The Odyssey: Recommended Reading/Viewing

Note: Some of these works contain sensitive material. Please review individual content warnings for specific details.

Novels

• Madeline Miller, Circe (2018): Just like Kate Hamill, Madeline Miller’s captivating novel foregrounds the female perspective in an exploration of one of The Odyssey’s most notorious monsters, the witch Circe. Miller’s epic retelling sheds new light on a complex heroine, one portrayed by Kate Hamill herself in A.R.T.’s production!
• Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad (2005): Legendary author Margaret Atwood reframes The Odyssey through Penelope’s perspective. While Hamill’s world-premiere play weaves Odysseus’ narrative together with Penelope’s, Atwood focuses her attention on the twenty years Penelope was left alone while Odysseus was on his adventure.
• Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones (2011): This is a contemporary reimagining of the Medea myth, as a poor Black family in rural Mississippi braces for Hurricane Katrina. Though Ward’s fourteen-year-old protagonist is thoroughly preoccupied with Greek heroines, Medea is the true core of this novel.
• Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia (2008): Le Guin gives voice to the voiceless in Lavinia, the king’s daughter who Aeneas fights to claim. In the entirety of The Aeneid, she never speaks a word. Her point of view here offers a powerful and insightful supplement to the epic.
• Jennifer Saint, Ariadne (2021): Ariadne is notorious in Greek myth, both for her role in vanquishing the monster the Minotaur and for being abandoned by Theseus. Like Miller’s Circe, Saint’s novel is an account of her heroine’s entire life that affirms her agency and personhood.
• Pat Barker, Silence of the Girls (2018): Barker’s novel centers around Briseis, yet another iconic Grecian woman, reduced to a mere archetype by the men fighting over her in Homer’s Iliad. The novel is both a war story and an examination of the women erased by history.

Poetry

• Alice Oswald, Memorial (2011): An epic poem itself and an imagining that remembers the lives of the soldiers lost in The Iliad.
• Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016): A poetry collection which offers reflections on war and collective memory. Similarly to Homer’s work, the collection is inspired by the Vietnamese oral tradition. There’s even a poem named “Telemachus.”
• Lord Alfred Tennyson, “Ulysses” (1842): Directly translated, the name Ulysses is the Roman variant of Odysseus. This poem returns to a question that Kate Hamill’s adaptation centers—after you’ve gone through something traumatic, how do you return home, and can you return to who you were? “Ulysses” presents an Odysseus who is unsatisfied with idle life at home and longs for the roaming he had come to know.

Scholarship

• Barbara Clayton, A Penelopean Poetics: Reweaving the Feminine in Homer’s Odyssey (Lexington Books, 2004): A scholarly study on Penelope and gender politics in both the epic and the scholarship around it. This text is also interested in the language, specifically the poetic “weaving” that Penelope does.
• Helene P. Foley, “Modern Performance and Adaptation of Greek Tragedy” (Transactions of the American Philological Association Vol. 129, 1999, pp. 1–12): This article discusses Greek plays more broadly, specifically how they evolved as a response to the social and political climates of the time. Foley contends that all contemporary performances of Greek plays must be adaptation.
• Richard Heitman, Taking her Seriously: Penelope and the Plot of Homer’s Odyssey (Michigan University Press, 2005): Just like Hamill does in her adaptation, this text emphasizes Penelope’s role in The Odyssey. Here, she is given agency, and therefore her role and contributions are evaluated in a new light.

Film/TV

• Andrei Konchalovsky, dir., The Odyssey (1997): An Emmy-winning miniseries, this 1997 anthology is one of the most recent and notable screen adaptations of Homer’s work.
• Joel Coen, dir., O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000): This epic hero’s journey, written by the Coen Brothers and starring George Clooney, is perhaps one of the most infamous retellings of The Odyssey. Though it features more music than its source material, similarities include sirens and a Cyclops.
• Anthony Minghella, dir., Cold Mountain (2003): This contemporary screen adaptation of The Odyssey based on Charles Frazier’s 1997 novel features a soldier on a long journey to reunite with his love. Set in the American South during the Civil War, this film was praised for its accurate historical depiction of the period and all-star cast.
• Tim Burton, dir., Big Fish (2003): A heart-wrenching, mythic depiction of a hero’s journey, Big Fish incorporates the oral tradition and reflects on healing, just like Hamill’s adaptation of The Odyssey.
• Uberto Pasolini, dir., The Return (2024): An acclaimed film adaptation of The Odyssey, starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, takes place after Odysseus has returned home after the Trojan War.

Visual Art

Take an Odyssey-themed tour in the acclaimed Ancient Greek galleries at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston with objects selected by Phoebe Segal, Mary Bryce Comstock Curator of Greek and Roman Art:

• Jar (pelike) with Odysseus and Elpenor in the Underworld (about 440 BC)
• Drinking cup (kylix) depicting scenes from the Odyssey (550 – 525 BC)
• Head of Polyphemos (about 150 BC or later)
• Two-handled jar (pelike) depicting the escape of Odysseus from the cave of Polyphemos (about 490 – 480 BC)
• Oil flask (aryballos) with Odysseus confronted by Sirens (575 – 550 BC)
• Bust of Homer (late 1st century BC or 1st century AD)

Other Writing

• Emily Wilson, “Growing Up with the Odyssey” (The Paris Review, 2017)
• Emily Wilson, trans., “From Homer’s ‘Odyssey,’ Book I” (The Paris Review, 2017): Hamill relied upon renowned scholar Emily Wilson’s highly acclaimed translation of The Odyssey that when writing her world-premiere play.
• Emily Wilson, “A Translator’s Reckoning with the Women of the Odyssey” (The New Yorker, 2017): Wilson offers reflections on interpreting this text today, particularly the portrayal of the women in the poem.
• Ryan R. Goble and Elizabeth Wiersum, “Epic Explorations: Teaching the ‘Odyssey’ With The New York Times” (The New York Times, 2019): This article distills the complex themes of Homer’s Odyssey in a digestible way, tailored for students, but useful for anyone interested in the story. The teachers who wrote the piece provide supplemental materials and methods to help make the epic more accessible.
• Kate Hamill, “Love and Frustration” (A.R.T. Guide, 2017): Kate Hamill explains her process and her perspective of adaptation on Sense & Sensibility, produced at A.R.T. in 2017. Her work on Jane Austen’s novels are another example of Hamill’s interest in writing “new female classics.”
• “Fighting for Freedom: The Civil War and Its Legacies” (The A.R.T. of Human Rights, 2015): Father Comes Home From The Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3), produced at A.R.T. in 2015, was loosely inspired by The Odyssey and followed a slave during the Civil War. Like Hamill’s play, the play dealt with the impact of war. A.R.T. presented this post-performance discussion with Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks as a part of its series The A.R.T. of Human Rights.