Joel P. Christensen – författare

The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Odyssey brings together internationally recognized experts to provide commentary style essays for non-specialists on each book of the Homeric epic. The introduction provides a broad overview of the historical and mythographical backgrounds to the Odyssey along with brief discussions of the major thematic and scholarly concerns of the poem. The introduction can stand alone as a guide to reading the Odyssey, while it also prepares readers for the deeper discussions of the individual books. Twenty-four scholars, selected for their expertise and earlier publications, contributed essays aimed at guiding readers through different approaches to the poem. Each essay offers a summary of the plot of an individual book followed by a discussion of interpretive issues and its relationship with the epic as a whole. The essays were written and edited with a view towards providing accessibility to epic and epic scholarship to audiences from all backgrounds. While each chapter follows basic guidelines, their authors also add new insights and analyses to classic Homeric controversies. This collection provides an essential resource to engaging with Homer's epic from beginning to end or on a book-by-book basis for readers who have limited access to the original language and for researchers looking to learn more about scholarly approaches to Homer. New interpretations of the Odyssey offered by established scholars, moreover, make this collection a must-read for current researchers as well.

The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Odyssey brings together internationally recognized experts to provide commentary style essays for non-specialists on each book of the Homeric epic. The introduction provides a broad overview of the historical and mythographical backgrounds to the Odyssey along with brief discussions of the major thematic and scholarly concerns of the poem. The introduction can stand alone as a guide to reading the Odyssey, while it also prepares readers for the deeper discussions of the individual books. Twenty-four scholars, selected for their expertise and earlier publications, contributed essays aimed at guiding readers through different approaches to the poem. Each essay offers a summary of the plot of an individual book followed by a discussion of interpretive issues and its relationship with the epic as a whole. The essays were written and edited with a view towards providing accessibility to epic and epic scholarship to audiences from all backgrounds. While each chapter follows basic guidelines, their authors also add new insights and analyses to classic Homeric controversies. This collection provides an essential resource to engaging with Homer's epic from beginning to end or on a book-by-book basis for readers who have limited access to the original language and for researchers looking to learn more about scholarly approaches to Homer. New interpretations of the Odyssey offered by established scholars, moreover, make this collection a must-read for current researchers as well.

From Homer’s epics to mainstream news, stories have lives of their own—and humans may not always control the narratives we create  Combining ancient epic and myth with analogies from biology and the natural world, Joel P. Christensen explores the creative process and how narratives develop. This bold work urges readers to treat narratives as living things with their own agency in the world. Christensen starts by using Homeric epic to explore the way language and meaning develop alongside audiences in complex ecosystems and then moves through storytelling in the ancient Mediterranean over a thousand years. In this study, which ranges from the evolution of narratives to viral ideas, and to the dangerous side of stories in mass shootings and war, we see how narratives function as independent entities with consequences that cause lasting harm.  Connecting his argument to the present day, Christensen addresses contemporary cultural panics, including AI and ChatGPT, “post-truth” or alt-facts in the digital age, and free speech and cancel culture. Storylife invites readers to rethink human creativity, the importance of collective actions, and the lives we build together with and against narrative. In an age rife with misinformation, it is time to reconsider how much control we have over stories and how to educate ourselves once we acknowledge the power that narrative exerts over us.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are the only early Greek heroic epics to have survived the transition to writing, even though extant evidence indicates that they emerged from a thriving oral culture. Among the missing are the songs of Boeotian Thebes.Homer’s Thebes examines moments in the Iliad and Odyssey where Theban characters and thematic engagements come to the fore. Rather than sifting through these appearances to reconstruct lost poems, Elton Barker and Joel Christensen argue that the Homeric poems borrow heroes from Thebes to address key ideas—about politics, time, and genre—that set out the unique superiority of these texts in performance. By using evidence from Hesiod and fragmentary sources attributed to Theban tradition, Barker and Christensen explore Homer’s appropriation of Theban motifs of strife and distribution to promote his tale of the sack of Troy and the returns home.As Homer’s Thebes shows, this Theban material sheds light on the exceptionality of the Homeric epics through the notions of poetic rivalry and Panhellenism. Furthermore, by emphasizing a nonhierarchical model of “reading” the epics derived from oral-formulaic poetics, this book contributes to recent debates about allusion, neoanalysis, and intertextuality.

This book offers students of Greek and scholars interested in Greek literature the first English-language commentary on the “Battle of Frogs and Mice”, a short animal epic ascribed to Homer in the ancient world. The book includes a contextualizing introduction covering issues of literary genre, literary history and the language of Homeric Greek. In addition to a revised Greek text, the volume also offers a new translation of the poem. The commentary furnishes readers with extensive linguistic and literary information so that they may investigate the problem of the poem’s character and authorship on their own. A full vocabulary at the back ensures this is a one-stop shop for students reading the poem.

This book offers students of Greek and scholars interested in Greek literature the first English-language commentary on the “Battle of Frogs and Mice”, a short animal epic ascribed to Homer in the ancient world. The book includes a contextualizing introduction covering issues of literary genre, literary history and the language of Homeric Greek. In addition to a revised Greek text, the volume also offers a new translation of the poem. The commentary furnishes readers with extensive linguistic and literary information so that they may investigate the problem of the poem’s character and authorship on their own. A full vocabulary at the back ensures this is a one-stop shop for students reading the poem.

Widely revered as the father of Western literature, Homer was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the epic poems which immortalised such names as Achilles, Cyclops, Menelaus, and Helen of Troy. In this vivid introduction, Elton Barker and Joel Christensen celebrate the complexity, innovation, and sheer excitement of Homer’s two great works. Investigating the controversy surrounding the man behind the myths, they ask who Homer was and whether he even existed.Making parallels between Homeric hexameter and rap, and between his battle scenes and The Lord of the Rings, the authors highlight how his hugely influential epics deal with ageless questions that still confront us today. Perfect for new readers of the great poet and full of insights that will delight Homeric experts, this book will inspire you to discover – or rediscover – his masterpieces first-hand.