Nausicaa - Later Influence

Later Influence

The 2nd century BC grammarian Agallis attributed the invention of ball games to Nausicaa, most likely because Nausicaa was the first person in literature to be described playing with a ball.

An asteroid discovered in 1879, 192 Nausikaa, is named after her.

Nausicaa has been occasionally referenced in literature and art.

In his 1892 lecture, "The Humor of Homer" (collected in his Selected Essays), Samuel Butler concludes that Nausicaa was the real author of the Odyssey, since the laundry scene is more realistic and plausible than many other scenes in the epic. His theory that the Odyssey was written by a woman was further developed in his 1897 book "The Authoress of the Odyssey".

Chapter 13 in James Joyce's Ulysses is entitled "Nausicaa" and echoes the story to a degree: the character Gerty McDowell (Nausicaa's analogue) tempts Bloom.

William Faulkner named the cruise ship Nausikaa in his 1927 novel "Mosquitoes."

Robert Graves' 1955 novel Homer's Daughter presents Nausicaa as the author of the Odyssey, which draws on experiences and influences of her own life.

The Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks wrote an opera entitled Nausicaa (libretto by Robert Graves), first performed in 1961 at the Athens Festival.

The manga and 1984 anime film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, was indirectly inspired by the character in the Odyssey. Miyazaki read a description of Nausicaa in a Japanese translation of Bernard Evslin's anthology of Greek mythology, which portrayed her as a lover of nature. Miyazaki added other embellishments to fill in the gaps from Homer.

In 1991, the public aquarium Nausicaä Centre National de la Mer, one of the largest in Europe, opened in Boulogne-sur-Mer in France.

In 2010, the band Glass Wave recorded a song entitled "Nausicaa," sung in the voice of the Phaeacian maiden.

Nausicaans are a race of tall, strong, aggressive humanoids in the Star Trek universe.