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