THE ODYSSEY AND ITS ODYSSEY IN CONTEMPORARY TEXTS: RE-VISIONS IN STAR TREK, THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE, AND THE PENELOPIAD

Abstract

Homer’s The Odyssey is the archetypal quest story. The dialogue began with Homer, and contemporary texts and popular culture media have continued the tradition of deconstructing and recreating stories, addressing issues related to the human psyche. As Hardwick and Stray note, the relationship between ancient and modern is “not merely inherited but constantly made and remade,” one that we see in the following varied genres and versions that retell the Odyssean myth, relating re-visions of characters, relationships, structures, and themes. The original Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais” is an allegory of the Odyssean quest for human knowledge, while Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife presents a modern magical story of love, and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad is a story of “slippery truth,” debunking the heroic and romantic.

Beyond instilling aesthetic appreciation in our students, Odyssean stories indeed offer a plethora of rich pedagogical material. A comparative approach to the texts offers our students the ability to further their own analytical and critical insights. As the stories deal with issues of identity, self-knowledge, sense of place in the cosmos, and human relationships and communities, they provide perception of psychological and philosophical insights into both our human-ness and our present preoccupations in our world. Rather than view the Odyssean epic as “exclusive,” a constructive pedagogical approach is to explore the blurred spaces and/or gaps between the past and the present. Thus while texts are set in different and distinct times and spaces with varied purpose, story, and genre, what makes classroom discussions vital and vibrant are the similar issues raised, which explore our constant yearning to discover our human-ness, and following that, examination of the meaning of love, war, fate, meaning of life, and death, quintessential matters that are transcultural, universal, and timeless.