Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Odyssey

The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Odyssey brings together internationally recognized experts to provide commentary style essays for non-specialists on each book of the Homeric epic. The introduction provides a broad overview of the historical and mythographical backgrounds to the Odyssey along with brief discussions of the major thematic and scholarly concerns of the poem. The introduction can stand alone as a guide to reading the Odyssey, while it also prepares readers for the deeper discussions of the individual books. Twenty-four scholars, selected for their expertise and earlier publications, contributed essays aimed at guiding readers through different approaches to the poem. Each essay offers a summary of the plot of an individual book followed by a discussion of interpretive issues and its relationship with the epic as a whole. The essays were written and edited with a view towards providing accessibility to epic and epic scholarship to audiences from all backgrounds. While each chapter follows basic guidelines, their authors also add new insights and analyses to classic Homeric controversies. This collection provides an essential resource to engaging with Homer's epic from beginning to end or on a book-by-book basis for readers who have limited access to the original language and for researchers looking to learn more about scholarly approaches to Homer. New interpretations of the Odyssey offered by established scholars, moreover, make this collection a must-read for current researchers as well.

Joel Christensen (he/his) is Professor of Classics at the CUNY Graduate Centerwhere he also serves as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. Previously Joel taught at UT San Antonio and Brandeis University. His research interests include early Greek poetry, myth, and literary theory. With Elton Barker, Joel has published Homer's a Beginner's Guide (2013) and Homer's Thebes (2020). He has also recently published The Many-Minded Man: The Odyssey, Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic (2020) and Storylife: On Epic, Language, and Living Things (2025).