Greek lyric poetry encompassed a wide range of types of poem, from elegy to iambos and dithyramb to epinician. It particularly flourished in the Archaic and Classical periods, and some of its practitioners, such as Sappho and Pindar, had significant cultural influence in subsequent centuries down to the present day. This Companion provides an accessible introduction to this fascinating and diverse body of poetry and its later reception. It takes account of the exciting new papyrus finds and new critical approaches which have greatly advanced our understanding of both the corpus itself and of the sociocultural contexts in which lyric pieces were produced, performed and transmitted. Each chapter is provided with a guide to further reading, and the volume includes a chronology, glossary and guide to editions and translations.

Felix Budelmann is University Lecturer in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Magdalen College. He is author of The Language of Sophocles (2000) and is currently working on an edition with commentary of a selection from Greek lyric, and on cognitivist approaches to Greek literature.