The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Odyssey

A unique collection of 24 book-by-book essays on the Homeric Odyssey by renowned scholars aimed at a general audience. It contains an extensive introduction to the epic's historical and mythographical backgrounds, and each chapter summarizes a book's plot, and discusses interpretive issues and the book's relationship with the epic as a whole.

The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer''s Odyssey brings together internationally recognized experts to provide commentary style essays for non-specialists on each book of the Homeric epic. The introduction provides a broad overview of the historical and mythographical backgrounds to the Odyssey along with brief discussions of the major thematic and scholarly concerns of the poem. The introduction can stand alone as a guide to reading the Odyssey, while it also prepares readers for the deeper discussions of the individual books. Twenty-four scholars, selected for their expertise and earlier publications, contributed essays aimed at guiding readers through different approaches to the poem. Each essay offers a summary of the plot of an individual book followed by a discussion of interpretive issues and its relationship with the epic as a whole. The essays were written and edited with a view towards providing accessibility to epic and epic scholarship to audiences from all backgrounds. While each chapter follows basic guidelines, their authors also add new insights and analyses to classic Homeric controversies. This collection provides an essential resource to engaging with Homer''s epic from beginning to end or on a book-by-book basis for readers who have limited access to the original language and for researchers looking to learn more about scholarly approaches to Homer. New interpretations of the Odyssey offered by established scholars, moreover, make this collection a must-read for current researchers as well.