Nine Essays on Homer

The essays in this collection address questions of intense interest in Homeric studies today: the questions of performance and poet-audience interaction, especially as depicted in idealized performances within the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey", the ways in which epic incorporates material of diverse genres, such as women's laments, blame poetry, or folk tales; how the ideological balance of epic can change and be influenced by "alternative ideologies" introduced through the incorporation of new material; the implications of the continuity of tradition for etymological studies; and how the traditional nature of epic affects textual criticism.

The essays differ in focus and method, but all share one fundamental approach to Homer: an understanding of the Homeric tradition as a poetic system that expresses and preserves what is culturally important, and a view of the Homeric epic as instances of a cultural tradition which they attempt to explore through the epics themselves and through the comparative, anthropological and linguistic evidence they bring to bear on these texts.