The Odyssey

An ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer, recounting the ten-year journey of Odysseus home to Ithaca after the fall of Troy, and the parallel story of his son Telemachus and his wife Penelope holding off her suitors in his absence. Like the Iliad, the poem descends from an oral performance tradition, composed in dactylic hexameter and built from formulaic phrases suited to improvisation, before it was fixed in writing. Its structure, opening in the middle of the action and unfolding Odysseus' earlier wanderings in his own retrospective narration, became a durable model for narrative poetry told out of chronological order.