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The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer's Odyssey

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This essay offers incisive, enthusiastic, and sometimes mischievous glances at the subjects and ideology of works that patently derive from The Odyssey, or apparently develop aspects of its matter in non-Homeric contexts. To score certain points, Hall ' an eminent classics scholar ' batches her cameo critiques under convenient, if at times trendy, rubrics: "Telling Tales", "Singing Songs", and "Turning Phrases" but also "Colonial Conflict", "Women's Work", and "Class Consciousness". The Return of Ulysses is clearly not a treatise: its argument is too scattered, under-theorized, and idiosyncratic in its treatment of evidence to qualify as mainstream scholarship. Moreover, despite the subtitle and routine observance of chronology within chapters, Hall's discourse is not historical in any disciplinary sense, nor is its connection with "culture" (other than the post-modern) clear and continuous. Originating in a BBC talk as well as BA and MA courses Hall recently taught at the University of Durham, The Return of Ulysses addresses adventurous, literate non-specialists, interested in a Cook's tour and willing to countenance an implausible major claim: that The Odyssey is nothing less than the Foundational Text of Western Civilization.

You can reinvent yourself by reading Homer's "The Odyssey", and then read "The Return of Ulysses" to learn how much 'The Odyssey" has permeated our culture. "Oh Brother Where Art Thou", and then "2001;, A Space Odyssey", would provide good non-print intertextuality. Maybe listen to Eric Clapton with Cream, singing 'Tales of Brave Ulysses'. The list goes on! It's hard to imagine how our culture would be if 'The Odyssey" weren't written!.