The epic cycle : a commentary on the lost Troy epics / M.L. West.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

West, M. L. (Martin Litchfield), 1937-2015.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Trojan War--Literature and the war.

Trojan War.

Physical Description:

ix, 334 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013.

Summary:

The Iliad and Odyssey do not cover the main story of the Trojan War. The whole saga, which includes Zeus' plan to reduce the world's population, the Judgment of Paris and seduction of Helen, the start of the campaign, the Wooden Horse, the fall of Achilles, the homecoming of Agamemnon, and the eventual death of Odysseus, was related in six other epics, dating from 630-560 BCE, that were influential for lyric poets, tragedians, and artists of the classical age but are known to us only through fragments and brief prose summaries. In this book Martin West presents all the source material and provides the first comprehensive commentary on it, making full use of iconographic as well as literary evidence. Discussing the individual fragments and testimonia, he endeavours to reconstruct the connections between them, so far as possible, and to build up a picture of the plan and course of each poem. In a substantial introduction he addresses general issues, including the nature and formation of the Epic Cycle, the status of the summaries of the Troy epics preserved under the name of Proclus, the validity of the attested ascriptions to particular poets, the reflexes of the Cycle in early art and literature, and its fortunes in and after the Hellenistic period. Book jacket.

Contents:

Prolegomena

1 What was the Epic Cycle? 1

2 Proclus' Chrestomatheias Eklogai and Apollodorus' Bibliotheke 4

3 The formation of the Cycle 16

4 Ascriptions 26

5 Reflexes in archaic and classical art and literature 40

6 The Cycle in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods 47

7 Reconstructing the poems 51

Commentaries

1 Cypria 55

2 Aethiopis 129

3 Little Iliad 163

4 Iliou Persis 223

5 Nostoi 244

6 Telegony 288

Excursus: The Death of Odysseus 307.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 316-319) and indexes.

ISBN:

9780199662258

0199662258

OCLC:

812686119