The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Odyssey (Oxford Critical Guides)

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 ch