The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic

EMMA GREENSMITH is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St John's College. She specialises in imperial Greek literature, particularly epic poetics and religious culture. Her 2020 book, The Resurrection of Homer in Imperial Greek Epic offers a new reading of the role of epic and the reception of Homer in the Graeco-Roman world. She has co-edited a volume on the Posthomerica (2022) and is currently working on a new book entitled Homer and the Bible: Christian Greek Epic in Late Antiquity. She has written many articles and public engagement pieces on ancient Greek literature, and is also filming a documentary on Homer's Odyssey and its cultural legacy.

Introduction: (pushing) the limits of epic Emma Greensmith; Part I. Epic Engagements: 1. Greek and near eastern epic: context and comparison Bernardo Ballesteros; 2. Epic and lyric Henry Spelman; 3. Didactic (and) epic Emily Kneebone; Part II. Epic Space: 4. Space and story: the Iliad and odyssey Christos Tsagalis; 5. Do not talk death to me: the epic underworld Karolina Sekita; 6. Epic dislocation: nostalgia and return Alexander C. Loney; 7. Shrunken epic: the poetics of epyllion Berenice Verhelst; Part III. Epic Time: 8. A brief history of epic time Simon Goldhill; 9. Time and again: Apollonius' Argonautica Tom Phillips; 10. Trojan temporality in imperial Greek epic Emma Greensmith; Part IV. Epic People: 11. The language of epic sacrifice Renaud Gagné; 12. Epic racecraft and the race of heroes Jackie Murray; 13. Women in homer and beyond Emily Hauser; Part V. Epic Feelings: 14. Before, beneath, beyond emotions: reading affects in epic Pauline LeVen; 15. Humour in Greek epic Matt Hosty; 16. Love, desire and erotics Steven D. Smith; Part VI. Epic Without End: 17. Ancient readers of Greek epic Richard Hunter; 18. Greek epic in a Christian empire: grit in the eye Tim Whitmarsh; 19. The fates of epic in Byzantium: homer for a new era Markéta Kulhánková; 20. Homeric epic and nation building in modern Greece and Turkey Johanna Hanink; 21. Ancient Greek epic and the cinema: transformations and archetypes Martin M. Winkler; Epilogue: a continuous song: reflections on Greek epic in the modern Greek lands Panayiotis Christoforou; Chapter abstracts; Timeline of ancient Greek epic; Bibliography; Index locorum; Subject Index.