This book is the result of over four decades of S.'s study of the Homeric poems, and stands as a testament to his sensitive, thorough and engaging approach to Greek epic. While collections of previously published essays can risk seeming disjointed or lacking in a coherent argument, S.'s chapters together form a satisfying whole, which demonstrates his own contribution to Homeric scholarship while also looking forward to the future of the field and encouraging his readers to do the same.

In his introduction S. lays out his rationale for the combined publication of these essays, only two of which have not previously been published: he wishes to make his work more widely available, especially in university libraries, and he believes that each work benefits from being brought together in a single volume. Because of this second aim, the essays are grouped thematically and methodologically rather than in chronological order of their first publication, which successfully creates a sense of unity and coherence. Readers familiar with some of the essays are encouraged to read them again in the context of S.'s other work, which demonstrates the consistency of his approach to Homeric epic. This approach marries a precise attention to language, metre and style – which S. names as a legacy of Parry, Kakridis and Fränkel – with a literary reading of the poems, thereby allowing him to articulate the complexity of the poet's craft.

Chapter 1 is short, at just five pages, but immediately demonstrates the benefits of S.'s methodology. The death of Simoeisios at the hands of Ajax, which in the Iliad is related in 17 lines, is shown to reflect, by carefully chosen language and narrative detail, the poet's ‘profound perception of the cost of the heroism’ that his poem celebrates (p. 9). In Chapter 2, on the lament of Achilles’ horses, S. convincingly shows how close study of diction, style and ‘thematic resonance’ (p. 26) serves to illuminate the emotional power of this scene, revealing links to wider themes and concerns. Chapter 3 advances the argument of D. Page in The Homeric Odyssey (1955) by applying a neoanalytical approach to demonstrate the significance of departures from folktale patterns in the Polyphemus episode of the Odyssey. Chapter 4 focuses on what S. identifies as the most complex form of Odyssean allusions: those to Heracles, and in particular the stories relating to the bow of Odysseus. The ethical tension inherent in these allusions is shown to be consistent with the ambiguity of the poem's ending, and an example of the moral and mythological complexity of its final books. Chapter 6 examines a possible case of intertextuality between the Iliad and the Odyssey, in the use of a speech formulation which casts Odysseus as an Iliadic hero; here S. does well to emphasise the value of such an analysis whether or not we should consider the two as fixed texts showing awareness of one another, or as part of a shared tradition which allows contact without direct reference. Throughout these chapters, S.'s focus remains on finding ways to improve our reading of the poems and their tradition, combining neoanalytical methodology with an emphasis on the literary effects which result.

Chapter 5, on the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, is one of the most recent components of the collection, having first appeared in 2012, and proves relevant to a volume otherwise focused on the Iliad and Odyssey. Making use of the idea, articulated by L. Slatkin in The Power of Thetis (1991) and B. Graziosi and J. Haubold in Homer: the Resonance of Epic (2005), that individual works of Greek epic gain in resonance by evoking a wider narrative of cosmic history, S. demonstrates how the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite positions itself within that history. The core of this argument has already been discussed by J.S. Clay in The Politics of Olympus (1989), but S.'s interpretation focuses on how the Hymn interacts with the tradition of the Iliad, and argues that in doing so, it represents a particular kind of religious poetry which is unique in extant Greek epic.

Chapters 7, 8 and 9 move away from the close textual focus of the earlier chapters and show that S. is able to incorporate diverse scholarly perspectives into his own aims of interpretation. Chapter 7 makes use of neuro-linguistics to examine violations of the metrical norm known as Hermann's Bridge. S.'s conclusions – that these violations call to mind specific and relevant mythological themes – may seem tenuous to some readers, relying as they do on a very high level of attention and contextual awareness on the part of the audience. However, the methodology applied here does show how cognitive science may provide an objective basis for our understanding of how audiences react to metrical patterns and departures from them. In Chapter 8 S. addresses what he sees as a contradiction present in the later work of Parry, between his theories of how epic poetry is formed, and his ideas about the value of that poetry both to its original audiences and to modern readers. S. addresses this tension by arguing that the most useful way of carrying forward Parry's findings is to see them as just one among several different interpretative possibilities, rather than following their implications rigidly and without compromise. Chapter 9 similarly expounds the value of another stream of Homeric scholarship: neoanalysis, and in particular the work of Kakridis, whom S. judges to have ‘contributed as much to the understanding of Homeric epic as any scholar in the twentieth century’ (p. 134). This essay, not previously published, explains the influence and continuing worth of Kakridis's work, but does not present any particular new argument or perspective on it, and will probably be most useful for readers less familiar with neoanalysis and its benefits as an interpretative methodology.

The remaining chapters concern Homeric reception more widely, and examine how the poems have influenced modern poets, thinkers and higher education syllabi. Chapter 10 considers the interpretation of Iliad 24 in the Cavafy poem Priam's Night-Journey, and demonstrates that S.'s skills of close reading and intertextual awareness are just as fruitful when applied to modern poetry. Chapter 11 examines how four modern receptions of the Iliad – the treatises of Simone Weil and Rachel Bespaloff, and the poems of Alice Oswald and Christopher Logue – react to and conceptualise the epic's attitude to war, arguing that these responses do not always adequately reflect the ‘ethical and existential’ complexity of the Homeric view of war (p. 149). In Chapter 12, S. looks ahead to the future reception of the Homeric poems in the context of North American universities, and the popular ‘Great Books’ courses of which they form a part. As S. points out, we cannot afford to ignore that such courses generate a huge readership for the poems, outnumbering ‘perhaps all other readers since the time of Alexandrian scholarship’ (p. 171). S. identifies the possible pitfalls of teaching the poems in this context: in translation, often hurriedly and as part of a narrow and potentially dangerous narrative of cultural progress. This book as a whole shows the benefits of S.'s method of close and careful reading of the Homeric poems in the context of the Greek epic tradition, but in his final chapter he addresses these more superficial readers, and provides realistic suggestions for how the poems could be taught more effectively. It is a thought-provoking close to a book which encourages the reader to have awareness of the wide range of ways in which students, scholars and poets receive the Homeric poems, and which will be valued and enjoyed by anyone interested in the literary interpretation of Greek epic.