"Edith Hall explains the enduring fascination of Homer's epic in terms of its extraordinary susceptibility to adaptation. Not only has the narrative reflected a myriad of intellectual and aesthetic agendas, but it has seemed perhaps uniquely fertile in generating new kinds of artistic media. Art forms created in direct response to the Odyssey include the tragedies of classical Athens and the burlesque of Aristophanes, as well as more recent genres such as travelogue, science fiction, the novel, opera, film, children's books and detective stories. The author explores fifteen key themes in the Odyssey which illuminate the innumerable ways it has impacted on the cultural imagination. Cultural texts as diverse as Joyce's Ulysses, Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, Suzanne Vega's Calypso, the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou?, Daniel Vigne's Le Retour de Martin Guerre, Jon Amiel's Sommersby, Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Theo Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze all show that Odysseus is truly a versatile hero. The travels of this charismatic wayfarer across the waters of the wine-dark Aegean are journeys not just into the mind of one of the most brilliantly creative and inspiring of all the ancient Greek poets. They are as much a voyage beyond the boundaries of a narrative which, perhaps more than any other, can lay claim to being the quintessential global phenomenon."--Jacket.