The Epic Journey in Greek and Roman Literature

This volume explores journeys across time and space in Greek and Latin literature, taking as its starting point the paradigm of travel offered by the epic genre. The epic journey is central to the dynamics of classical literature, offering a powerful lens through which characters, authors, and readers experience their real and imaginary worlds. The journey informs questions of identity formation, narrative development, historical emplotment, and constructions of heroism - topics that move through and beyond the story itself. The act of moving to and from 'home' - both a fixed point of spatial orientation and a transportable set of cultural values - thus represents a physical journey and an intellectual process. In exploring its many manifestations, the chapters in this collection reconceive the centrality of the epic journey across a wide variety of genres and historical contexts, from Homer to the moon.

About the Author

Thomas Biggs is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Georgia. He specializes in Roman literature and culture, especially poetry and poetics, and is completing a book on the First Punic War, the representation of history in Latin literature, and the development of the epic genre.

Jessica Blum is Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at the University of San Francisco. Her research focuses on imperial Latin poetry and the epic tradition, and she is completing a monograph on the interaction of visual effects, genre, and discourses of exemplarity in Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, with a particular focus on the character of Hercules.