How did the Homeric narrator use metaphors of time, speech, and thought to compose and structure the Iliad and Odyssey?

How are time, speech, and thought presented in the Iliad and Odyssey? What role does metaphor play in these portrayals? How might metaphor have aided the poet in the production of his song? In this book, Andreas T. Zanker considers these and other questions from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory, investigating the commonalities and differences between the ancient and modern conceptualizations of, for example, the passing of time, communication of information, and internal dialogue. In so doing, he takes a stance on broader questions concerning the alleged 'primitive' quality of the Homeric conceptual system, the process of composition in performance, and the categories of the literal and the figurative. All Greek is translated, and readers in disciplines beyond classics and cognitive linguistics will find something of interest in this investigation of the conceptual metaphors lodged within a corpus of extremely early poetry.

Since their composition almost 3,000 years ago the Homeric epics have lost none of their power to grip audiences and fire the imagination: with their stories of life and death, love and loss, war and peace they continue to speak to us at the deepest level about who we are across the span of generations. That being said, the world of Homer is in many ways distant from that in which we live today, with fundamental differences not only in language, social order, and religion, but in basic assumptions about the world and human nature. This volume offers a detailed yet accessible introduction to ancient Greek culture through the lens of Book One of the Odyssey, covering all of these aspects and more in a comprehensive Introduction designed to orient students in their studies of Greek literature and history. The full Greek text is included alongside a facing English translation which aims to reproduce as far as feasible the word order and sound play of the Greek original and is supplemented by a Glossary of Technical Terms and a full vocabulary keyed to the specific ways that words are used in Odyssey I. At the heart of the volume is a full-length line-by-line commentary, the first in English since the 1980s and updated to bring the latest scholarship to bear on the text: focusing on philological and linguistic issues, its close engagement with the original Greek yields insights that will be of use to scholars and advanced students as well as to those coming to the text for the first time.

An examination of the aesthetic qualities of the Homeric simile

An investigation of the political imagery found in ancient Greek history, literature and culture.