Penelope Bauer sips on a margarita, celebrating her acceptance into the graduate Classics program at Boston University, unaware that she will soon become the central player in a bold scheme to save Western Civilization from itself. Of course, like any intelligent young woman in the dark days of 2018, she sees the symptoms of decay all around her, and the waning of the original values of ancient Greece. The good life for most Americans has become synonymous with the individual drive for wealth and status, acquisitiveness displacing the quest for the classical virtues of wisdom, courage, justice, and the like. Indeed, the small liberal arts college from which she will graduate in a week has fallen victim to the money-grubbing paws of a shady for-profit educational corporation.Penny's decision to pursue the Classics reflects her growing realization that liberal education may be human kind's last best hope. She and her fellow students at the College of St. Francis had the opportunity to experience, many for the first time, the pleasures of a genuinely good life, a moral or ethical life, liberated from the need to acquire the material symbols of success. Her passionate commitment to live such a life made her the unwitting subject of an ancient prophecy. She has been watched, studied without her knowledge. Fate has groomed her to participate in a grand adventure, a wild ride of Homeric proportions, with help along the way from an Irish Setter mix named Sappho, and a bevy of strong, intelligent women--Black and brown, Irish and Greek, gay and straight. And like her ancient namesake, the wife of Odysseus, she will have to depend on an abiding love and her courage, the courage of a woman warrior, to see her through the perils of her own Odyssey.

In the wake of recent advances in the treatment of longstanding problems pertaining to the interpretation of Homeric poetry, this volume brings together cutting-edge research from a cohort of acclaimed scholars on Homer and the Homeric Hymns. The variety of topics covered spans the entire field of Homeric philology: the methods and solutions provided for a new edition of the Odyssey, the puzzle of the relation between the festival of the Panathenaea and the Homeric text, the disclosure of the meaning of notorious cruces pertaining to arcane formulas, the two emblematic heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Achilles and Odysseus, Homeric poetics, the range and use of repetition in a traditional medium, the composition of the Homeric epics, the Apologoi and 'Cyclic' Narrative, as well as the Homeric Hymns to Hermes and Aphrodite.

Odysseus and the Oar was written for military members, veterans, their loved ones, and those who counsel and serve them. Using Homer's Odyssey and the experiences of today's veterans, he explores the processes of homecoming, healing, and transformation. This is "the archetype of the warrior's return," a phrase coined by Magers that corresponds with the archetypal patterns seen in myths about returning warriors worldwide. Honoring these timeless patterns, Magers argues, is essential for veterans to heal and recover the meaning, vitality, and purpose of their lives. Odysseus and the Oar's novel interpretation of the Odyssey is possible because of the author's experiences in combat, his conscious exploration of his post-war dreams through his own Jungian analysis, and because of his expertise in Jungian psychology and mythology. Commentaries on the Odyssey have been written in dozens of languages over hundreds of years, and yet this book goes into territory never before explored, illuminating Homer's myth in new ways. Magers shares the storyline as an inner, archetypal reality. We learn that the archetypal imagery in the Odyssey and the dreams of modern combat veterans have an uncanny resemblance to one another because they depict psychological processes and content that is universal, and if we are to help veterans "come home" from war, this must be understood. At once entertaining and instructive, readers will find that they've taken a journey through ancient Greece, war, the painful process of homecoming, and even into new territory within their own souls. After Odysseus successfully navigates his immediate postwar trials, he is called "to carry an oar far beyond his home, to a land where people do not use salt with their food (whose lives lack flavor) and who do not even know the sea." He has a mission to share the truth of healing that he himself has integrated.

Here Stephen Tracy offers a vivid, fast-paced narrative that serves as a reading guide to Homer's monumental epic. He not only provides translations of key passages and traces the evolution of major themes in the Odyssey, but also helps new readers to understand the artistry of one of the best tales ever told. Aimed at advanced readers as well, this book stresses an appreciation of how Homer has ordered his narrative, covering such topics as character interaction, family relationships, elements of poetic language, and the symbolic treatment of death, rebirth, growth, and knowledge. Given the controversy over the way the Odyssey was composed and handed down, Tracy concentrates on presenting the poem as a highly unified work. His analysis of the narrative structure reveals the epic to be arranged as a series of parallel journeys. The journey, seen here as a symbol of growth and self-knowledge, is among the major themes discussed in detail, along with the importance of women as overseers of life's journeys and the need for the sons of heroes to grow up worthy of their fathers.

The Raft of Odysseus looks at the fascinating intersection of traditional myth with an enthnographically-viewed Homeric world. Carol Dougherty argues that the resourcefulness of Odysseus as an adventurer on perilous seas served as an example to Homer's society which also had to adjust in inventive ways to turbulent conditions. The fantastic adventures of Odysseus act as a prism for the experiences of Homer's own listeners--traders, seafarers, storytellers, soldiers--and give us a glimpse into their own world of hopes and fears, 500 years after the Iliadic events were supposed to have happened.

His articles on classical and modern Arabic literature have appeared in Spanish, English, Arabic, and Ukrainian.ContentsIntroduction: Reclaiming Arabian MythThe Textual PuzzleThe Thamudic Backdrop to the PuzzleThe First Answer to the Puzzle: The Raid on TabukThe Totem and the TabooPoeticizing the ThamudDemythologizing the ThamudThe ScreamThe Arabian Golden Bough and Kindred Branches: Frazer, Vergil, Homer, and GilgameshConclusion