Description: "Gives students an informed and critical understanding of Homeric language and a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of a culturally charged essential episode in the Odyssey. Also aims to be an essential new step in the ongoing conversation about the Odyssey in general and the Cyclops episode in particular"--
Brief description: EGBERT J. BAKKER is the Alvan Talcott Professor of Classics at Yale University. He has published widely on many aspects (linguistic, cultural, literary) of the Homeric poems among other authors and subjects - his books on Homer include Linguistics and Formulas in Homer (1988), Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse (1997), Pointing at the Past: From Formula to Performance in Homeric Poetics (2005), and The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey (Cambridge, 2013). In the present commentary he draws on all his previous research as well as on years of experience in teaching Homeric poetics and Homeric language.