This collection of essays explores the crucial place of Homer in the shifting cultural landscape of the twentieth century. It argues that Homer was viewed both as the founding father of the Western literary canon and as sharing important features with poems, performances, and traditions which were often deemed neither literary nor Western: the epics of Yugoslavia and sub-Saharan Africa, the keening performances of Irish women, the spontaneous inventiveness of the Blues. The book contributes to current debates about the nature of the Western literary canon, the evolving notion of world literature, the relationship between orality and the written word, and the dialogue between texts across time and space. Homer in the Twentieth Century contends that the Homeric poems play an important role in shaping those debates and, conversely, that the experiences of the twentieth century open new avenues for the interpretation of Homer's much-travelled texts.

This fine collection of essays...covers important elements of the reception of Homer in the twentieth century in text and film...a genuine contribution to the study of Homer. * Phiroze Vasunia, The Classical Review *
firmly academic...contains much of interest * Richard JenkynsTimes Literary Supplement *
A rich and stimulating collection of essays that should open many avenues for future research * Richard Whitaker, Scholia *
[This] collection is superbly carefully edited, cross-referenced and put into dialogue with itself. * Constanze Guethenke, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *

Barbara Graziosi is Senior Lecturer in Classics at Durham University. Emily Greenwood is Lecturer in Ancient Greek Literature at the University of St Andrews.