The Trojan War: Literature and Legends from the Bronze Age to the Present

The city of Troy, lying at the edge of Asia Minor, and the story of its war against the Mycenaean Greeks has been captured and retold in a variety of ways from ancient times to the present day, Diane Thompson reveals how each period of history has remembered Troy and added its own gods, heroic deeds, romantic characters and foundation myths to reinvent the history and legend of the city for a new audience. She examines Troy and the Trojan War in the Bronze Age, through the epics of the Iliad and Odyssey , through Aeschylus' Agamemnon , Euripides' plays about Iphigenia and Virgil's Aeneid . The rest of the book considers the Trojan war reinvented in medieval stories and romantic tales, in Chaucer and Shakespeare, and in 20th-century film, novels, games and Internet sites, A fascinating history of an enduring myth.