The shadow of Ulysses : figures of a myth
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The shadow of Ulysses : figures of a myth
Clarendon Press , Oxford University Press, 1994
- Other Title
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Ombra di Ulisse
- Uniform Title
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Ombra di Ulisse
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Note
Translation of: Ombra di Ulisse
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This study is an exploration of the myth of Ulysses in a range of Western literature from Homer to Joyce. Describing the many incarnations of Ulysses, Boitani sees the hero as an ideal observation-point from which to measure the similarities and differences between the otherness "alterity" of the past and the "modernity" of the present. Ulysses is seen as a figure which every culture is free to interpret, according him values rooted on the one hand in the mythical qualities of Odysseus as a character, and on the other in the ideals, problems, and philosophycial, ethical and political horizons of the individual civilization. The book follows the evolution of this sign through its various phases - classical, medieval, Renaissance, romantic and modern - returning continuously as it does so to the inter-relations between myth, poetry and history, and between rhetoric and the imaginary. Among the writers discussed are Homer, Dante, Tasso, Tennyson, Poe, Joyce and Borges, to name but a few.
The book should be of interest to: students and scholars of classical, medieval and modern literature; students and scholars of comparative literature; and anyone interested in the history of ideas, the relationships between history and literature.
Table of Contents
- Introduction - wonder - poetry and history
- shadows - figuralism and prophecy
- shipwreck - interpretation and alterity
- the "nova terra" - typologies, history and intertextuality
- from land to land, towards the whirlpool - obliquity, impurity and restless readings
- "in breve carta" - science and the poetry of knowledge
- the final journey and an end to all journeying - the functions of irony
- the mirror of the sea - a hope for literature within history
- Ulysses, the sirens and the pheasant - word enigma and silence.
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