This volume, from an international and interdisciplinary cohort of scholars, offers independent-minded essays about central Greek texts and about the relation of social theory and comparative method to the study of archaic and classical Greek literature. It is in honour of James M. Redfield, whose innovative and theoretically-informed work has been a touchstone for the contributors; it includes an Introduction that discusses Redfield's work, as well as a complete Bibliography of Redfield's scholarship. The volume is divided into three parts: on Homer; Plato in conversation with epic, tragedy, and comedy; and finally reception and transmission. An exploration of the dialectical relationship between literary genre and social form animates many of the essays. Drawing on work in anthropology, linguistics, sociology, art history, and philosophy, this volume offers ground-breaking perspectives on the study of Greek literature. It will be an invaluable resource to students and researchers alike.

Odysseus is famous for resisting the appeal of the Sirens, but does the Odyssey itself exert a seductive influence on its female audiences? Doherty argues that it does, especially by contrasting its female characters in the roles of listener and storyteller. Odysseus courts and rewards supportive female characters like Arete and Penelope by treating them as privileged members of the audience for his own tale of his adventures. At the same time, dangerous female narrators - who, like Helen or the Sirens, threaten to disrupt or revise the hero's story - are discredited by the narrative framework in which their stories appear. In a synthesis of audience-oriented and narratological approaches, Doherty examines the relationships among three kinds of audiences: internal, implied, and actual. Internal audiences are made up of characters in the work itself. The Odyssey, rich in storytelling episodes, uses such characters to build patterns of audience response, which in turn allow us to sketch an implied or model audience for the epic as a whole. But while this implied audience includes females as well as males, the epic addresses the two genders differently. Males are addressed as a group of peers, while females are addressed as individuals whose most important ties are to individual males. Like the hero, the epic woos the individual female reader by inviting her to identify with the faithful Penelope. Actual audiences, composed of historical individuals, are not compelled to accept the response the epic models for them; but when the model corresponds to gender roles in a reader's own culture, there may be unconscious incentives to accept it. Siren Songs contributes to the growing body offeminist work in the fields of classics and literary criticism while making the fruits of research available to a nonspecialist audience. All Greek is translated and critical terminology is clearly defined. The book will be especially useful to those who study and teach the Odyssey at the college level and above, whether in English, comparative literature, classics, or general humanities courses.

This volume, from an international and interdisciplinary cohort of scholars, offers independent-minded essays about central Greek texts and about the relation of social theory and comparative method to the study of archaic and classical Greek literature. It is in honour of James M. Redfield, whose innovative and theoretically-informed work has been a touchstone for the contributors; it includes an Introduction that discusses Redfield's work, as well as a complete Bibliography of Redfield's scholarship. The volume is divided into three parts: on Homer; Plato in conversation with epic, tragedy, and comedy; and finally reception and transmission. An exploration of the dialectical relationship between literary genre and social form animates many of the essays. Drawing on work in anthropology, linguistics, sociology, art history, and philosophy, this volume offers ground-breaking perspectives on the study of Greek literature. It will be an invaluable resource to students and researchers alike.

Offers profiles of ancient Greek writers, including Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch, and traces the development of Greek literature.

Myths reflect, reinforce, and sometimes subvert gender ideologies and so have an influence in the 'real world'. This is true in the present no less than when the Greek and Roman myths were created. The struggles to redefine gender roles and identities in our own time are inevitably reflected in our interpretations and retellings of these classical myths. Using the new lenses provided by gender studies and the diverse forms of feminism, Lillian Doherty re-examines some of the major approaches to myth interpretation in the twentieth century: psychological, ritualist, 'charter', structuralist and folklorist. 'Popular' uses of classical mythology, from television and comic books to the evocation of goddesses in Jungian psychology, are also explored.