Joel Christensen on The Odyssey

Joel Christensen discusses with Ivan six things about The Odyssey which should be better known.

Joel P. Christensen is Professor of Classics at the CUNY Graduate Center where he also serves as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. Joel has previously taught at UT San Antonio and Brandeis University. His research interests include early Greek poetry, myth, and literary theory. With Elton Barker, Joel has published Homer: A Beginner’s Guide (2013) and Homer’s Thebes (Harvard University Press 2020). Joel has also authored The Many-Minded Man: The Odyssey, Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic (2020) with Cornell University Press, Storylife: On Epic, Language, and Living Things with Yale in 2025, and Why Odysseus? With Palgrave/Macmillan (2026). He is also editor of the Oxford Critical Guide to the Odyssey (2026) and author of numerous articles on Homer, myth, Greek poetry, and its reception in the modern world.

1. Ancient Audiences rarely ever read the Odyssey in its entirety
2. The Odyssey was sung and performed for generations before it was written down
3. We don't know how The Odyssey was written down
4. The Homeric Odyssey isn't the only version of the story that used to exist
5. Odysseus was disliked by many early Greek audiences
6. The ending of the Odyssey is extremely strange and most people ignore it!

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