The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle [Paperback]

Jonathan S. Burgess (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 17, 2003

Although the Iliad and Odyssey narrate only relatively small portions of the Trojan War and its aftermath, for centuries these works have overshadowed other, more comprehensive narratives of the conflict, particularly the poems known as the Epic Cycle. In The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle, Jonathan Burgess challenges Homer's authority on the war's history and the legends surrounding it, placing the Iliad and Odyssey in the larger, often overlooked context of the entire body of Greek epic poetry of the Archaic Age. He traces the development and transmission of the Cyclic poems in ancient Greek culture, comparing them to later Homeric poems and finding that they were far more influential than has previously been thought.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A lively and venturesome study of the relationship between the Homeric epics and the largely lost Cyclic poems... A very interesting and accessible book.

(S. Douglas Olson Religious Studies Review 2005)

This is a bracingly skeptical treatment of some important issues... A fresh, engaging exercise in heterodox scholarship.

(Greece and Rome 2010)

[Jonathan Burgess] has firmly established the case that the Cyclic epics should be regarded as more authoritative representatives of Greek tradition about the Trojan War than the poems of Homer... Essential reading for everyone seriously interested in Homer and Greek epic tradition.

(Margalit Finkelberg Bryn Mawr Classical Review )

The Iliad and the Odyssey continue to be translated anew, and noticed when they are. Less widely noticed [is] other poetry about the Trojan War... The range and argument of the book make it valuable to any with an interest in what we call Homeric, and indeed, in ancient traditions generally.

(Virginia Quarterly Review )

Both the author's remarkable knowledge of previous scholarship on the topic and his eminently moderate and well-balanced approach make this volume a most valuable resource for approaching this complex field, and it immediately becomes indispensable for the study of Homeric and early non-Homeric epic.

(Mark W. Edwards Phoenix )

Anyone who has a serious interest in Homer and the Greek epic tradition should find this a valuable and thought-provoking book.

(Mike Chappell Journal of Classics Teaching )

A well argued book that packs a great deal of scholarship and insight into less than two-hundred pages. It deserves careful and repeated reading.

(D.M. Carter Polis )

About the Author

Jonathan S. Burgess is an associate professor of classical studies at the University of Toronto.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (December 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080187890X
• ISBN-13: 978-0801878909
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #581,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Homer in the Context of the Epic Tradition, November 9, 2005

By 

Michael L. Hall (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle (Paperback)

Anyone who has an interest in the Homeric epics, the Trojan War, ancient Greek mythology and culture, should read this book. It's an academic product, so the argument is detailed and sometimes complicated. But Burgess writes very clearly and presents his case in a masterfully logical process that builds on an enormous amount of textual, scholarly, critical, and artistic evidence. The notes are a treasure trove of previous scholarship. I wanted to learn more about the literary and mythological context of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I came away with a much greater understanding of the composition of the Homeric poems as well as the other (now lost) works of the ancient Greek oral tradition. Rarely have I read a book that answered so many of the questions that I brought to it, and left me so confident in the fairness of the author's scholarship.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hostage to Milieu, September 17, 2002

By 

Alvaro Lewis "jwatson5" (Redwood City, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle (Hardcover)

Truly, here is a very exciting book. The author clearly, in three long chapters (with appendices) discusses the Trojan War in the evidence of the Epic Cycle and its relation to the Homeric poems. The author has brought together philology, history, archaeology and good sense here. He shares bright arguments and suggestions in these pages that provoke thought for those interested specifically in the poems of Homer or in epic generally. Far from stealing the sparkle of the Homeric poems, this book provides the best discussion I have read of the variant threads of the stories of the Trojan War current in the age of the oral composition of the Iliad and Odyssey. It seemed so improbable that such magnificent, encyclopedic poems would stridently bound from the dark, poetic silence of the early Greek Mediterranean. Burgess shows that they didn't and that already at the time of the composition of the Homeric poems there existed a bounty of versions of the Trojan War that bore no direct relation to the poems of Homer as we know them. I recommend this timely book (timely, for it seems there is enough research to be thoroughly convincing, to me,) to teachers of Homer, early Greek culture and epic.

5.0 out of 5 stars informative read, October 12, 2011

By 

Joshua Loomis - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle (Paperback)

This book was everything I was looking for when I first saw it. As someone who is very interested in mythology, I have been interested for some time in the now lost Epic Cycle. This book looks at the connection between the cycle, and the deeper, oral tradition that the author believes Homer used for his masterpieces. Unlike other books on the subject, this book is not obsessed with comparing the cycle to Homer, and treats it with respect in its own right. Definately an interesting read.