Homer and the Dual Model of the Tragic interprets both of Homer's epics as demonstrating a sense of "the Tragic." While this view of human experience and society is customarily linked with Greek tragedy rather than epic, Rinon uses close readings of the texts to argue persuasively that both The Iliad and The Odyssey present a view of pathos interwoven with the knowledge that it is unavoidable and inexplicable. Using Aristotle's Poetics as a guide toward defining eutuchia and dystuchia, Rin...

Oedipus, the former ruler of Thebes, has died. Now, when his young daughter Antigone defies her uncle, Kreon, the new ruler, because he has prohibited the burial of her dead brother, she and he enact a primal conflict between young and old, woman and man, individual and ruler, family and state, courageous and self-sacrificing reverence for the gods of the earth and perhaps self-serving allegiance to the gods of the sky. Echoing through western culture for more than two millennia, Sophocles...

For those of us who know and love the incomparable Odyssey of Homer (and there are many), Dr. Hexter has created a valuable, detailed analysis, taking into account many of Homer's most fascinating subtleties.

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. Barbara Graziosi considers Homer's famous works, and their impact on readers throughout th...

The Cambridge Companion to Homer is a guide to the essential aspects of Homeric criticism and scholarship, including the reception of the poems in ancient and modern times. Written by an international team of scholars, it is intended to be the first port of call for students at all levels, with introductions to important subjects and suggestions for further exploration. Alongside traditional topics like the Homeric Question, the divine apparatus of the poems, the formulae, the characters a...

From the renowned contemporary American poet comes this fluent and accessible version of The Bacchae , the great tragedy by Euripides.Includes an introduction by Martha Nussbaum"This new version of The Bacchae should allow English readers to appreciate some of the rich qualities of Euripides' masterpiece. C. K. Williams handles the spoken poetry of the original in a flexible verse that en...

Bacchae is one of the most troubling yet intriguing of Greek tragedies. Written during Euripides' self-imposed exile in Macedonia, it tells of the brutal murder and dismemberment of Pentheus by his mother and aunts who, driven temporarily insane, have joined the Bacchae (devotees of the god Dionysus, or Bacchus). The startling plot, driven by Dionysus' desire to punish his family for refusing to accept his divinity, and culminating in the excruciating pathos of a mother's realizat...

Achilles is the quintessential Greek hero, but that does not mean that he is a conventional hero. His uniqueness is dictated by his birth, as the son of a sea goddess, and his education at the hands of a centaur. The hero’s exceptional nature also forms part of the tension that both unites and opposes him to Apollo.Achilles presents the different episodes in the life of this hero conventionally, in chronological order, based primarily on the Greek sources: birth, education, deeds i...

Viewing the Iliad and myth through the lens of modern psychology, in Becoming Achilles: Child-Sacrifice, War, and Misrule in the Iliad and Beyond,Richard Holway shows how the epic underwrites individual and communal catharsis and denial. Sacrificial childrearing generates but also threatens agonistic, glory-seeking ancient Greek cultures. Not only aggression but knowledge of sacrificial parenting must be purged.Just as Zeus contrives to have threats to his regime play out harmlessl...

The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Iliad investigates each of the Iliad's twenty-four books, proceeding in order from book 1 to book 24 and devoting one chapter to each one. Contributors summarize the plot of a book and then explore its themes and poetics, providing both close readings of individual passages and synthetic reviews of current scholarship. This format allows readers to study the poem in the same manner in which they read it: book by book. Differing from ot...

Although Classical Athenian ideology did not permit women to exercise legal, economic, and social autonomy, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides often represent them as influential social and moral forces in their own right. Scholars have struggled to explain this seeming contradiction. Helene Foley shows how Greek tragedy uses gender relations to explore specific issues in the development of the social, political, and intellectual life in the polis. She investigates three ...

A fresh and original introduction to the Odyssey—and how it continues to shape literature, film, art and even the ways we make sense of our livesReading the Odyssey is an introduction to Homer’s masterpiece like no other. It combines a cultural and intellectual history of the epic with an in-depth exploration of its unique and influential narrative structure and the ways it continues to inform issues of identity, meaning and experience.