Homer’s Odyssey in Modern and Digital Receptions
Module 3 focuses on receptions of Homer’s Odyssey, one of the most influential and popular epics ever created. The 10-year journey home to Ithaca from the Trojan War by Odysseus, the “man of many ways,” has become so entrenched in Western culture that, as Hall notes, “no later author could ever again make a fresh start when shaping a narrative or a visual representation of a voyage, a metamorphosis, a run-in with savages, an encounter with anyone dead, a father-son relationship, a recognition token, or a reunion between husband and wife” (Hall 2008, 8). Moreover, the epic has “so deeply…shaped our imagination and cultural values” that it is now often difficult “even to identify ‘spin-offs’ from the Odyssey” (Hall 2008, 3).
Module 3.1 outlines both the narrative richness of the Odyssey and the complex way in which that narrative is delivered to the ears and eyes of its many audiences over the millennia. The multilayered and non-linear way in which the story unfolds, in particular the epic’s emphasis on story-telling and disguise and the consequent uncertainty as to the truth of the stories being told, has proven almost as important in modern receptions as the narrative itself. In addition, the epic is rich in sensory experience, vivid characterizations, and a stimulating blend of realistic detail mixed with sometimes wild and supernatural elements.
Perhaps it has been the particular nature of the Odyssey, as described in 3.1, that has generated the quantity and variety of receptions in different modern media. In module 3.2, a raft of “direct” receptions (called “Modysseys”) are surveyed; by “direct” is meant a reception that, following a deep engagement with the original source, attempts to limit changes and interventions into the narrative and structure of the ancient epic, and to communicate the work to a modern audience “directly” as opposed to “indirectly” (by means of either significant changes to the original, passing references to it, and so on). Reception categories such as “direct” and “indirect” are inexact, to be sure, and should be regarded as broad tendencies. 3.2 surveys a range of “direct” receptions in film and TV from very early in the history of cinema up to a 2013 French TV Miniseries. In the 1997 French TV Miniseries directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and starring Armand Assante as Odysseus, CGI was used to great effect in creating storm scenes and various locations, especially the Underworld scenes in what was otherwise a rather tedious rendition of Homer’s epic.
Module 3.3 briefly surveys some “indirect” receptions of the Odyssey. Here the field is wide open, as almost any modern film or TV series (or any “indirect” reception in any other medium) can claim descent from the ancient epic no matter how thin the connection is.
The close connections between the concepts and narrative arc underpinning Homer’s Odyssey and Science Fiction (usually now written as “SciFi” or “SF”) are exami