The mythical narratives of Stesichorus provide the earliest surviving examples of poetic production in the Greek West. This book illustrates how Stesichorus reshaped Greek epic to create a remarkably innovative type of lyric poetry – a literature that was particularly expressive in its handling of motifs associated with travel, such as the voyages of heroes, their returns home, and their escapes. This comprehensive survey of Stesichorus’ treatment of myth discusses his engagement with Homer and Hesiod, his powerful and often moving means of characterisation, his subtle treatment of narrative, and his elaboration of emotional episodes unprecedented in archaic Greek lyric poetry. All Greek is translated, making the book accessible to anyone with an interest in one of the great poets of archaic Greece, whose work had such an impact on the later genre of tragedy.

Stesichorus' lyric poetry vividly recreates the most dramatic episodes of Greek myth: the labours of Heracles, the sack of Troy, the vengeance of Orestes, and more besides. It can be appreciated today as never before, thanks to the recent discovery of ancient manuscripts buried for some two millennia in the sands of Egypt. This fresh edition of Stesichorus' poems presents the first full-scale analysis of all his surviving works. The detailed introduction and commentary investigate a wide range of key issues, such as Stesichorus' imagery and style, his narrative technique, and his mythological innovations. The controversial question of how Stesichorus' poems were originally performed receives careful scrutiny; particular attention is paid to the fascinating story of the transmission, disappearance, and recovery of his work. A translation integrated with the commentary renders this book accessible to all readers with an interest in early Greek poetry and its legacy.

The first collection of essays, by leading scholars, on a major Greek poet whose works have only recently been recovered.

This book is about the bold, beautiful, and faithful heroines of the Greek novels and their mythical models, such as Iphigenia, Phaedra, Penelope, and Helen. The novels manipulate readerly expectations through a complex web of mythical variants and constantly negotiate their adventure and erotic plot with that of traditional myths becoming, thus, part of the imperial mythical revision to which they add the prospect of a happy ending.

The award-winning poet reinvents a genre in a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present. Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is. A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist "Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today." --Michael Ondaatje "This book is amazing--I haven't discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing." --Alice Munro "A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." --The New York Times Book Review "A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday." --The Village Voice

Challenging many established narratives of literary history, this book investigates how the earliest known Greek poets (seventh to fifth centuries BCE) signposted their debts to their predecessors and prior traditions – placing markers in their works for audiences to recognise (much like the 'Easter eggs' of modern cinema). Within antiquity, such signposting has often been considered the preserve of later literary cultures, closely linked with the development of libraries, literacy and writing. In this wide-ranging new study, Thomas Nelson shows that these devices were already deeply ingrained in oral archaic Greek poetry, deconstructing the artificial boundary between a supposedly 'primal' archaic literature and a supposedly 'sophisticated' book culture of Hellenistic Alexandria and Rome. In three interlocking case studies, he highlights how poets from Homer to Pindar employed the language of hearsay, memory and time to index their allusive relationships, as they variously embraced, reworked and challenged their inherited tradition.

This volume brings together 13 original articles which review, re-establish, and rehabilitate the origins, forms, and functions of the mythological elements that are found in the narratives of Herodotus' Histories.