This study is an exploration of the myth of Ulysses in a range of Western literature from Homer to Joyce. Describing the many incarnations of Ulysses, Boitani sees the hero as an ideal observation-point from which to measure the similarities and differences between the otherness "alterity" of the past and the "modernity" of the present. Ulysses is seen as a figure which every culture is free to interpret, according him values rooted on the one hand in the mythical qualities of Odysseus as a character, and on the other in the ideals, problems, and philosophycial, ethical and political horizons of the individual civilization. The book follows the evolution of this sign through its various phases - classical, medieval, Renaissance, romantic and modern - returning continuously as it does so to the inter-relations between myth, poetry and history, and between rhetoric and the imaginary. Among the writers discussed are Homer, Dante, Tasso, Tennyson, Poe, Joyce and Borges, to name but a few. The book should be of interest to: students and scholars of classical, medieval and modern literature; students and scholars of comparative literature; and anyone interested in the history of ideas, the relationships between history and literature.