About the lecture

In this module, we think about the narrative structure of the Iliad, focusing in particular on: (i) the condensed time and place in which the action takes place – just forty-five days in a war that lasts ten years, on a battlefield between the Greek camp and the city of Troy; (ii) narrative ‘issues’, e.g. the presence of completely standalone episodes (e.g. Book 10), the reappearance of heroes who have already been killed earlier in the narrative, etc.; and (iii) the different ways of understanding the overall architecture of the narrative.

About the lecturer

Dr Emily Hauser is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter, and the author of an acclaimed trilogy of novels reworking the women of Greek myth, including For the Most Beautiful (2016, Penguin Random House). She has written articles on gender in Homer, women poets in antiquity and their reception in contemporary women’s writing; she also co-edited Reading Poetry, Writing Genre: English Poetry and Literary Criticism in Dialogue with Classical Scholarship (2018, Bloomsbury). Her latest books are Ancient Love Stories (2023, Bonnier) and How Women Became Poets: A Gender History of Greek Literature (2023, Princeton).