Reading Homers Odyssey

Finalist for the 2020 PROSE Awards, Classics section Homers 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 Homers Odyssey offers a book-by-book commentary on the epics 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, Penelopes relationship with Odysseus, Telemachus journey, Odysseus rejection of Calypsos offer of immortality, Odysseus lies, Homers use of the House of Atreus and other myths, the cinematic qualities of the epics structure, womens role in the epic, and the Odysseys 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 books commentary. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.