Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad

Acclaimed as one of the pioneering texts to introduce narratology (the theory that deals with the general principles underlying narrative texts) to classical scholarship, Irene de Jong's work explains the key concepts such as "narrator," "focalization" and "prolepsis," highlighting their relevance by using them for the analysis and interpretation of Homer's "Iliad." What is the role of the narrator and how do the parts of the story told by the narrator relate to the many speeches for which Homer is famous? This work was first published in 1987 and it is reissued here with a new introduction by the author, offering an overview of the trends in Homeric narratological scholarship over the last decade.