The essays in this collection address questions of intense interest in Homeric studies today: the questions of perfomance and poet-audience interaction; the ways in which epic incorporates material of diverse genres, such as women´s laments, blame poetry, or folk tales; how the ideological bvalance of epic can change and be influenced by "alternate ideologies" introduced through the incorporation of new material; the implications of the continuity of tradition for etymological studies; and how the traditional nature of epic affects textual criticism.