Returns of Odysseus
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€70.99
A01=Irad Malkin
ancient literature
ancient societies
annexation
antiquity
archaeology
archaic period
Author_Irad Malkin
Category=DSBB
Category=JBCC9
Category=JBGB
Category=JHM
Category=NHC
city founding
classical period
collective representation
colonial perceptions
colonialism
decolonialism
diomedes
early greek exploration
empire
epeios
epic
epirus
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnicity
expansion
foreign lands
homer
iconography
identity
ithaca
literary criticism
mythology
myths
nestor
odysseus
odyssey
oral poems
philoktetes
pithekoussai
proto-colonial hero
return myths
rituals
the etruscans
trojan war
western mediterranean
Product details
- ISBN 9780520211858
- Weight: 726g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 30 Nov 1998
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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This remarkably rich and multifaceted study of early Greek exploration makes an original contribution to current discussions of the encounters between Greeks and non-Greeks. Focusing in particular on myths about Odysseus and other heroes who visited foreign lands on their mythical voyages homeward after the Trojan War, Irad Malkin shows how these stories functioned to mediate encounters and conceptualize ethnicity and identity during the Archaic and Classical periods. Synthesizing a wide range of archaeological, mythological, and literary sources, this exceptionally learned book strengthens our understanding of early Greek exploration and city-founding along the coasts of the Western Mediterranean, reconceptualizes the role of myth in ancient societies, and revitalizes our understanding of ethnicity in antiquity. Malkin shows how the figure of Odysseus became a proto-colonial hero whose influence transcended the Greek-speaking world. The return-myths constituted a generative mythology, giving rise to oral poems, stories, iconographic imagery, rituals, historiographical interpretation, and the articulation of ethnic identities.
Reassessing the role of Homer and alternative return-myths, the book argues for the active historical function of myth and collective representations and traces their changing roles through a spectrum of colonial perceptions--from the proto-colonial, through justifications of expansion and annexation, and up to decolonization.
Irad Malkin is Professor of Ancient History at Tel Aviv University and author of Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece (1987) and Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean (1994).
