This path-breaking book has made an unusual and original contribution to literary theory by means of a study of the literature of ancient Greece. It investigates an aspect of poetic imagery in the practical context of Greek lyric and drama up to and including Aeschylus and Pindar. Several hundred passages are systematically examined, with many passages from English verse introduced to provide illustration. Using these, Michael Silk formulates a new critical concept, 'interaction', which characterises certain features of metaphor and other imagery and explores in detail their nature and significance. He then proceeds to discuss related issues in the fields of stylistics and literary theory, give fresh insights into several features of ancient literature, and – above all – make important contributions to the theory and practice of 'literary lexicography' in a dead language. This reissue contains a substantial new Introduction engaging with critical and scholarly developments since first publication.

'An original and exceptional contribution to literary theory'. Études Classiques
'Theoretical articulation, textual scrupulosity, historical learning and fineness of poetic perception'. Classical Philology
'It will be the unusual reader whose understanding of poetry in general and Aeschylean and Pindaric imagery in particular is not significantly advanced.' Classical World

M. S. SILK is Emeritus Professor of Classical and Comparative Literature at King's College London (where from 1991 to 1996 he was also Professor of Greek Language and Literature); Adjunct Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and a fellow of the British Academy. He has published extensively on poetry and drama, the classical tradition, and literary theory and thought (from Homer to Aristophanes, Sophocles to Shakespeare, Aristotle to Nietzsche and Virgil to Ted Hughes).