Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer's Odyssey

"In this study, Carol Dougherty offers an interpretation of the Homeric poem rooted in the topics of overseas travel, trade, and settlement that dominated the early archaic period in Greece. The Raft of Odysseus approaches the poem both as literary fiction and as an ethnographic text - the product of a culture trying to construct a reading of its own mythic past in order to make sense of a tumultuous present. Odysseus, the man who has "seen the cities of many men and learned their minds," embodies the poem's ethnographic imagination. His extensive travels overseas expose him to a broad spectrum of new worlds and customs, and his successful return integrates these experiences abroad into the Greek world at home."--BOOK JACKET.


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices