C. M. Bowra – författare

First published in 1964, this volume remains the standard introduction to Pindar.

Published in 1930, this volume is still considered one of the standard works of criticism on the great epic.

Politics are not alien to poetry and in his Wiles Lectures Sir Maurice Bowra covered the main lines of European poetry during the first sixty years of the twentieth century in so far as it directly related to politics. From an exceptionally wide reading of the poetry of Western Europe, Greece, Russia and China, Sir Maurice gained unrivalled equipment for illuminating the three poetical forms with a political influence: the prophetic; the intimate and personal; and the politically effective - or ineffective. He illustrates the impact which world events had on the vision and technique of the poets of 1900-60; of Mandel'shtam, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky, Blok and Pasternak in Tsarist and Soviet Russia; of Stefan George and others in Germany; of Cernuda and Jimenez in the Spanish Civil War; of Mao Tse-tung as poet; of Yeats as political prophet; of Edith Sitwell under the impact of Hiroshima; and of many more.

La literatura europea nace con la Ilíada y la Odisea, dos poemas que los griegos atribuyeron a Homero y que han ejercido una inmensa influencia en la literatura posterior. La fascinación por ambas obras ha llegado prácticamente intacta a nuestra época, en la que continuamos planteándonos interrogantes e hipótesis sobre su autoría y las circunstancias que rodearon su composición. En esta magistral introducción a Homero y a su obra, Bowra analiza los hallazgos de disciplinas como la lingüística, la arqueología o la crítica textual para resolver cuestiones tanto narrativas como otras relacionadas con el proceso de creación de estos dos poemas fundamentales.