Lexington Books
Pages: 228
Trim: 6¼ x 9
978-1-4985-3424-6 • Hardback • September 2018 • $123.00 • (£95.00)
978-1-4985-3426-0 • Paperback • September 2020 • $47.99 • (£37.00)
978-1-4985-3425-3 • eBook • September 2018 • $45.50 • (£35.00)
Charles Underwood is executive director of University-Community Links in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
Chapter 1: Journey of the Heart: Navigating a World of Trouble
Chapter 2: Telemakhos in the Zone: Learning with Others in Mind
Chapter 3: Engendering the Male: Mentor and Mythos in Telemakhos’ Journey
Chapter 4: Penelope’s Wonder: Navigating the Mythos of Masculinity
Chapter 5: Odysseus on Edge: Learning to Survive in an Unreal World
Chapter 6: Iron Will and Heart’s Desire: Body and Voice in the Heart’s Journey
Mythos and Voice combines theoretical structure with close reading and exacting scholarship in near perfect balance. The concept of 'voice' in 'heroic discourse' (powerful speech) keeps the focus on the role of orality both in the making of the epic poem and in its very subject matter. The analysis of Achilles and Agamemnon conversing in Hades (Odyssey 24) is a tour de force of literary exegesis. The original adaptation of Vygotsky’s 'zone of proximal development' and Bourdieu’s 'habitus' emphasize interaction and relationalism, which place Mythos and Voice squarely amid current trends in social psychology or what the author calls 'cognitive ethnography.'
— John Paul Russo, University of Miami
From his unique perspective as a working anthropologist, drawing especially on cultural psychology, Charles Underwood has re-envisioned the Odyssey as an extended meditation on human development and situated learning. A ‘cognitive ethnography’ of archaic Greece, as well as a meticulous, passage-by passage explication, the book offers compellingly fresh insights into the figures of Telemachus, Penelope, and Odysseus as they separately and collaboratively navigate a world of dangerous social displacement. Underwood’s grasp of Homeric scholarship and range of theoretical perspectives, from Vygotsky and Bakhtin to Goffman and G.H. Mead, are impressive. The result is one of the deepest and most intriguing books about the Odyssey in years.
— Richard Martin, Anthony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor in Classics, Stanford University