Reviews for Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of Epic (Cambridge Classical Studies Series)O

The average rating for Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of Epic (Cambridge Classical Studies Series)O based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-02-19 00:00:00 Dave Berte Basically deals with the question, "Who was Homer?". The book does so by examining ancient as well as modern approaches to the question. While, at times technical, all quotations from non-English sources have been translated, making the book easy to read.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-02-20 00:00:00 Leon DeCervantes I was looking for a book that would tell me how Homer was received in the archaic and classical periods. It is because I have this paper on Thucydides right now and I wanted to situate how Thucydides uses/sees/understands Homer in the context of other prior/(near)contemporary uses/visions/understandings. There was some frustration. It took me some time to find what I was looking for. I have no idea why. But anyways, here, I found it. This is a great work for anyone interested in classical reception in general. I'll let Barbara sum up the task of her book: "In this book, I have focused on how the ancient Greeks imagined Homer and have deliberately failed to discuss whether their representations were true to the 'real' poet(s) of the Iliad (and the Odyssey). Instead, I have suggested that ancient depictions of Homer can be history for us in that they express how ancient audiences received the Homeric poems." (p.236)