This collection of essays explores the crucial place of Homer in the shifting cultural landscape of the twentieth century. It argues that Homer was viewed both as the founding father of the Western literary canon and as sharing important features with poems, performances, and traditions which were often deemed neither literary nor Western: the epics of Yugoslavia and sub-Saharan Africa, the keening performances of Irish women, the spontaneous inventiveness of the Blues. The book contributes to current debates about the nature of the Western literary canon, the evolving notion of world...
This collection of essays explores the crucial place of Homer in the shifting cultural landscape of the twentieth century. It argues that Homer was vi...
How was the poet Homer imagined by ancient Greeks? This book looks at stories circulating between the sixth and fourth centuries BC about his birth, name and origin, blindness and his relationship to other poets and his descendants. The work studies the ancient reception of the Homeric poems, and looks at it in relation to modern representations of Homer, ancient and modern conceptions of authorship, and the "Homeric Question."
How was the poet Homer imagined by ancient Greeks? This book looks at stories circulating between the sixth and fourth centuries BC about his birth, n...
How was the poet Homer imagined by ancient Greeks? This book looks at stories circulating between the sixth and fourth centuries BC about his birth, name and origin, blindness and his relationship to other poets and his descendants. The work studies the ancient reception of the Homeric poems, and looks at it in relation to modern representations of Homer, ancient and modern conceptions of authorship, and the "Homeric Question."
How was the poet Homer imagined by ancient Greeks? This book looks at stories circulating between the sixth and fourth centuries BC about his birth, n...
This book offers a new approach to the study of Homeric epic by combining ancient Greek perceptions of Homer with up-to-date scholarship on traditional poetry. Part I argues that, in the archaic period, the Greeks saw the lliad and Odyssey neither as literary works in the modern sense nor as the products of oral poetry. Instead, they regarded them as belonging to a much wider history of the divine cosmos, whose structures and themes are reflected in the resonant patterns of Homer's traditional language and narrative techniques. Part II illustrates this claim by looking at some central...
This book offers a new approach to the study of Homeric epic by combining ancient Greek perceptions of Homer with up-to-date scholarship on traditi...
George Boys-Stones Barbara Graziosi Phiroze Vasunia
The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies is a unique collection of some seventy articles which together explore the ways in which ancient Greece has been, is, and might be studied. It is intended to inform its readers, but also, importantly, to inspire them, and to enable them to pursue their own research by introducing the primary resources and exploring the latest agenda for their study. The emphasis is on the breadth and potential of Hellenic Studies as a flourishing and exciting intellectual arena, and also upon its relevance to the way we think about ourselves today.
The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies is a unique collection of some seventy articles which together explore the ways in which ancient Gree...
Homer's mythological tales of war and homecoming, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are considered to be two of the most influential works in the history of Western literature. Yet their author, 'the greatest poet that ever lived' is something of a mystery. By the 6th century BCE, Homer had already become a mythical figure, and even today the debate continues as to whether he ever existed. In this accessible and concise introduction, Barbara Graziosi considers Homer's famous works and their impact on readers throughout the centuries. She shows how the Iliad and the...
Homer's mythological tales of war and homecoming, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are considered to be two of the most influential works ...
"AN ENGAGING INTRODUCTION TO A FASCINATING TOPIC . . . GRAZIOSI NARRATES THE MANY METAMORPHOSES OF THE GREEK GODS WITH HUMOR AND ERUDITION."--The Christian Science Monitor The gods of Olympus are the most colorful characters of Greek civilization: even in antiquity, they were said to be cruel, oversexed, mad, or just plain silly. Yet for all their foibles and flaws, they proved to be tough survivors, far outlasting their original worshippers. In Egypt, the Olympian gods claimed to have given birth to pharaohs; in Rome, they led respectable...
"AN ENGAGING INTRODUCTION TO A FASCINATING TOPIC . . . GRAZIOSI NARRATES THE MANY METAMORPHOSES OF THE GREEK GODS WITH HUMOR AND ERUDITION."--