Barry B. Powell

Barry Bruce Powell (born 1942) is an American classical scholar. He is the Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of the widely used textbook ''Classical Myth'' and many other books. Trained at Berkeley and Harvard, he is a specialist in Homer and in the history of writing. He has also taught Egyptian philology for many years and courses in Egyptian civilization.

Work

His ''Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization'' (Wiley-Blackwell 2009) attempts to create a scientific terminology and taxonomy for the study of writing, and was described in ''Science'' as "stimulating and impressive" and "a worthy successor to the pioneering book by Semitic specialist I. J. Gelb." This book has been translated into Arabic and modern Greek. It expresses an unusual stance in that it rejects the standard theories of the origins of both Sumerian cuneiform and the Phoenician alphabet as deriving from pictograms.

Powell's study ''Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet'' advances the thesis that a single man invented the Greek alphabet expressly in order to record the poems of Homer. This thesis is controversial. The book was the subject of an international conference in Berlin in 2002 and has been influential outside classical philology, especially in media studies. Powell's ''Writing and the Origins of Greek Literature'' follows up themes broached by the thesis.

Powell's textbook, ''Classical Myth'' (8th edition) is widely used for classical myth courses in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan, as his text ''The Greeks: History, Culture, Society'' (with Ian Morris) is widely used in ancient history classes. His text ''World Myth'' is popular in such courses.

Powell's critical study ''Homer'' is widely read as an introduction for philologists, historians, and students of literature. In this study, Powell suggested that Homer may have hailed from Euboea instead of Ionia.

''A New Companion to Homer'' (with Ian Morris), also translated into modern Greek and Chinese, is a comprehensive review of modern scholarship on Homer.

His literary works include poetry (''Rooms Containing Falcons''), an autobiography (''Ramses in Nighttown''), a mock-epic (''The War at Troy: A True History''), an academic novel (''A Land of Slaves: A Novel of the American Academy''), a novel about Berkeley (''The Berkeley Plan: A Novel of the Sixties''), a novel about Jazz (''Take Five'', with Sanford Dorbin), and a collection of short fiction. He has published a memoir: ''Ramses Reborn''. In ''Tales of the Trojan War'' he retells in a droll, sometimes ribald style, the stories attached to the Trojan cycle, based on ancient sources.

He has translated the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey.'' The introduction to these poems discusses Powell's thesis about the Greek alphabet and the recording of Homer and is an influential review of modern Homeric criticism. He has also translated the ''Aeneid'' and the poems of Hesiod. His '' Greek Poems to the Gods'' includes translation and commentary on Greek hymns from Homer to Proclus.

Works

Books

* ''Composition by Theme in the Odyssey'', Beiträge zur klassichen Philologie, 1974
* ''Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet'', Cambridge University Press, 1991
* ''A New Companion to Homer'' (with Ian Morris), E. J. Brill, 1995
* ''A Short Introduction to Classical Myth'', Pearspm, 2000
* ''Writing and the Origins of Greek Literature'', Cambridge University Press, 2003
* ''Homer'', Wiley-Blackwell, 2004, 2nd ed. 2007
* ''Helen of Troy'', Screenplay based on Margaret George novel. 2006
* ''Rooms Containing Falcons'', poetry, 2006
* ''The War at Troy: A True History'', mock-epic, 2006
* ''Ramses in Nighttown'', a novel, 2006
* ''The Greeks: History, Culture, Society'' (with Ian Morris), Pearson, 2006, 2nd ed. 2009
* ''Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization'', Wiley-Blackwell, 2009
* ''Ilias, Odysseia'', Greek text with translation of Alexander Pope, Chester River Press 2009
* ''A Land of Slaves: A Novel of the American Academy'', Orion Books 2011
* ''World Myth'', Pearson, 2013
* ''The Iliad'', Oxford University Press, 2013
* ''The Odyssey'', Oxford University Press, 2014
* ''Classical Myth'', eighth edition, Pearson, 2014
* ''Homer's ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'': The Essential Books'', Oxford University Press, 2014
* ''Vergil's Aeneid'', Oxford University Press, 2015
* ''Vergil's Aeneid: The Essential Books'', Oxford University Press 2015
* ''The Berkeley Plan: A Novel of the Sixties'', Orion Books 2016
* ''The House of Odysseus, and other short fictions'', Orion Books 2016
* ''The Poems of Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, the Shield of Heracles'', University of California Press 2017
* ''Take Five, A Story of Jazz in the Fifties'' (with Sanford Dorbin), Telstar Books, 2017
* ''Ramses Reborn: A Memoir'', Amazon Publications, 2017
* ''Tales of the Trojan War'', Amazon Publications, 2017
* ''Greek Poems to the Gods'', University of California Press, 2021

Articles

* "Did Homer Sing at Lefkandi?", ''Electronic Antiquity'' 1(2), July 1993
online version

Notes and references

External links

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20191031124225/https://canes.wisc.edu/staff/barry-powell/ Staff profile page at University of Wisconsin–Madison (archived 2019)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Powell, Barry B.
American classical scholars
Living people
Classical philologists
Classical scholars of the University of Wisconsin–Madison
1942 births
Translators of Homer
Homeric scholars