Conflict and Consensus in Early Greek Hexameter Poetry

Achilles inflicts countless agonies on the Achaeans, although he is supposed to be fighting on their side. Odysseus' return causes civil strife on Ithaca. The Iliad and the Odyssey depict conflict where consensus should reign, as do the other major poems of the early Greek hexameter tradition: Hesiod's Theogony and the Homeric Hymns describe divine clashes that unbalance the cosmos; Hesiod's Works and Days stems from a quarrel between brothers. These early Greek poems generated consensus among audiences: the reason why they reached us is that people agreed on their value. This volume, accordingly, explores conflict and consensus from a dual perspective: as thematic concerns in the poems, and as forces shaping their early reception. It sheds new light on poetics and metapoetics, internal and external audiences, competition inside the narrative and competing narratives, local and Panhellenic traditions, narrative closure and the making of canonical literature.

Paola Bassino is Lecturer in Classical Studies at the University of Winchester. She has published articles on the biographical tradition of the Greek epic poets, and is the author of a forthcoming edition and commentary of the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi. Her current research includes a study of the interactions between the Sophists and the epic tradition and of the Renaissance reception of Homer. Lilah Grace Canevaro is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Classics at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Hesiod's Works and Days: How to Teach Self-Sufficiency (2015) and has published articles on Hesiod, Homer, Old Norse didactic, Victorian poetry and art, and cognitive approaches to poetry. She is currently working on a book about women and objects in Greek epic. Barbara Graziosi is Professor of Classics and Head of Department at the University of Durham. She has published extensively on ancient Greek literature and culture, including most recently The Gods of Olympus: A History (2013) and Homer (2016). She recently completed a research project, funded by the European Research Council, on visual and narrative portraits of ancient Greek and Roman poets.

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