This book aims to promote a simple idea: that, in the contemporary context of the study and interpretation of classical literature at universities, traditional classical scholarship and modern theoretical ideas need to work with each other in the common task of the interpretation of texts. Such dialogue and co-operation is not merely desirable; it is essential to ensure the survival and relevance of the study of classical literature in the twenty-first century.

The purpose of this book is protreptic, to speak both to the sceptical and non-sceptical and to suggest to both the importance of the topic. The topics selected were chosen by a panel of distinguished practitioners as traditional areas of classical literary studies where the importance of co-operation of theory and scholarship could be shown in different ways by scholars who ranged widely in their views: 'literary language', 'narrative', 'genre', 'historicism', and 'reception and history of scholarship'.