Reconstructing the Classics collects across three volumes more than ninety papers by P. J. Finglass (Henry Overton Wills Professor of Greek at the University of Bristol, and formerly Professor of Greek at the University of Nottingham) on Greek lyric poetry, Greek tragedy, and related subjects in Greek literature. Written over nearly two decades, these papers are founded on a close philological analysis of ancient Greek texts: whether long-established classics such the seven surviving plays of Sophocles, or the ‘new classics’ revealed via the publication of long-lost ancient papyrus manuscripts, which demand the most careful scrutiny to yield their riches. The reinvigoration of our understanding of familiar classics through the painstaking reconstruction of new ones lies at the heart of the scholarship on Greek literature presented in these volumes.

This first volume of the collection focuses on Greek lyric poetry. In particular, it collects Finglass’s many essays on the great archaic poet Stesichorus, whose vivid lyric narratives transformed the mythological landscape which he inherited from Greek epic, and exerted a profound influence on the later genre of Greek tragedy, and thus on literature down to our own day.