The editor: Robert J. Rabel is Professor of Classics in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of Plot and Point of View in the Iliad (University of Michigan Press, 1997) and various articles on Greek and Roman literature. Much of his recent work centers on the relationship between Classics and film.

Ten new essays, from a distinguished cast of (mainly) North American scholars, approach Homer with insights gained from the modern disciplines of psychology and anthropology, narratology, oral theory and cognitive research. But the contributors also attend to ancient modes of approach to the Homeric poems: linguistic and narratological, ethical and psyhological. The volume focuses both on literary technique in the poems, and on the portrayal of characters and peoples, central and marginal.