arts

Homer in Other Arts

Three years since I last saw the wounded amazon
Central Park and I'm out here
and old Greece is in there
What have I learned? That we're both under the hint
and protect of Death?
Something I can't put my finger on. . . .
Gregory Corso, "Spontaneous Poem after Having
Seen the Metropolitan Museum"

Almost all handbooks since Bulfinch (1855) have included illustrations. Some, like
Mayerson (1971), take their examples from the contemporary as well as the ancient
world. The works listed below are more narrow in their focus than handbooks.

Carpenter, T. H. Art and Myth in Ancient Greece. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991.
256p. 370 illus.

Carter, Jane B., and Sarah P. Morris. The Age of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend
Vermeule.Austin: U of Texas P, 1995. 542p.

Harrison, Jane Ellen. Myths of the Odyssey in Art and Literature. London: Rivingstons,
1882. 219p. [Harrison was one of the first British women to make a career as a
classicist.]

Lessing, Erich. The Adventures of Ulysses: Homer’s Epic in Pictures. Intro. Karl
Kerényi. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970. [67 color plates, translated.]

Luce, John Victor. Celebrating Homer’s Landscape: Troy and Ithaca Revisited. New
Haven: Yale UP, 1998. 260p.

Reid, Jane Davidson. The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1990s.
2 vols. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. [A wonderful bibliography.]

Roth, Hal. We Followed Ulysses. Port Washington, WI: Seaworthy, 1999. 225p.

Scherer, Margaret R. The Legends of Troy in Art and Literature. New York: Phaidon,
1963. 304p. [Many b&w illustrations from ancient times to our own.]

Severin, Tim. "The Quest for Ulysses." Photos Kevin Fleming. National Geographic
170.2 (Aug. 1986): 197-225.

Shapiro, H. A. Myth into Art: Poet and Painter in Classical Greece. London: Routledge,
1994. 196p.