Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays

by Seth L. Schein

Overview

This wide-ranging collection makes available to specialists and nonspecialists alike important critical work on the Odyssey produced during the last half century. The ten essays address five major concerns: the poem's programmatic representation of social and religious institutions and values; its transformation of folktales and traditional stories into epic adventures; its representation of gender roles and, in particular, of Penelope; its narrative strategies and form; and its relation to the Iliad, especially to that epic's distinctive conception of heroism.


In the introduction, Seth L. Schein describes the poetic background to the work and suggests a variety of interpretive approaches, some of which are developed in the essays that follow. These essays include previously published work by Jean-Pierre Vernant, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Pietro Pucci, and Charles P. Segal. There also are a new essay by Laura M. Slatkin, two revised and expanded ones by Nancy Felson-Rubin and Michael N. Nagler, and three appearing in English for the first time by Uvo Hlscher, Karl Reinhardt, and Vernant. The result is a collection that juxtaposes older, often hard-to-find articles with significant newer pieces in a way that allows for a fruitful dialogue among them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691044392
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/18/1995
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Seth L. Schein is Professor of Comparative Literature and Classics at the University of California, Davis. His books include The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer's "Iliad" and The Iambic Trimeter in Aeschylus and Sophocles: A Study in Metrical Form.

Table of Contents

	Preface
	Acknowledgements
	Introduction	3
	Land and Sacrifice in the Odyssey: A Study of Religious and Mythical Meanings	33
	Death with Two Faces	55
	The Adventures in the Odyssey	63
	Penelope and the Suitors	133
	Dread Goddess Revisited	141
	Penelope's Perspective: Character from Plot	163
	The Refusal of Odysseus	185
	The Song of the Sirens	191
	Kleos and Its Ironies in the Odyssey	201
	Composition by Theme and the Metis of the Odyssey	223
	Bibliography	239
	Contributors	253
	Index of Passages Discussed and Cited	257
	General Index	271