This wide-ranging collection makes available to specialists and nonspecialists alike important critical work on the Odyssey produced during the last half century. The ten essays address five major concerns: the poem's programmatic representation of social and religious institutions and values; its transformation of folktales and traditional stories into epic adventures; its representation of gender roles and, in particular, of Penelope; its narrative strategies and form; and its relation to the Iliad, especially to that epic's distinctive conception of heroism.

In the...

This is an English translation of Sophocles' tragedy of Philoctetes, an archer who had been abandoned on Lemnos by the rest of the Greek fleet while on the way to Troy. Focus Classical Library provides close translations with notes and essays to provide access to understanding Greek culture.

THE WORLD'S GREATEST WAR NOVEL

Humans and gods wrestling with towering emotions. Men fighting to the death amid devastation and destruction. Perhaps the Western world's first and best storyteller, Homer draws the reader in with bated breath. His masterful tale contains some of the most famous episodes in all of literature: the curse on the prophet Cassandra; the siege of Troy; the battle between Hector and Achilles; the face that launched a thousand ships; and of course, the deception of the Trojan Horse. To this day, the heroism and adventure of The Iliad have remained...

Homeric Epic and its Reception, comprising twelve chapters--some previously published but revised for this collection, and others appearing here in print for the first time--offers literary interpretations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. While some chapters closely study the diction, meter, style, and thematic resonance of particular passages and episodes in the Iliad and the Odyssey, others follow diverse pathways into the interpretation of the epics, including mythological allusion, intertextuality, the...