Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays

Seth L. Schein

Princeton University Press, 1996 - Literary Criticism - 278 pages

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.

Contents

• IV: 33
• V: 55
• VI: 63
• IX: 133
• X: 141
• XI: 163
• XII: 185
• XIII: 191
• XIV: 201
• XVI: 223
• XVII: 239
• XVIII: 253
• XIX: 257
• XX: 271

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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays; Princeton paperbacks : Literature; Princeton paperbacks
• Editor: Seth L. Schein
• Contributor: Seth L. Schein
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0691044392, 9780691044392
• Length: 278 pages
• Subjects: Literary Criticism / Ancient & Classical; Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / Poetry; Social Science / Folklore & Mythology