In this new volume, Jan Haywood and Naoíse Mac Sweeney investigate the position of Homer's Iliad within the wider Trojan War tradition through a series of detailed case studies. From ancient Mesopotamia to twenty-first century America, these examples are drawn from a range of historical and cultural contexts; and from Athenian pot paintings to twelfth-century German scholarship, they engage with a range of different media and genres.
Inspired by the dialogues inherent in the process of reception, the book adopts a dialogic structure. In each chapter, paired essays by Haywood and Mac Sweeney offer contrasting authorial voices addressing a single theme, thereby drawing out connections and dissonances between a diverse suite of classical and post-classical Iliadic receptions.
The resulting book offers new insights, both into individual instances of Iliadic reception in particular historical contexts, but also into the workings of a complex story tradition. The centrality of the Iliad within the wider Trojan War tradition is shown to be a function of conscious engagement not only with Iliadic content, but also with Iliadic status and the iconic idea of the Homeric.
For classical scholars wishing to test the waters of reception studies (perhaps for teaching purposes), the book offers an impressively varied array of entry points. At least one topic - and more likely several - ought to be of interest to any given scholar. Anyone wanting to enrich a university-level course on epic will find here a set of ready-made topics, issues (suggested by the discussion of the section themes) and avenues for further reading (in the footnotes). As each essay gives considerable attention to historical and cultural context, many could also be assigned as fair introductions to the particular works with which they deal: the essays on the Erra and on Schliemann come to mind especially here. Moreover, the book's accessible prose style(s) and (almost perfectly) consistent translation of Greek and Latin terms may make it an attractive option for students and scholars in other disciplines whose interests include Trojan War materials.
