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The Odyssey
10Homer
The original journey narrative — its word entered every European language, and its plot architecture still structures storytelling from Joyce to Pixar three thousand years later.
GBM Assessment (Score: 10/10)
The Odyssey is the archetype of the journey narrative, establishing storytelling techniques such as in medias res that remain fundamental to literature and cinema. The word "odyssey" has entered virtually every language as a synonym for an epic voyage, and James Joyce's Ulysses stands as its most celebrated literary heir, reimagining Odysseus's wanderings in the streets of modern Dublin.
The Odyssey recounts Odysseus's nostos, or homeward journey, from Troy, and its narrative techniques have been employed throughout Western literature for nearly three millennia. James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and the Coen Brothers' film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) are among the most notable modern reimaginings of its story. The poem has never gone out of print.
Archaic Greece, c. 750-700 BC
Greece emerges from its Dark Age. City-states form. Colonization spreads Greek settlements from the Black Sea to Sicily. The Olympic Games begin (traditionally 776 BC). Homer composes the Iliad and Odyssey from centuries of oral tradition, giving Europe its founding literary works. Hesiod provides the first systematic Greek theology. Rome is a cluster of huts on the Palatine Hill.
Awards & Adaptations
Joyce's Ulysses. O Brother (2000). Core everywhere. Never out of print.
Recommended Edition
A.T. Murray (Loeb 1919); S. Butler (1900)
