“Fascinating and comprehensive! As expected, Joel Christensen provides an insightful and eye-opening exploration of Greek myth's most complicated hero. A necessary read for all of us ensnared in Odysseus' millennia-old trap.” (Liv Albert, host and creator of “Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby!” podcast)
“Written with Christensen’s unparalleled scholarly expertise in the Homeric poems, his characteristic flair and aptitude for making complicated ideas accessible without losing nuance, Why Odysseus offers a slick and sophisticated guide to the afterlife of the Odyssey across thousands of years, from Greek tragedy to Penelope in Ovid’s Heroides to Emily Wilson’s translation and Epic: The Musical – and why the Odyssey matters so much now. In a particularly Odyssean moment in time, with reworkings, translations and films of Homer’s epic across the horizon, we could ask for no better helmsman to the Odyssey’s manifold adaptations.” (Emily Hauser, author of “Penelope's Bones”)
“This brilliant and elegantly written book is both deeply learned and genuinely accessible. With clarity and flair, it shows why Odysseus endures—not just as a hero, but as a cipher for ourselves and who we might yet become. By illuminating the Odyssey’s long cultural afterlives, Christensen reveals how our fascination with Odysseus’s wanderings, character, and return continues to shape how we read ancient epic and how we human possibility today.” (Candida Moss, author of “God's Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible”)
“In Why Odysseus?, Joel Christensen expertly ushers his audience through the many transformations of Odysseus—the antihero with a thousand faces. Whether as a veteran, a king, a sage, a trickster, a missing pater familias, or a vengeful murderer, Why Odysseus? provides an essential guide to the myriad iterations of this epic main character. From the Aeneid to James Joyce to Finding Nemo, Odysseus is more than just a myth. Christensen shows readers that he is an important cultural mirror that reflects the people, places, and politics of the cultures that he travels to.” (Sarah E. Bond, author of “Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire”)
“An eloquent examination of the durable yet malleable and morally complex Odysseus figure, Joel Christensen’s Why Odysseus? offers an engaging and profound meditation on the power and purposes of storytelling itself. Christensen artfully explores the figure of Odysseus as a perennial medium for understanding our own individual social and political identities and addressing the permanent and evolving challenges of human life. Ingenious, comprehensive, and detailed, Why Odysseus? has urgent resonance for our own -- indeed for any and every-- political and cultural moment.” (Emily Katz Anhalt, author of “Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times: Why Humanity Needs Herodotus, the Man Who Invented History”)
"In a particularly Odyssean moment in time, with reworkings, translations and films of Homer’s epic across the horizon, we could ask for no better helmsman to the Odyssey’s manifold adaptations.”
–Emily Hauser, author of Penelope's Bones
"Ingenious, comprehensive, and detailed, Why Odysseus? has urgent resonance for our own – indeed for any and every – political and cultural moment.”
–Emily Katz Anhalt, author of Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times: Why Humanity Needs Herodotus, the Man Who Invented History
"This brilliant and elegantly written book is both deeply learned and genuinely accessible."
–Candida Moss, author of God's Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible
This book examines the enduring appeal of Odysseus in artistic representation from antiquity to the present. The volume aims to provide a sense of how this character changes from ancient Greek myth through modern poetry, and how this capacity for change both perpetuates the motif of a mutable and devious character while reflecting essential anxieties over what it means to be a person.
Why Odysseus? demonstrates that Odysseus was already a figure of dynamic reception in Homer’s Odyssey, then examines his varied uses in antiquity, his resurgence in the twentieth century, and his flexibility in modern reception. It concludes with the challenges of translating the character from one period to the next. Why Odysseus? explores how a uniquely indeterminate character becomes an important “shifting signifier” for reflecting different periods’ and peoples’ values on what it means to survive—and sometimes thrive—in a world that is definitively non-heroic.
Joel P. Christensen is Provost, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Professor for Classics at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. With Elton Barker, Joel has published Homer: A Beginner’s Guide (2013) and Homer’s Thebes (2020); he has also written The Many-Minded Man: The Odyssey, Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic (2020), and Storylife: On Epic, Language, and Living Things (2025), and edited The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Odyssey (2026).
About the Author
Joel P. Christensen is Provost, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Professor for Classics at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Previously, he served as Professor of Classical and Early Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis University, where he also served as Senior Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs, Chair of Classical Studies, and Chair of the Brandeis Faculty Senate. Joel previously taught for nine years at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His research interests include early Greek poetry, myth, and literary theory. With Elton Barker, Joel has published Homer’s a Beginner’s Guide (2013), Homer’s Thebes (2020), The Many-Minded Man: The Odyssey, Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic (2020), Storylife: On Epic, Language, and Living Things (2025), and has recently edited The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Odyssey (2026).
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