Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad

by Eva Brann

Fifty years of reading Homer—both alone and with students—prepared Eva Brann to bring the Odyssey and the Iliad back to life for today's readers. In Homeric Moments, she brilliantly conveys the unique delights of Homer's epics as she focuses on the crucial scenes, or moments, that mark the high points of the narratives: Penelope and Odysseus, faithful wife and returning husband, sit face to face at their own hearth for the first time in twenty years; young Telemachus, with his father Odysseus at his side, boldly confronts the angry suitors; Achilles gives way to boundless grief at the death of his friend Patroclus.

Eva Brann demonstrates a way of reading Homer's poems that yields up their hidden treasures. With an alert eye for Homer's extraordinary visual effects and a keen ear for the musicality of his language, she helps the reader see the flickering campfires of the Greeks and hear the roar of the surf and the singing of nymphs. In Homeric Moments, Brann takes readers beneath the captivating surface of the poems to explore the inner connections and layers of meaning that have made the epics "the marvel of the ages."

"Written with wit and clarity, this book will be of value to those reading the Odyssey and the Iliad for the first time and to those teaching it to beginners."—Library Journal

"Homeric Moments is a feast for the mind and the imagination, laid out in clear and delicious prose. With Brann, old friends of Homer and new acquaintances alike will rejoice in the beauty, and above all the humanity, of the epics." —Jacob Howland, University of Tulsa, Author of The Paradox of Political Philosophy

"In Homeric Moments, Eva Brann lovingly leads us, as she has surely led countless students, through the gallery of delights that is Homer's poetry. Brann's enthusiasm is as infectious as her deep familiarity with the works is illuminating."—Rachel Hadas

"Brann invites us to enter a conversation [about Homer] in which information and formal arguments jostle with appreciations and frank conjectures and surmises to increase our pleasure and deepen the inward dimension of our humanity."—Richard Freis, Millsaps College

"For anyone eager to experience the profundity and charm of Homer's great epic poems, Eva Brann's book will serve as a passionate and engaging guide. Brann displays a deep sensitivity to the cadence and flow of Homeric poetry, and the kind of knowing intimacy with its characters that comes from years of teaching and contemplation. Her relaxed but informative approach succeeds in conveying the grandeur of the great Homeric heroes, while making them continually resonate for our own lives. Brann helps us see that this poetry has an urgency for our own era as much as it did for a distant past."—Ralph M. Rosen, University of Pennsylvania, Author of Old Comedy and The Iambographic Tradition

"The most enjoyable books about Homer are always written by those who have read and taught him the most. Eva Brann's collection of astute observations, unusual asides, and visual snapshots of the Iliad and the Odyssey reveals a lifelong friendship with the poet, and is as pleasurable as it is informative. Homeric Moments is rare erudition without pedantry, in a tone marked by good sense without levity."—Victor Davis Hanson, author of The Other Greeks and co-author of Who Killed Homer?

Eva Brann is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she has taught for fifty years. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. Her other books include The Logos of Heraclitus, Feeling Our Feelings, Homage to Americans, Open Secrets / Inward Prospects, The Music of the Republic, Un-Willing, and Then and Now (all published by Paul Dry Books).

Genres: Classics, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Greece, History, Literature

326 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

About the author

Eva T. H. Brann was an American scholar, classicist, and the longest-serving tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. Born in Berlin in 1929 and later immigrating to the U.S., she earned degrees from Brooklyn College and Yale University. Brann devoted over six decades to teaching and writing, becoming a key figure in the Great Books tradition and serving as dean of St. John’s College.
Her wide-ranging works include Paradoxes of Education in a Republic, What, Then, Is Time?, and The Music of the Republic. She also co-translated several Platonic dialogues and received the National Humanities Medal in 2005. Brann passed away in 2024 at the age of 95, leaving behind a lasting legacy of intellectual rigor and philosophical inquiry.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you read one book on the Odyssey and/or the Iliad make it this one.

I had Ms. Brann as a tutor at St. John's College in 2008. I was lucky to get exposed to her style and SJC at that time and it gives a great depth to her work.

However, anyone who has read and enjoyed Homer will be amazed at the approachability and depth of Homeric Moments.

I especially enjoyed the explanation of the greek language and structure of the epic poem. Also, Ms. Brann's ability to relate Homer to Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Austen, and the great English Romantics brought both a clarity in meaning to her explanations and a direction for further study.

Amazingly in depth, but so elegantly explained. Take for instance one sentence comparing Achilles and Odysseus:

"As Achilles is taken over by 'menis', Odysseus is the man of 'metis', of measured calculated planning."

I cannot recommend this book enough.

[Captain Curmudgeon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me want to drop everything and learn Greek.

[Humberto Ballesteros · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a non-specialist who teaches Homer every year, I found this book quite useful, and at times even enlightening. There are many truly delightful readings of Homer in it. I particularly enjoyed the last three pieces, which focus on the recognition scenes at the end of the Odyssey, and I must also say that Mrs. Brann's deeply sympathetic and clever understanding of Penelope seems to me second to none.

That said, I did find many of the other essays capricious in the extreme, and some of her arguments and connections are a stretch to say the least. That is the main reason why I give it only three stars, but I still recommend the book enthusiastically to anyone who teaches Homer's epics, and the Odyssey specifically.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak are stuck in my head. "Imma leave the door OOOPEEEEN," said Telemachus when he was supposed to close (and lock) the door where he was hiding the armor of the suitors.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so incredibly helpful as I taught The Odyssey. Eva Brann’s 50 years of insight on Odysseus are literally invaluable but they can be purchased or even just borrowed from the library! I loved her way of exploring some of the themes of the book in short, roughly sequential chapters. This was a great guide that has helped me interpret this story and given me better historical context for The Odyssey. Along with An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, this book helped me love the adventure of The Odyssey. These two books by college professors and classics scholars give me a crash course in what makes The Odyssey such an enduring story so that I could convey genuine enthusiasm about this story to my students!

[Tleary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eva Brann’s writing is delightful as always while making observations that seem so simple and obvious once she makes them yet are so profound and the result of many years of reading Homer. She always enriches my own reading experience, and much of my love for Homer comes from having her as a literary guide to him.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine a professor who has immersed herself in her subject for almost 50 years and loves it--loves it and appreciates it for just what it is, not an anachronistic mold that the modern mind wants to force it into. Now imagine that professor distilling all that she's learned and realized through decades of instruction, deep reading, and discussion into a series of mostly plot-chronological reflections on those works, teaching you like she would teach her own fortunate students. What a treasure that book would be--and is, because...yeah, it's this book.

I understood the importance of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I didn't hate them, but they weren't anything I had a desire to ever pick up again. But Eva Brann helped me enter the ancient Greek world, understand the stakes, and finally appreciate the masterpieces that Homer wrote. What Tolkien did for me with Beowulf, she did for me with Homer.

I was resistant to her ultimate thesis about the supernatural occurrences in the Odyssey, and for that reason I didn't enjoy that half of the book as much. But equally surprising--or even more so--is how I felt about the Iliad section, because I'd never had much patience for its countless lists of bloody deaths, and I downright loathed Achilles. Brann opened my eyes to the themes and oppositions in the Iliad so that I now truly prize it. I see what the big deal is. I even have a little more grace for Achilles.

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend to teachers and lovers of Homer, but would also be a great companion to anyone wanting to tackle the Iliad or Odyssey for the first time. One of my grad school advisors derogatorily referred to my other advisor as “an appreciator, not a scholar”—which I thought actually pretty high praise—and I would put Brann delightfully in that camp. No high literary theory here, just an excellent reader showing us how to get more from these books.

[Melora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really excellent! She has so many insights into the characters, actions, layers of story in the Iliad & Odyssey! These were very interesting, delightfully Short essays, and now I'm Almost looking forward to re-reading Homer!

[Zachary Waltz · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I shall be focusing on certain crucial and interpretable moments in the Odyssey, whose meanings are worked into the poetry by Homer with artful reticence.” (xiii)

Even with its shortcomings, this is a must-read for readers of Homer. Eva Brann has here compiled so many observations of his artful reticence that it’s invaluable for all fans who - in the spirit of Nabokov - wish to see deeper into the work's treasures. “[I]t is a reasonable faith that there is a responsible author, a maker, who leaves an inexhaustible wealth of intentional small signs meant to be picked up by any reader as evidence from the lines of what is being said beyond and between the lines.” (13) Admittedly, it’s a bit uneven work as it is comprised of 49 independent (though interconnected) essays, including the introduction. You can find some gold in every essay, and the best of these are below. However, there are a few essays that are incomparably great. “Ajax the Silent”, “Visibility and Visuality”, “Beginnings and Endings”, “Simile: The Double Vision”, “The Cretan Liar”, and “Time Chasms”, not to mention her graphic tracking of events in the Iliad and Odyssey.

“Accounting for the Title”

“Reading Homer’s Poem is one of the purest, most inexhaustible pleasures life has to offer - a secret somewhat too well kept in our time. The aim of this book is to tell anyone who might care … some of the causes and details of that delight. (3)

“Let it be granted that the Homeric world is full of conditions and objects very different from those of our world. It would follow that Homer’s people think about different things, not that they think differently. A leisurely teenager in America might think about a souped up hotrod, and a young prince of Ithaca might care about a well-wrought chariot, and the differences between car and chariot carry a myriad of implications, but if we have some empathy for the dreams of the one, we will understand the hopes of the other.” (27)

Let me again call Aristotle to aid. He invented a term for that culminating completion in which a being is what it was meant to be: “Held-in [the timeless moment of its own] fulfillment”: entelecheia. The usual translation is “actuality.” He distinguished a first and a second such actuality. Feet may be actually swiftly moving, but this runner’s actuality is only second to a primary one: whether sitting, lyre in hand, or rising in greeting, Achilles is a swift-footed runner; it is his very nature to be swift, swift footed and swift fated, whatever he might “actually be doing. (29)

“The Gods”

“In all matters requiring merely human ingenuity we and the inhabitants of the epic world are similarly endowed with “skill” (techne) and with devices–Odysseus, particularly, is the man “of many devices” (polymechanos); you will recognize in the ancestral Greek our “technique” and “machine” But in one respect they appear to have had an advantage over us. They had the gods to help and harass them. The reader of the epics may come away believing that to be so stalked– in Aristotle’s term– from on high, as Odysseus was by Poseidon, is a grander and more bearable lot than to be left severely alone to cope with mere misfortune.” (35)

“The mode of belief or disbelief is in fact quite misapplied here. The Homeric gods are not “believed in.” The single God of the other Western tradition, as his Book says, indeed the object of a strenuous and difficult faith: He is wroth with Israel “because they believed not in God and trusted not in his salvation,” and in particular because they slip from the belief and knowledge “that I am He: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.” And this faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith in a God who exists, is one, alone saved, and is invisible to the eye is a task to be achieved and a test to be passed.”

“No one in the Homeric epics ever evinces the slightest interest in urging the existence of the gods, in insisting that one god is the god, or in claiming that there is an inherently invisible deity. No one shows any inclination to disbelieve in the gods because not one believes in them. They are simply presences, whose absence is a felt lack.” (36-37)

“Hephaestus’ World: The Shield”

When, however, we have had our fill of looking at Hephaestus' handiwork, we have to recall that this shield is made for Achilles and that he bears it into the final battle of the IIiad, when he is nearly berserk, a raging elemental force assaulting the elements. This is the man behind and under, "covered," by this sturdy five-layered shield with its beautiful but presumably fragile surface. Spears smash it; Aeneas drives his spear nearly through it, and one cannot help wondering what he hits-perhaps the golden dancing youths and maidens? Once the shield is all but drowned in River Scamander, and when Achilles finally rushes at Hector, whose spear has rebounded, Homer thinks to say, "from the fair and artfully made shield." This is what Hector last sees in the minutes before death: a world that has repelled his thrust. (84)

It [the Shield] is this world, whole and hale and soberly glorified by the artist, that Achilles carries into the last battle. He bears it; it shields him. He exposes it; it covers him. He exposes it to the thrust of spears under which it is punctured and staved in but never completely penetrated (as any world is reparable after war), while during battle it insulates the warrior–but barely–from totally berserk dissociation. Achilles carries the shield into battle as a real enough defense against mortal wounding, but he also bears it about-earth, star-studded heaven, seas, cities, land-as if he were the power behind the cosmos. I surmise, I imagine, that Homer thinks of swift-footed, swift-fated Achilles as the being who makes possible the poetry that makes the full world visible. It's not the clearest thought, but I think it approaches some truth. (86-87)

“Name Tags and Speaking Names”

EVEN BEFORE WE SEE SCENES and imagine similes, however, we hear names, at a rough estimate a thousand in the Iliad, where two armies, each with its heroes, are contending in a small place. Thus the Iliad is like a memorial wall on which the warriors, living and dead, of both sides are inscribed. In the Odyssey there are only half that many names; though its world is larger, its population is sparser. (141)

“Odysseus’ Odyssey I: First Through Sixth Adventure”

If Iliad contains multitudes of similes, the odyssey might be thought of as comprising a dozen metaphors, in each of which a mundane fact is figured as a fantastic event. (184)

“The Treasure House of the Greeks”

“Hermes is the inventory of the lyre, the swiftest of travelers and their guardian, a messenger and go-between amongst the Olympians and other realms, the god of heralds (such as on earth lead about blind poets), the only Olympian who enters fantasyland. As son of Maia the Midwife, he is the guardian of generative production; he is the protector of thieves and liars, and had taught Odysseus' grandfather Autolycus these skills; he is the god "who lends grace and glory to the work of humans"; he is the only Olympian god who enters Hades, and it is he who will in later times be the god of the art of interpretation, known to the ancients and to us as the Hermes-art ("hermeneutics"), and of literature in general.
Above all Hermes is the conductor of souls from the place of the living to the realm of the dead-one might say that is his signature capacity, which sums up all the others. Following him they go past the streams of Ocean, past the demesne of dreams, to the meadows of asphodel where dwell the phantoms of the great heroes, who toiled once but are now at leisure-beyond the land of dreams: the House of Hades, the last destination of all souls, is deeper and more remote but also more public than dreamland; death is the deeper brother of sleep.” (201-202)

“Calypso who Conceals: Eleventh Adventure”

“[Thrinacia] is the place where Odysseus finally achieves the certainty of solitude, where Circe's prophecy will begin to come true: "And if you yourself will escape, late you will return and in a bad way, having lost [or: destroyed] all your comrades." On Thrinacia Odysseus shows together the two features of his leadership: a self-control incommensurable with his men's simple creatureliness, and a recklessness that expresses itself sometimes in provocative curiosity and sometimes in dangerous lassitude. He is disciplined, hardy, and mystifying to his men in his hidden purpose to see, hear, experience, know, and apprehend the world imaginatively. To them his leadership must look like aimless drifting into continual hazards. They have been falling away from him for quite a while now: They are urgent where he is dilatory, they are slack where he is impulsive. They depend on him but distrust him; he cares for them occasionally but not about them steadily.” (214)

[Peter Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Homeric Moments by Eva Brann

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

I read this book after reading the Iliad and the Odyssey as part of the Online Great Books program. I think it worked better that way than trying the other way. By reading the primary texts first, I had a background that added to my appreciation of the observations made by Professor Brann. While reading this book first might have given me insights into the text, I think I might have found this book far too dry and acadmic. In addition, reading this book after the primary texts was an excellent review of those texts.

Brann's style is to skip around addressing different topics where she has insights after teaching Homer for years. All of the insights are well-worth considering. In some ways, reading this book is like having a conversation with an old friend about a subject she loves. Professor Brann clearly loves this material and finds it to be a vastly rewarding subject to consider.

This book is filled with tidbits. For example:

//Helen and Clytemnestra are indeed sisters, married to the brothers Menelaus and Agamemnon. They are the daughters of Tyndareus, who is, in turn, brother to Icarius, Penelope’s father.//

Clytemnestra was the wife of Agamemnon. She was infamous for killing her husband on his return from Troy. Given that she figures prominently in the Orestiad, the connection of Helen, Penelope and Clytemnestra adds a dimension I did not pick up from reading Homer or the play.

Another insight answers a question about the Odyssey that came up during the OGB discussion of the book, namely, what did Telemachus get out of his journey to see Menelaus?

//Moreover, she had taken one look and asked her husband, “Do we know who among men these claim to be who have come to our house?” And she points to him: “that man,” he is the one who looks like Odysseus’ young son. It may be the first time in his prolonged boyhood that he has been called a man, and by such a personage! I think that perhaps Helen is never more beautiful than when she gives this boy the recognition that makes him Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, a young man.//

Again, these insights work better after the reader has interacted with Homer's texts and tried to unravel them for himself.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chapter 1 starts out, "Reading Homer's poems is one of the purest, most inexhaustible pleasures life has to offer--a secret somewhat too well kept in our time. The aim of this book is to tell anyone who might care... some of the causes and details of that delight." It was at this moment I knew I was going to like her.

Brann has been reading and teaching the Iliad and Odyssey for 50 years, and it was just really nice to have her go through and point out clever things Homer was doing. He's so subtle and witty and it really helps to have someone explain it who knows Greek. I kept bounding away and telling family members all about it.

Did you know that Penelope was cousins with Helen and Clytemnestra? Did you notice that Telemachus went on a sailing journey to parallel his father's, and while he didn't find much news of Odysseus, Queen Helen did give him something very precious: she recognized him as indisputably Odysseus's son and as a man. Telemachus stepped into his adulthood at her house, and then he could go home and help reclaim his palace.

One of my favorite sections was her discussion of Achilles's magic shield. The shield contained art of a whole world, land, sea, and sky, filled with people doing things and with gods and people watching the work get done. She teased out a Greek concept that a work reaches its highest fulfullment when it is contemplated by someone at rest. I love that idea. Don't we all long to show somebody when we do work? It fills me with satisfaction that even social media ties into that very old human need to Look What I Did.

[Matt McCormick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would make a great set-up for someone who hasn't yet read Homer and a worthwhile reminder of interesting stories within the epics for those who have. I appreciated the structure - dividing "moments" of Homer into topical chapters that were more pedestrian than academic. While most provide an interesting view supplied by the author, few go very deep. I came away with few insights - humans get their value because the gods bother to notice them.

There were times when the writing itself became a bit to choppy for my pleasure - page 19 - "Besides telling some of the delightful discoveries any well-disposed reader can make in epics, I would like, really incidentally, to demonstrate a way of reading the epics that will, I think, make more such things reveal themselves." I love commas. I don't love them this much.

If someone said to me that the were planning on reading either Homeric epic I would suggest they start with Brann's book as a primer.

[M.H. Thaung]

I’ve read The Odyssey in various translations, although I’m not nearly so familiar with The Iliad. This book looked like an interesting way to explore new-to-me aspects of both poems. It lived up to its promise.

There are just under 50 chapters, each examining some theme such as the roles of certain characters, or use of epithets. The chapters are short and I found them easy to read, with an enthusiastic but not over-simplified style. During discussion of poetic form, there are occasional quotations from the “original” Greek text. These were presented as transliterated text, which took a while to get used to.

I initially dipped into a few topics that caught my eye, then settled down to read from the start. The early chapters refer to both poems while the later ones concentrate on The Odyssey. At times I found myself thinking, “Ah, she makes a good point,” or “I must keep an eye out for more examples.” And that is surely a good thing :)

[Banbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many of the author's insights into specific incidents of the Iliad and the Odyssey were enlightening. I especially appreciate where she connected one event or character to another by showing a parallel, a foreshadowing, or a similarity, thus deepening the importance of both. For example, when she connects the burial mound and oar for Elpenor to Teiresias's instructions to Odysseus to go inland until an oar is mistaken for a winnowing paddle and to there set a memorial. There are so many wonderful bits of analysis and close reading in this book. My quibbles with it are that it feels more like a loose set of essays than an integrated analysis, and some of the chapters just seem to end mid-thought. That said, I recommend this book to anyone interested in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

[Felicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this after I read "The Iliad" and Odyssey. Then I RE-READ those works after reading this book. It's a delightful companion from a brilliant scholar that gives great insight into things you might miss on a first read. I wish I could have taken an actual class to study these classics, but this book definitely enhanced my understanding and pleasure in these seminal works in a great substitute way.

[Hilary Forrest · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this alongside reading the Odyssey. It is a brilliant book written by Eva Brann who has taught and read Homer for over 50 years. This book has excellent tidbits and insights that helped flesh out Homers tales for me. I didn't read it chronologically, I skipped around as the chapters allowed for that.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I have read about the Homeric epics in years, focusing on the delight one can find in reading Homer's poetry. I found some things I really hadn't thought about before, and that's saying something, so I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in the Classics, especially Homer.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first 75 pages are really well put together. Each chapter is like a short essay or classroom talk. They are independent of each other. The later part of the book goes through all the books of the Odyssey. I thought the beginning and these chapters were the most interesting.

[Austin Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of vignettes and moments from the Iliad and the Odyssey (mostly the Odyssey).

[Mary Elizabeth Campbell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Granted, I did not read every chapter of this, but it just KEPT going.

[Sunblinding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essays that help you inhabit the text like no other.

[max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended for anyone who loves Homer. This book is written by a very knowledgeable and sympathetic reader of Homer's poems. It does not, thankfully, rehash everything you already know about both poems. Instead, it is loaded with all sorts of fresh and thoughtful insights into Homer's world, his poetic art, and why the books are deeply enjoyable, rewarding and stimulating to read, over and over.

The author is a college professor who has taught both the Iliad and the Odyssey for many years; her extensive familiarity with the poems is evident in every page of this book. She possesses a deep understanding of the poems and has a great talent in communicating how they are different from any other kind of literature. She is fully conversant with the original language of the poems, which she occasionally transliterates (and then translates) to allow readers to get the feel for the rhythm or sonic qualities of certain hexameter lines.

She is obviously a skilled Greek scholar, and one of the nice aspects of the book are all of the little tidbits she throws in that reveal her deep knowledge of the Greek language. These points are always made in service of her main goal of enlarging her readers' understanding of Homer's remarkable art.

There is always so much more in Homer than meets the eye. On the surface he is an entertaining storyteller; below that he is an artist whose works reveal an extraordinarily sophisticated technique and seemingly bottomless depth. His characters and all of the qualities they embody, the narrative structure of each poem -- these have never been rivaled by any other poet, and the author is at her best when she is dissecting all of these elements and aiding us in our understanding of how they work.

Regrettably, many books that have been written about Homer are pedantic, jejune, and dull. This book is quite the opposite. The author has dispensed altogether with a formal academic approach and has instead opted to share with her readers a series of 48 illuminating insights. I, for one, am grateful.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brann’s book is a wonderful companion to The Odyssey, as well as to The Iliad. I think that the book’s strength lies in the fact that it is not intended to be a scholarly commentary, but rather as a companion to actually reading and enjoying the work. Brann walks the reader through The Odyssey as a tour guide might walk one around the ruins of Athens or Ilium, pointing out aspects of the epic that may slip past the reader’s attention. Brann briefly discusses the debate on the “Homeric question” without going into too much detail, more as a way to familiarize the reader with the academic questions surrounding the authorship, an aspect of her narrative which I appreciated, since her work is primarily devoted to the enjoyment of reading the epic. Brann discusses the meanings of words and names, and how these are reflective of the different layers of meaning found in both The Iliad and The Odyssey, which reinforces the fact that learning Homeric Greek is a worthwhile endeavor in order to understand these meanings. She focuses on different parts of Odysseus’ journey to bring out what this epic taught the Greeks and what it continues to teach modern readers, and uses quotations from different authors, from Shakespeare to Tennyson, to illustrate the impact these works have had on succeeding generations. My favorite part of her book is where she discusses the homecoming of Odysseus, and the interplay between Odysseus and Penelope. I really missed that completely, the first time I read The Odyssey, and now I want to go back and re-read it. The overall feel of the book is of a teacher pointing out unnoticed aspects of the text, and will reward anyone who reads it. It is not a comprehensive look at The Odyssey, nor is it intended to be one. The intent is to bring the reader to a deeper appreciation of one of the foundations of the Western Canon.

[Tommy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the very best books for deepening one's appreciation of Homer. Very well-written, and tremendously observant and thoughtful. Required reading for those who teach the Iliad and Odyssey.

[A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reasonably good modern interpretation of the Odyssey and the Iliad. Quick but worthwhile.

[Yoby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would love taking classes under her. Have all of her books but two. (She does a lot of her reading and writing in the bathtub._

[P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still a delight, but occasionally goes too far.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fabulous compliment to reading The Iliad and I expect it will be even more useful when we move to reading The Odyssey.

[Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love love love!!