In the following essay, Michael J. Spires focuses on the human element and scale of the Odyssey as an important reason for its continued popularity.
As Peter Jones remarks in his 1991 introduction to E. V. Rieu's translation of the poem, "The Odyssey—the return of Odysseus from Troy to reclaim his threatened home on Ithaca—is a superb story, rich in character, adventure and incident . . . and making the household, rather than the battlefield, the centre of its world" (p. xi). That, I think, goes a long way toward explaining its perennial appeal, even some 3,000 years after it was written.
That is not to say that the
Source: Epics for Students, ©2013 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
(The entire page is 2066 words.)
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