Review
Barnouw…offer[s] insight into Stoic psychology from an unusual intellectual standpoint; the most original feature is the analogy with the ideas of the American Pragmatists. -- Christopher Gill, Professor of Ancient Thought, University of Exeter ― Phronesis
Attempting to demolish Bruno Snell's view―and seeing Odysseus's behavior as a harbinger of pragmatism―Barnouw contends that the wily-yet-single-minded, crafty-yet-persistent hero manages to return to Ithaca as a husband, father, son, and king, using a complex stoic strategy of exchanging present pain for future pleasure (as opposed to a Platonic hierarchical model)....This is a book for specialists in Homeric, historical, and philosophical studies. Summing Up: RECOMMENDED. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. -- R. Cormier, Longwood University ― Choice Reviews
This important book presents a vast panorama of contexts for the reading of the epic. -- Robert Zaborowski ― Gaia
[This book] is an interesting contribution to the understanding of Homer and, perhaps more, of a set of later philosophical and psychological theories which, as Barnouw convincingly demonstrates, have much in common with Homer's poetic descriptions. -- G. Lentini, University of Siena-Arezzo ― Bryn Mawr Classical Review
About the Author
Jeffrey Barnouw is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Barnouw holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University. He is also author of Propositional Perception: Phantasia, Predication and Sign in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics (University Press of America, 2002).
