The influence of the Homeric texts can be difficult to summarise because of how greatly they have impacted the popular imagination and cultural values.[69] The Odyssey and the Iliad formed the basis of education for members of ancient Mediterranean society. That curriculum was adopted by Western humanists,[70] meaning the text was so much a part of the cultural fabric that it became irrelevant whether an individual had read it.[71] As such, the influence of the Odyssey has reverberated through over a millennium of writing. The poem topped a poll of experts by BBC Culture to find literature's most enduring narrative.[4] It is widely regarded by western literary critics as a timeless classic[72] and remains one of the oldest works of extant literature commonly read by Western audiences.[73]
Literature
In Canto XXVI of the Inferno, Dante Alighieri meets Odysseus in the eighth circle of hell, where Odysseus appends a new ending to the Odyssey in which he never returns to Ithaca and instead continues his restless adventuring.[23] Edith Hall suggests that Dante's depiction of Odysseus became understood as a manifestation of Renaissance colonialism and othering, with the cyclops standing in for "accounts of monstrous races on the edge of the world", and his defeat as symbolising "the Roman domination of the western Mediterranean".[33] Some of Ulysses' adventures reappear in the Arabic tales of Sinbad the Sailor.
The Irish poet James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses (1922) was significantly influenced by the Odyssey. Joyce had encountered the figure of Odysseus in Charles Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses, an adaptation of the epic poem for children, which seems to have established the Latin name in Joyce's mind.[74][75] Ulysses, a re-telling of the Odyssey set in Dublin, is divided into 18 sections ("episodes") which can be mapped roughly onto the 24 books of the Odyssey.[76] Joyce claimed familiarity with the original Homeric Greek, but this has been disputed by some scholars, who cite his poor grasp of the language as evidence to the contrary.[77] The book, and especially its stream of consciousness prose, is widely considered foundational to the modernist genre.[78]
Nikos Kazantzakis's The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel begins where the Odyssey ends, with Odysseus leaving Ithaca again.
Modern writers have revisited the Odyssey to highlight the poem's female characters. Canadian writer Margaret Atwood adapted parts of the Odyssey for her novella The Penelopiad (2005). The novella focuses on Penelope and the twelve female slaves hanged by Odysseus at the poem's ending,[79] an image which haunted Atwood.[80] Atwood's novella comments on the original text, wherein Odysseus' successful return to Ithaca symbolises the restoration of a patriarchal system.[80] Similarly, Madeline Miller's Circe (2018) revisits the relationship between Odysseus and Circe on Aeaea.[81] As a reader, Miller was frustrated by Circe's lack of motivation in the original poem and sought to explain her capriciousness.[82] The novel recontextualises the sorceress' transformations of sailors into pigs from an act of malice into one of self-defence, given that she has no superhuman strength with which to repel attackers.[83]
Film and television
- L'Odissea (1911) is an Italian silent film by Giuseppe de Liguoro.[84]
- Ulysses (1954) is a film adaptation starring Kirk Douglas as Ulysses, Silvana Mangano as Penelope and Circe, and Anthony Quinn as Antinous.[85]
- L'Odissea (1968) is an Italian-French-German-Yugoslavian television miniseries praised for its faithful rendering of the original epic.[86]
- Nostos: The Return (1989) is an Italian film about Odysseus' homecoming. Directed by Franco Piavoli, it relies on visual storytelling and has a strong focus on nature.[87]
- Ulysses' Gaze (1995), directed by Theo Angelopoulos, has many of the elements of the Odyssey set against the backdrop of the most recent and previous Balkan Wars.[88]
- The Odyssey (1997) is a television miniseries directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and starring Armand Assante as Odysseus and Greta Scacchi as Penelope.[89]
- O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) is a crime comedy drama film written, produced, co-edited and directed by the Coen brothers and is very loosely based on Homer's poem.[90]
Opera and music
- Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, first performed in 1640, is an opera by Claudio Monteverdi based on the second half of Homer's Odyssey.[91]
- Rolf Riehm composed an opera based on the myth, Sirenen – Bilder des Begehrens und des Vernichtens (Sirens – Images of Desire and Destruction), which premiered at the Oper Frankfurt in 2014.[92]
- Robert W. Smith's second symphony for concert band, The Odyssey, tells four of the main highlights of the story in the piece's four movements: "The Iliad", "The Winds of Poseidon", "The Isle of Calypso", and "Ithaca".[93]
- Jean-Claude Gallota's ballet Ulysse,[94] based on the Odyssey, but also on the work by James Joyce, Ulysses.[95]
Sciences
- Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay wrote two books, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (1994)[96] and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming (2002),[97] which relate the Iliad and the Odyssey to posttraumatic stress disorder and moral injury as seen in the rehabilitation histories of combat veteran patients.
