Sophocles

Seth L. Schein

A new translation into English. Includes a map, notes, interpretative essay.

Philoktetes

W. H. D. Rouse

Όμηρος

Adam Nicholson

Iliad

From the Preface:This book is addressed mainly to non-specialist readers who do not know Greek and who read, study, or teach the Iliad in translation; it also is meant for classical scholars whose professional specialization has prevented them from keeping abreast of recent work on Homer. It is grounded in technical scholarship, to which it constantly referes and is intended to contribute, and I hope that even Homeric specialists will find ideas and interpretations to interest them. I have tried to present clearly what seem to me the most valuable results of modern research and criticism of the Iliad while setting forth my own views. My goal has been to interpret the poem as much as possible on its own mythological, religious, ethical, and artistic terms. The topics and problems I focus on are those that have arisen most often and most insistently when I have thought the poem, in translation and in the original, as I have done every year since 1968. This book is a literary study of the Iliad. I have not discussed historical, archaeologoical, or even linguistic questions except where they are directly relevant to literary interpretation. Throughout I have emphasized what is thematically, ethically, and artistically distinctive in the Iliad in contrast to the conventions of the poetic tradition of which it is an end product.

An Introduction to Homer's Iliad

The Mortal Hero

Book I of the Iliad marks the beginning of the first surviving work of Greek literature. This edition with commentary enables readers at all levels to interpret the poetry with heightened pleasure and understanding. It provides help with the morphology, grammar, and syntax of Homeric Greek, situates the poem in its historical and poetic contexts, and elucidates its traditional language, meter, rhetoric, and style, as well as its distinctive transformation of traditional mythology and narrative motifs in accordance with its own interests, values, and poetic purposes. It also addresses the programmatic contrast in Book I between gods and humans; the characterization of both major and minor figures; and the thematic significance in Book I and the poem generally of the representation of social, cultural, religious, and ethical institutions and values. Fully accessible to undergraduates and graduate students, this edition also contains much of value for the scholar.

Homer: Iliad Book I

Princeton University Press

Constituting a substantial contribution to the elaboration of the parameters of the professional identity of the human rights field officer, this book comprises what may be considered the second and final of two volumes on the topic of human rights field work. The first volume, The Human Rights Field Operation, comprised a wide-ranging survey and critique of the historical development of human rights field work and its current situation. This second volume builds on this material to construct normative and prescriptive frameworks for field work. There is a shift from critical analysis to the construction and justification of professional guidance, and the focus moves from the general situation of the work of organizations to the specific responsibilities of the individual human rights officer. This approach allows the book to concentrate on issues of professionalism, therefore having relevance beyond the confines of the United Nations or any other specific organization. The applied approach of many of the chapters expands the analysis in the case studies section of the first volume, allowing for a more up to date and global review of practice. This volume draws in part from the proceedings and outputs of a major international and inter-institutional research project on the topic of the professionalization of human rights field work that was implemented during 2004 to 2008. No such effort has been undertaken before with regard to the work of the individual human rights field officer. As such, this book is unique in its scope and ambition and will make a significant contribution to the construction of a new profession.

Selected Interpretive Essays

Reading the Odyssey

A Study in Metrical Form

The Iambic Trimeter in Aeschylus and Sophocles

This wide-ranging collection makes available to specialists and nonspecialists alike important critical work on the Odyssey produced during the last half century. The ten essays address five major concerns: the poem's programmatic representation of social and religious institutions and values; its transformation of folktales and traditional stories into epic adventures; its representation of gender roles and, in particular, of Penelope; its narrative strategies and form; and its relation to the Iliad, especially to that epic's distinctive conception of heroism. In the introduction, Seth L. Schein describes the poetic background to the work and suggests a variety of interpretive approaches, some of which are developed in the essays that follow. These essays include previously published work by Jean-Pierre Vernant, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Pietro Pucci, and Charles P. Segal. There also are a new essay by Laura M. Slatkin, two revised and expanded ones by Nancy Felson-Rubin and Michael N. Nagler, and three appearing in English for the first time by Uvo Hlscher, Karl Reinhardt, and Vernant. The result is a collection that juxtaposes older, often hard-to-find articles with significant newer pieces in a way that allows for a fruitful dialogue among them.

Homeric Epic and its Reception, comprising twelve chapters--some previously published but revised for this collection, and others appearing here in print for the first time--offers literary interpretations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. While some chapters closely study the diction, meter, style, and thematic resonance of particular passages and episodes in the Iliad and the Odyssey, others follow diverse pathways into the interpretation of the epics, including mythological allusion, intertextuality, the metrics of the Homeric hexameter, and the fundamental contrast between divinity and humanity. Also included are two chapters which focus on the work of Milman Parry and Ioannis Kakridis, founders of the two most fruitful twentieth-century scholarly approaches to Homeric scholarship: the study of the Iliad and the Odyssey as traditional oral formulaic poetry (Parry), and the study of the poems' adaptations and transformations of traditional mythology, folktales, and poetic motifs in accordance with their distinctive themes and poetic purposes (Kakridis). The volume draws to a close with three chapters which discuss some of the most compelling poetic and critical receptions of the Iliad and the Odyssey since the late nineteenth century, and the institutional reception of the epics in colleges and universities in the United States over the past two centuries. Written over a period of 45 years, this collection reflects the author's long-standing interest in, and scholarly and critical approaches to, the literary interpretation of Homeric poetry.

Interpretive Essays

Homeric Epic and Its Reception

Discusses Greek poetic traditions, analyzes the themes of the Iliad, and looks at the portrayal of Achilles, Hektor, and the gods

Seth L. Schein

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