This book consists of twelve chapters written over the past forty-five years. Nine are revised and in some cases expanded versions of previously published papers. Chapters 7, 9, and 11 are new. The twelve chapters reflect the author’s long-standing interest in, and approaches to, the literary interpretation of Homeric poetry. Some focus closely on the diction, metre, style, and thematic resonance of particular passages and episodes and move from close readings to broad ideas and interpretations; others explore the usefulness of mythological allusion, Homeric intertextuality, hexameter metrics, ... More

This book consists of twelve chapters written over the past forty-five years. Nine are revised and in some cases expanded versions of previously published papers. Chapters 7, 9, and 11 are new. The twelve chapters reflect the author’s long-standing interest in, and approaches to, the literary interpretation of Homeric poetry. Some focus closely on the diction, metre, style, and thematic resonance of particular passages and episodes and move from close readings to broad ideas and interpretations; others explore the usefulness of mythological allusion, Homeric intertextuality, hexameter metrics, and the contrast between humanity and divinity as interpretive pathways into the poems; still others explore the contributions to the literary interpretation of Homeric poetry by Milman Parry and Ioannis Kakridis, who founded the two most fruitful twentieth-century scholarly approaches to Homeric epic: the study of the poems as traditional oral formulaic poetry and of ‘the epic technique of oral versemaking’ (Parry) and the Neoanalytical emphasis on the Homeric adaptation and transformation of traditional mythology, folktales, and poetic motifs (Kakridis). The final three chapters discuss some of the most compelling poetic and critical receptions of the Iliad since the late nineteenth century and the institutional reception of the Iliad and Odyssey in colleges and universities in the United States over the past two centuries. All twelve chapters gain strength by being brought together in a single volume that focuses on the iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite as literary works.