Hesiod's Cosmos offers a comprehensive interpretation of both the Theogony and the Works and Days and demonstrates how the two Hesiodic poems must be read together as two halves of an integrated whole embracing both the divine and the human cosmos. After first offering a survey of the structure of both poems, Professor Clay reveals their mutually illuminating unity by offering detailed analyses of their respective poems, their teachings on the origins of the human race and the two versions of the Prometheus myth. She then examines the role of human beings in the Theogony and the role of the gods in the Works and Days, as well as the position of the hybrid figures of monsters and heroes within the Hesiodic cosmos and in relation to the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.

珍妮·施特勞斯·剋萊（Jenny Strauss Clay），美國弗吉尼亞大學古典學教授。她受古希臘研究中心、美國國傢人文基金會、德意誌學術交流中心、羅馬美國學院、雅典美國學派古典研究所等機構的研究基金資助，在歐美廣泛講學。她的主要研究領域為古希臘詩歌，並就此撰寫瞭大量的學術作品，包括兩本專著：《雅典娜的憤怒：荷馬《奧德賽》中的神與人》（The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in Homer’s Odyssey）和《奧林波斯的政治：幾部重要的荷馬頌歌中的形式與意義》（The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns）。此外，她在古希臘羅馬詩歌方麵發錶論文四十餘篇。