In exploring the significance of Homer for the poetry of Modern Greece, Dr. Ricks is tackling a theme that has implications for the study of poetic influence in general. He takes the work of Sikelianos, Cavafy and Seferis and subjects a selection of poems that deal with specifically Homeric themes to a careful scrutiny. All Greek is translated, modern poets from outside Greece find their way into the discussion, and the reader has no need to be a specialist in Greek to find this study absorbing and instructive.

Dialogus encompasses Greek language and literature, Greek history and archaeology, Greek culture and thought, present and past: a territory of distinctive richness and unsurpassed influence. It seeks to foster critical awareness and informed debate about the ideas, events and achievements that make up this territory, by redefining their qualities, by exploring their interconnections and by reinterpreting their significance within Western culture and beyond.

Every Greek and every friend of the country knows the date 1821, when the banner of revolution was raised against the empire of the Ottoman Turks, and the story of 'Modern Greece' is usually said to begin. Less well known, but of even greater importance, was the international recognition given to Greece as an independent state with full sovereign rights, as early as 1830. This places Greece in the vanguard among the new nation-states of Europe whose emergence would gather momentum through to the early twentieth century, a process whose repercussions continue to this day. Starting out from...