Modern odysseys : Cavafy, Woolf, Césaire, and a poetics of indirection /

"Explores the relationships between antiquity and modernity through C.P. Cavafy, Virginia Woolf, and Aimé Césaire's engagement with Odyssean tropes"--

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Zerba, Michelle, 1953- (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, [2021]
Series:Classical memories/modern identities.
Subjects:
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: A poetics of indirection and telling it slant
  • Diffusion and mixture. Homer: The Odyssey in a sea of difference ; Cavafy: diaspora, oblique encounters, and homoerotic desire ; Césaire: the colonial Antilles and a map of one's own spilled blood ; Woolf: tilting at Pagans' heads in a house that is a town
  • Islands and isolation. Homer: from Calypso to the therapy of the word ; Cavafy: cosmopolitan isolation and sexual shaming ; Woolf: domestic katabasis and moments of being ; Césaire: Peléan eruptions and portraits of blood
  • Passage and detour. Homer: Odysseus's wound and narrative detours ; Césaire: lagoons of blood and literary cannibalism ; Woolf: Constantinople and exile as carnival ; Cavafy: Mediterranean routes and ephebic visions
  • Return and split endings. Homer: murder in the home and split endings ; Woolf: time warps and wild goose chases ; Césaire: the incised tree, the slave ship, and the pirogue ; Cavafy: hedonic ships on policed waters
  • Epilogue: Toward an end.