Most of the work in English for thirty years and more after Milman Parry's discoveries was on the
background to Homer rather than the poems themselves. These studies concentrated on the development
of the oral tradition and the relation of Homer to the Mycenaean age. They culminated in two wide-
ranging books, A Companion to Homer (London, 1962), made up of chapters by many scholars edited
by A.J.B. Wace and F.H. Stubbings; and G. S. Kirk's The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, 1962, also in a
shortened version, Homer and the Epic, Cambridge, 1965).
The modern classic on Homer and history is M.I. Finley's The World of Odysseus (2nd edn., London,
1977), but this is an attempt to illuminate history by means of Homer, not the other way round. Homer's
integrity as a creative artist is better respected by O. Murray, Early Greece (London, 1980), chs. 3-4, and
A.M. Snodgrass, Archaic Greece (London, 1980), ch. 2. There are good essays on the relation of Homer
to the real world in The Trojan War, ed. L. Foxhall and J. K. Davies (Bristol, 1984).
- Greek Myth And Hesiod (By Jasper Griffin)
Myth
H.J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology (London, 1928: 6th edn., paperback, 1958) gives a reliable
account of the main mythological stories. The Loeb edition by J. G. Frazer of the ancient mythological
compilation known as Apollodorus' Library (2 vols., 1921) contains a mass of detailed information
about them. A more amusing way of making the acquaintance of these myths is by reading the
Metamorphoses of Ovid.
G. S. Kirk discusses the particular character of Greek mythology in The Nature of Greek Myth
(Harmondsworth, 1974); his book Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures
(California, 1970: paperback) deals with the role of myths in different societies and with modern
theories on the subject. Both books show a certain dissatisfaction with the 'rational' atmosphere of most
Greek myths. M. P. Nilsson showed that many of the myths go back to the Mycenaean period: The
Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (California, 1932: paperback). C. Levi-Strauss, in
Anthropologie structurale (Paris 1958, 1973) and Mythologiques (4 vols.: Paris, 1964-71) - available in
English as Structural Anthropology (Paris, 1972) and Introduction to a Science of Mythology (4 vols.;
London, 1964-81) - applied a radical structuralist analysis to mythology, primarily that of South
America. Structuralist works on Greek myth include M. Detienne, Les Jardins d'Adonis (Paris, 1972) (in
English, trans. J. Lloyd, The Gardens of Adonis, Hassocks, 1977), and Myth, Religion and Society,
Structuralist Essays edited by R. L. Gordon (Cambridge, 1981: paperback). W. Burkert, Structure and
History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (California, 1979: paperback) criticizes such views from a
standpoint closer to that of the zoological researches of Konrad Lorenz and the new science of ethology.
On the moral implications of myth, see H. Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus (California, 2nd edn. 1984:
paperback). Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind (Harvard, 1953: paperback), gives an idea of the