The Odyssey by Homer
Founded in 1960 by a group of relatively unknown young writers, Tel Quel quickly became one of the most influential literary journals and controversial intellectual movements in France. During the following two decades Tel Quel published the best in French intellectual thought and writing, including Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Pierre Faye, Michel Foucault, G rard Genette, Julia Kristeva, Bernard-Henri L vy, Marcelin Pleynet, Philippe Sollers, and Tzvetan Todorov. By focusing on Tel Quel as an instrument of cultural renewal, Danielle Marx-Scouras demonstrates that literature--even when it claims to be disengaged--can never escape its historical ties.
The book elucidates the complexities of French intellectual life and the role played by Tel Quel in the evolution of intellectual thought and writing in the 1960s and 1970s. Tel Quel's cultural politics have been fashioned as much by the unpredictable historical changes of the post-World War I and Cold War era as they have by the advances in literary studies, semiotics, philosophy, and psychoanalysis during this period. The journal ceased publication in 1982, shortly before the dissolution of Marxism-Communism marked by the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Europe, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Marx-Scouras ultimately finds in its cultural venture some significant parting thoughts on a vigorous period of European literary and intellectual history.
In the Iliad Homer sang of death and glory, of a few days in the struggle between the Greeks and the Trojans. Mortal men played out their fate under the gaze of the gods. The Odyssey is the original collection of tall traveller's tales. Odysseus, on his way home from the Trojan War, encounters all kinds of marvels from one-eyed giants to witches and beautiful temptresses. His adventures are many and memorable before he gets back to Ithaca and his faithful wife Penelope. We can never be certain that both these stories belonged to Homer. In fact 'Homer' may not be a real name but a kind of nickname meaning perhaps 'the hostage' or 'the blind one'. Whatever the truth of their origin, the two stories, developed around three thousand years ago, may well still be read in three thousand years' time.
Robert Fagles (1933-2008) was Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He was the recipient of the 1997 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His translations include Sophocles's Three Theban Plays, Aeschylus's Oresteia (nominated for a National Book Award), Homer's Iliad (winner of the 1991 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award by The Academy of American Poets), Homer's Odyssey, and Virgil's Aeneid. Bernard Knox (1914-2010) was Director Emeritus of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. He taught at Yale University for many years. Among his numerous honors are awards from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His works include The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy, Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles' Tragic Hero and His Time and Essays Ancient and Modern (awarded the 1989 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award).| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780374525743 |
| ISBN 10 | 0374525749 |
| Title | The Odyssey |
| Author | Homer |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Year published | 1998-11-05 |
| Number of pages | 592 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |