Synopsis "Hellenica: Volume i: Epic"
Martin West is internationally known as one of the outstanding Classical scholars of our time, and one of the most prolific. Hellenica is a three-volume selection of ninety or so of his more notable papers relating to Greek literature and thought. This first volume, Epic, contains thirty essays, including two previously unpublished. It is devoted to early epic, from its Mycenaean and pre-Mycenaean roots to its later manifestations in the Homeric Hymns and the poetry ascribed to Eumelus of Corinth. There are pieces on the myths of Helen and the Trojan War, on the transition from oral to written epic, and on the relationship of the Iliad and Odyssey to other lost poems. Spanning forty years of scholarship, the collection as a whole presents a powerful and coherent individual vision of the emergence of heroic epic in the archaic age of Greece. The second and third volumes, to appear at yearly intervals, will contain papers on the lyric poets, tragedy, philosophy, music, metre, and other miscellaneous topics. Each volume will contain a preface, an index, and a full list of the author's other writings relating to the areas in question.
