The Greek Poets - 9780393060836

The Greek Poets is a celebration of Western civilization's oldest poetic tradition. It is a landmark volume that presents three millennia of Greek poetry - over 1,000 poems by 185 poets - much of which has been neglected or untranslated in the past.
Divided into four eras, each with an introduction by the volume's editors, The Greek Poets opens with "Classical Antiquity." Embracing more than the heroic epics of Homer, the didactic verse of Hesiod, and Homeric Hymns, it includes numerous lyric and dramatic works by many poets.
The book's second section, "Byzantium," demonstrates that the Byzantine era - through its vibrant early Christian poetry, its sharp-tongued epigrams and medieval romances - was a period of great poetic accomplishment.
We sense in the "Early Modern" section, as freedom finally comes to Greece in 1821, a new aesthetic in which neither Athens and the classical world nor Constantinople and Christianity are the principal measure of things.
The startling renaissance that began sporadically in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries finally explodes in the "Twentieth Century". The master poets of this period, presented here among so many other compelling new voices, have succeeded in putting contemporary Greek poetry at the center of European letters.
The Greek Poets, through its originality and its translations, many by renowned poets themselves, is sure to become an essential companion to our Western literary tradition.