Customer Reviews

History of Greek Literature

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is not only an education about the whole history of Greek literature, it sets the standard for how to write such a book. Lesky is a philologist in the best German tradition. He sifts the arguments of the various key philologists as he goes through the problems along with the history. The history is superb from Homer through Hellenistic times. Lesky purposefully scants the Empire, the Roman Empire, that is, as well as Greek patristic literature. Also, a new version of this book has just come out in German as of 1998. I'm not a classical scholar, but it would be difficult to imagine any other book coming up to this book in covering this terrain. It makes other books look amateurish by comparison. I read this book this summer and am now rereading it.

As a graduate student preparing for my literature exam, this book is very useful to me. It is comprehensive in its approach. The main draw back, though, is that the information in it is several decades old, and I will need to look elsewhere for more up-to-date scholarship and perspectives.