University Press of America
Pages: 252
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9⅛
978-0-7618-5561-3 • Paperback • August 2011 • $49.99 • (£38.00)
Helaine L. Smith has taught English in grades six through twelve for over thirty-five years at Hunter College High School and The Brearley School. She is the author of Masterpieces of Classic Greek Drama, journal articles for CANE and CAMWS, and pieces about teaching The Odyssey for Literary Matters. She was a reader of AP English exams for The College Board and is currently completing a book adapting Aristophanes' comedies for middle school performance.
Introduction
Part I: The Gods in The Iliad
Chapter 1: Hera's Seduction of Zeus
Chapter 2: Aphrodite, Athene, and Ares on the Battlefield
Chapter 3: Hephaistos at Feast and Forge
Chapter 4: Apollo at the Ramparts
Chapter 5: Athene and Peitho
Chapter 6: Destiny and the Limits of Zeus' Power
Chapter 7: Hermes Eriounios
Part II: The Gods in The Odyssey
Chapter 8: Poseidon's Anger
Chapter 9: Athene's Humor
| Chapter 10: Calypso and Hephaistos, Unlucky in Love
Chapter 11: The House of Hades
Part III: The Gods in The Homeric Hymns
Chapter 12: Aphrodite and Anchises
Chapter 13: Demeter, Persephone, and Hades
Chapter 14: Dionysos
Chapter 15: The Birth of Aphrodite, Athene, and Apollo
Glossary
Index
Index of citations
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I know of no Greek mythology textbook to rival Homer and the Homeric Hymns. Helaine Smith has dipped her net into Homer's epics and the Homeric Hymns and pulled out the stories, alive and flashing, fresh from the Greek, which Smith has translated with loving sensitivity. This book will teach students how to read, analyze, and write. It is a treasure.
— Rosanna Warren, professor of Humanities, Boston University; poet and critic
Homer and the Homeric Hymns is equally strong as a text for English composition, as an education in mythology, and as an introduction to Greek literature. Needless to say, there are few good books that achieve any one of these aims, and this text does all three with finesse and charm.
— Frank Nisetich, professor of Classics, Emeritus, University of Massachusetts
Homer and the Homeric Hymns is loaded with resources-glossaries, questions for discussion, analytical and creative exercises, writing models, and suggestions for supplementary reading. Each chapter is self-contained and can be studied individually, so the text can be used as both a close-at-hand resource for the swamped teacher and as a core text for teachers who are designing an entire semester's course of study.
— Mara Taylor-Heine, Chair, Upper School English Department, The Chapin School
Clear and challenging, Homer and the Homeric Hymns provides college students in freshman writing and survey classes with context, analytic glosses, and narrative bridges that link crucial and substantial passages from the poems, presenting them for special attention as though they were sets of diamonds on a long string of gems.
— John C. Briggs, University of California, Riverside