Odysseus The Return

This remarkably rich and multifaceted study of early Greek exploration makes an original contribution to current discussions of the encounters between Greeks and non-Greeks. Focusing in particular on myths about Odysseus and other heroes who visited foreign lands on their mythical voyages homeward after the Trojan War, Irad Malkin shows how these stories functioned to mediate encounters and conceptualize ethnicity and identity during the Archaic and Classical periods. Synthesizing a wide range of archaeological, mythological, and literary sources, this exceptionally learned book strengthens our understanding of early Greek exploration and city-founding along the coasts of the Western Mediterranean, reconceptualizes the role of myth in ancient societies, and revitalizes our understanding of ethnicity in antiquity. Malkin shows how the figure of Odysseus became a proto-colonial hero whose influence transcended the Greek-speaking world. The return-myths constituted a generative mythology, giving rise to oral poems, stories, iconographic imagery, rituals, historiographical interpretation, and the articulation of ethnic identities. Reassessing the role of Homer and alternative return-myths, the book argues for the active historical function of myth and collective representations and traces their changing roles through a spectrum of colonial perceptions—from the proto-colonial, through justifications of expansion and annexation, and up to decolonization.

The extraordinary story of a legendary hero continues . . . After ten years of uninterrupted war, blood and agony, the Trojans have finally been defeated. Odysseus and his men begin the epic journey of returning to Ithaca. Along the way, terrifying enemies await them: the cyclops Polyphemus, the lotus eaters who feast on narcotic flowers that give only oblivion, the sorceress who turns men into swine, and the deadly, enthralling sirens. Odysseus is determined to make his way home to Ithaca, where his beloved family have awaited him for many long years. But his journey will present him with new, terrible perils - ones that he could not have dreamed of even in his wildest nightmares. In Odysseus: The Return, the second in his Odysseus epic, Valerio Massimo Manfredi gives a new voice to one of the most adventurous and fascinating heroes of all time.

Odysseus returns at last to Ithaca where he rids his house of the evil suitors, is reunited with Penelope, and visits his aging, grieving father.

Whether they focus on the bewitching song of the Sirens, his cunning escape from the cave of the terrifying one-eyed Cyclops, or the vengeful slaying of the suitors of his beautiful wife Penelope, the stirring adventures of Ulysses/Odysseus are amongst the most durable in human culture. The picaresque return of the wandering pirate-king is one of the most popular texts of all time, crossing East-West divides and inspiring poets and film-makers worldwide. But why, over three thousand years, has the Odyssey's appeal proved so remarkably resilient and long-lasting? In her much-praised book Edith Hall explains the enduring fascination of Homer's epic in terms of its extraordinary susceptibility to adaptation. Not only has the story reflected a myriad of different agendas, but - from the tragedies of classical Athens to modern detective fiction, film, travelogue and opera - it has seemed perhaps uniquely fertile in generating new artistic forms. Cultural texts as diverse as Joyce's Ulysses, Suzanne Vega's Calypso, Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou?, Daniel Vigne's Le Retour de Martin Guerre and Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain all show that Odysseus is truly a versatile hero. His travels across the wine-dark Aegean are journeys not just into the mind of one of the most brilliantly creative of all the ancient Greek writers. They are as much a voyage beyond the boundaries of a narrative which can plausibly lay claim to being the quintessential global phenomenon.

After war and strife, a mighty king's troubles are only just beginning . . . After ten years at war and ten years wandering the world, Odysseus has finally returned home. But he cannot reveal his identity to his faithful wife Penelope. A gang of would-be lovers are pestering her to marry one of them - and are prepared to kill anyone who claims to be her husband. Now Odysseus must use all his cunning and ingenuity to get rid of them, if he is to reclaim his wife and his rightful place as King of Ithaca once and for all.

Homer's two great epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, stand as cornerstones not only of Western literature but also of Western thought and culture, for although readers of two millennia have imitated or opposed these works' paradigm of character and action, few have ignored it. Where the Iliad strikes a heavy tone of tragic grandeur, the Odyssey evokes an atmosphere of adventure and fate. The latter work's key figure, Odysseus the restless wanderer, pervades our language and our thinking: his self-defining journey of experience and maturation has remained one of the world's most explored subjects of artistic expression. In his cogent reading of the Odyssey William G. Thalmann argues that, like its hero, the text is impossible to reduce to a single summary or set of oppositions. As presented in Homer's narrative, the polarities of nature versus civilization, war versus peace, action versus word, and force versus metis (intelligence) are fraught with ambiguity. Thalmann singles out in particular the precarious nature of metis, which imbues Odysseus with constructive intelligence but also a dangerous duplicity. Similarly, Thalmann contends that in all his travels Odysseus both inflicts pain and himself suffers after having saved his own life via his cleverness. Aside from its explorations of human character, however, the poem quite simply tells a wonderful story. Odysseus's myriad adventures during his 10-year struggle to get home to Ithaka have the powerful appeal of folktale and fairy tale: the poem's narrative, Thalmann asserts, offers the pleasure of desiring an end that is delayed by obstacles in the outer world and the necessity for intrigues on Ithaka, with the simultaneousassurance that the end will come, and that it will be a happy one. Thalmann perceptively identifies traces of class and gender inquiry in Homer's epic. The poem seems to open up questions about the upholding of a system by which those at the top of society are maintained by the labor of those below, Thalmann maintains; in due course, however, these questions are closed off with the ideal solution of the return of the righteous king, promising prosperity for all. Additionally, Thalmann detects in Penelope an independence and importance rarely accorded women in Greek literature or Greek life; her like-mindedness with Odysseus is emphasized and their marriage characterized as a collaboration between them. What makes Homer's text so relevant to our times, Thalmann concludes, is its suffusion with contradiction and elusiveness. Odysseus, after all, is a hero with a constantly deferred future, and the poem's ending preserves the tension between his two conflicting sides, for when peace is at hand our hero, overcome with battle fury, assaults the relatives of his enemies. Ultimately, Thalmann finds that, happy ending notwithstanding, Homer's masterpiece depicts man's complex and often insidious relationship with the world - a world wherein that which passes for truth seems like fantasy, and lies contain no monsters or miracles but are indistinguishable from the reality of experience.