Odysseus, whose very name echoes “odyssey,” is often translated to mean “son of pain.” Taken together the man and his journey seem fated for hardship.Īt a time when more than 65 million people around the world are officially displaced from their homes by conflict, violence and persecution - the highest figure recorded by the United Nations since World War II - The Times has chronicled many real-life odysseys in reports of those journeys. And in the spring of 2018, Madeline Miller released “ Circe,” a novel written from the enchantress’s perspective that expands her story both before and after her affair with Odysseus.īelow, five lesson ideas that draw on Times resources to help students navigate the wine-dark seas and discover how the “Odyssey” might speak to their own lives and the world around them.ĭaniel Mendelsohn explains in his memoir that the word “odyssey” has three meanings: “voyage,” “journey,” and “travel.” As an epic poem, the ”Odyssey” further prepares us for a long narrative told on a grand scale of time and place, featuring a larger-than-life protagonist who is also Western civilization’s oldest hero. The same year, Daniel Mendelsohn’s memoir, “ An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic,” recounted what happened when his 81-year old father decided to sit in on the author’s seminar on the “Odyssey” at Bard College.
In 2017, the first English translation of the “Odyssey” by a woman, the British classicist Emily Wilson, was published to much acclaim, replacing older translations on some high school and college syllabuses. Three recent books show that much remains to be said and discovered about the epic and its relationship to our lives today. As readers everywhere know, the story’s themes of homecoming and hospitality, hubris and humility, suffering and survival continue to resonate across the centuries.
His epic tale follows the wily warrior Odysseus as he twists and turns his way back home to the shores of Ithaca after fighting a 10-year war at Troy.
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