The publication of Interaction in Poetic Imagery: with special reference to early Greek poetry in 1974 inaugurated Michael Silk (1941-) as a Hellenist of exceptional learning and critical acumen, as a strenuous and ambitious theorist of literature, and as a comparatist of wide reach within the Western tradition. The present volume honours this distinctive voice in literary studies with a range of papers addressing some of his many interests, reflecting his deep and growing influence over half a century, and marking out areas for ongoing debate and development.

The seventeen chapters range widely and address important issues in the following areas: theory of literature; Greek literature, archaic to classical; the German dimension; classical reflexes beyond Greece and Germany; the Language Question: ‘neo-Latin’ and ‘modern Greek’; and classicizing in a recalcitrant age.

Poetry and Poetics, Greek and Beyond: Essays in Honour of M.S. Silk will appeal to scholars and students alike, especially those concerned with poetry and poetics; students of the classical tradition (or, to take a term which Silk disavows, classical reception); practitioners of comparative literary study; and literary theorists.