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About The Making Of The Odyssey
Product Description The poet of the Odyssey was a seriously flawed genius. He had a wonderfully inventive imagination, a gift for pictorial detail and for introducing naturalistic elements into epic dialogue, and a grand architectural plan for the poem. He was also a slapdash artist, often copying verses from the Iliad or from himself without close attention to their suitability. With various possible ways of telling the story bubbling up in his mind, he creates a narrative marked by constant inconsistency of detail. He is a fluent composer who delights in prolonging his tale with subsidiary episodes, yet his deployment of the epic language is often inept and sometimes simply unintelligible. The Making of the Odyssey is a penetrating study of the background, composition, and artistry of the Homeric Odyssey. Martin West places the poem in its late seventh-century context in relation to the Iliad and other poetry of the time. He also investigates the traditions that lie behind it: the origins of the figure of Odysseus, and folk tales such as those of the One-eyed Ogre and the Husband's Return. Review "This is one of the best scholarly books published this decade because it makes many new discoveries instead of repeating past findings. This book should be locatable in any public or academic library so that those reading "Homer's" texts can consider the true context behind the patchwork of stories they are appreciating." -- Anna Faktorovich, Pensylvania Literary Journal "Martin West, who died in 2017 at age 77, was truly one of the great Hellenists of recent generations. His output was enormous and influential. He wrote over thirty books and many dozens of articles. I mention only his editions of Hesiod's Theogony (1966) and Works and Days, his Teubner edition of the Iliad (1998, 2000), and his magisterial The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (1997). Here in his last book, published in hardback in 2014, he offers a companion to The Making of the Iliad: Disquisition and Analytical Commentary, published in 2011. ... West's book is useful for untangling the oral antecedents of Homer's poems" --Barry B. Powell, Bryn Mawr Classical Review About the Author The late M. L. West, OM, Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford The late Martin Litchfield West was a Fellow and Praelector in Classics at University College, Oxford from 1963 to 1974, before taking up a post as Professor of Greek at the University of London where he remained until 1991, then becoming a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. After his retirement in 2004 he became an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls. HM The Queen appointed him a Member of the Order of Merit (OM) in the 2014 New Year Honours.
