This is the only large-scale standalone edition of Odyssey XI in English. Other commentators have covered it as part of multi-volume editions covering the entire epic. They have thus given far less space to detail than does the current work where practically every other word calls for some kind of comment. Odyssey XI deals with Odysseus' visit to the world of the dead. It thus calls for a great deal of elucidation of material from the spheres of religion, myth, and genealogy. No other edition in any language goes into this kind of detail, and certainly not in English. Moreover, the editor's approach is to pay close attention to the interplay of past and present in the making of Homeric poetry. This involves not only attention to traditional referentiality but also explorations of how older meanings of words can linger in a tradition and show up in phraseology in ways that cast light on the deeper history of the Indo-European poetic tradition. As one might expect from earlier works by the same editor, close attention is paid throughout to matters of religion. In the same way, this book concentrates on linguistic details of all kinds that call for comment in a language such as Homeric Greek which can seem deceptively simple on account of its paratactic syntax but which is, on any view, rather tricky in its details.
