephen Phillips’ verse drama Ulysses (1902). Richard F Thomas, Professor of Greek and Latin, Harvard University EDITH HALL global phenomenon..
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