POSTLETHWAITE, Norman

PERSONAL:

Male. Education: Received Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o University of Exeter Press, Reed Hall, Streatham Dr., Exeter EX4 4QR, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and author. University of Exeter, Exeter, England, senior lecturer in classics and ancient history.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Christopher Gill and Richard Seaford) Reciprocity in Ancient Greece, Oxford University Press (New York, NY) 1998.

Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore, University of Exeter Press (Exeter, England), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author and educator Norman Postlethwaite specializes in the study of the works of Homer and Virgil, as well as in the Bronze Age in the Aegean. His 1998 volume, Reciprocity in Ancient Greece, is a collection of essays for which Postlethwaite served as coeditor along with Christopher Gill and Richard Seaford. James Davidson, reviewing the book for the Times Literary Supplement, noted that many of the volume's contributors "have chosen difficult or problematic areas which end up asking fundamental questions about the very nature of [reciprocity]."

Postlethwaite's Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore serves as an introduction to the epic tale for both general readers and classics students, providing background on the story and characters and a guide to the progression of the story itself. Postlethwaite intends the book to be accessible to the reader who has no familiarity with Homer's work and who knows no Greek. Martin Schmidt, in a review for the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, referred to Postlethwaite's book as one of a number of "useful commentaries based not on the Greek Homer but on the English translation."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Journal of Hellenic Studies, issue 122, 2002, Barbara Graziosi, review of Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore, pp. 160-161.

Times Literary Supplement, May 28, 1999, James Davidson, "A Tit for Two Tats," pp. 9-10.

ONLINE

Bryn Mawr Classical Review Online,http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/ (August 27, 2004), review of Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore.*