Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Homer from Byzantium to the Enlightenment

Series: 

This Companion examines conceptions and uses of Homeric poetry in philosophy, literature, and scholarship from the sixth to the eighteenth-century, while also including excursions into the fine arts and music in modern times. Its eighteen chapters explore the central place of Homer in Byzantine culture; the subsequent revival of Homeric studies in the Italian Renaissance; allegorical exegesis and the close connection between poetics and rhetoric inherited from Antiquity; the evolution of Homeric scholarship from a humanistic and aesthetic to a more historicist approach.
Copyright Year:
2026
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-75079-1
Publication:
01 Dec 2025
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-74908-5
Publication:
10 Dec 2025
Cover Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Homer from Byzantium to the Enlightenment

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Front Matter
Preliminary Material
Copyright Page
Figures
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Part 1 Byzantium
Chapter 1 Homer in the School of Gaza (Fifth to Sixth c.)
Chapter 2 Homer as a Tool for Creative Writing in the Works of Michael Psellos
Chapter 3 Eustathios’ Homeric Commentaries and Byzantine Textual Culture
Chapter 4 John Tzetzes’ Reception of Homer: A Love–Hate Relationship?
Part 2 The Renaissance
Chapter 5 Leonardo Bruni’s Translation of the Speeches in Iliad 9
Chapter 6 The Blurred Face of a Distant Beloved: Translations of Homer in Italy from Dante to the Sixteenth Century
Chapter 7 The True Face of Penelope: Jean Dorat on Odysseus’ Nostos
Chapter 8 Scaliger versus Homer (1561–1714)
Chapter 9 Thomas Hobbes’s Translations of The Homeric Poems: Writing about Politics through the Iliad and the Odyssey?
Part 3 The Enlightenment
Chapter 10 The “Discovery of the True Homer”: Giambattista Vico and His Contemporaries
Chapter 11 Alexander Pope’s Homer in Its Social and Political Context
Chapter 12 Homer in the Scottish Enlightenment
Chapter 13 The Reception of Homer in the French Enlightenment
Chapter 14 Eugenios Voulgaris on Homeric Scholarship and the History of Corfu
Chapter 15 Homer in Germany Around 1800: F. A. Wolf’s Prolegomena and Its Immediate Impact
Part 4 Fine Arts—Music
Chapter 16 Picturing Homer from the Fifteenth Century Onwards
Chapter 17 Costanza e astuzia: Penelope’s Progress on the Venetian Operatic Stage (1640–1725)
Chapter 18 Homer through Winckelmann: Education in Receptivity
Back Matter
General Index
Christina-Panagiota Manolea, PhD (2002), Classics, University College London, is Assistant Professor at the Hellenic Army Academy. She has published on the reception of the ancient Greek literary tradition (especially Homer), including the edition of Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Homer from the Hellenistic Age to Late Antiquity (Brill, 2022).

François Renaud, PhD, University of Tübingen, is Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Moncton, Canada. He has published in ancient ethics, rhetoric, and poetics, as well as modern hermeneutics and reception studies, including the co-edition of Reassessing Homer in the Platonic Tradition (de Gruyter, 2025).

Contributors are: Delphine Lauritzen, Floris Bernard, Baukje van den Berg, Valeria Flavia Lovato, Matteo Venier, Valentina Prosperi, Silvia Montiglio, Christiane Deloince-Louette, Andrea Catanzaro, Alexander U. Bertland, Pat Rogers, Ralph McLean, Fabienne Moore, Christina-Panagiota Manolea, François Renaud, Vincenzo Farinella, Wendy Heller, Holger Schmid.
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
  Introduction
 Christina-Panagiota Manolea and François Renaud

Part 1 Byzantium

1 Homer in the School of Gaza (Fifth to Sixth c.)
 Delphine Lauritzen

2 Homer as a Tool for Creative Writing in the Works of Michael Psellos
 Floris Bernard

3 Eustathios’ Homeric Commentaries and Byzantine Textual Culture
 Baukje van den Berg

4 John Tzetzes’ Reception of Homer: A Love–Hate Relationship?
 Valeria Flavia Lovato

Part 2 The Renaissance
 5 Leonardo Bruni’s Translation of the Speeches in Iliad 9
 Matteo Venier

6 The Blurred Face of a Distant Beloved: Translations of Homer in Italy from Dante to the Sixteenth Century
 Valentina Prosperi
 7 The True Face of Penelope: Jean Dorat on Odysseus’ Nostos  Silvia Montiglio

8 Scaliger versus Homer (1561–1714)
 Christiane Deloince-Louette (translated by Dylan Vaughan)
 9 Thomas Hobbes’s Translations of The Homeric Poems: Writing about Politics through the Iliad and the Odyssey?
 Andrea Catanzaro

Part 3 The Enlightenment

10 The “Discovery of the True Homer”: Giambattista Vico and His Contemporaries
 Alexander U. Bertland

11 Alexander Pope’s Homer in Its Social and Political Context
 Pat Rogers

12 Homer in the Scottish Enlightenment
 Ralph McLean

13 The Reception of Homer in the French Enlightenment
 Fabienne Moore

14 Eugenios Voulgaris on Homeric Scholarship and the History of Corfu
 Christina-Panagiota Manolea
 15 Homer in Germany Around 1800: F. A. Wolf’s Prolegomena and Its Immediate Impact
 François Renaud

Part 4 Fine Arts—Music

16 Picturing Homer from the Fifteenth Century Onwards
 Vincenzo Farinella (translated by Michael McOsker)

17 Costanza e Astuzia: Penelope’s Progress on the Venetian Operatic Stage (1640–1725)
 Wendy Heller

18 Homer Through Winckelmann: Education in Receptivity
 Holger Schmid

General Index
Undergraduate and graduate students, professional scholars in classics, in literary, intellectual, and social history, as well as the educated public interested in Homer and those fields of knowledge.
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Publisher:
Brill
Language:
English
Pages:
xvi, 452 pp
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004750791

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