Jonathan Ready

My research interests are in ancient Greek literature and culture with an emphasis on Homeric poetry and Greek tragedy.

I come at the Homeric epics from the perspectives offered by narrative theory and folkloristics. My first book, Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad (Cambridge UP, 2011), is the first large-scale examination of similes spoken by Homeric characters. I argue that similes function as sites and mechanisms of competition not only between the characters but also between the characters and the narrator. My second book, The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives: Oral Traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia (Oxford UP, 2018), uses detailed analyses of modern oral poetries and oral traditions to offer a new take on how our Homeric poets put together their similes and a new take on how our Homeric poets strove to show their competence as performers: success was not just a matter of standing apart from but of standing with their fellow poets, of doing what other Homeric poets were doing. My third book, Orality, Textuality, and the Homeric Epics: An Interdisciplinary Study of Oral Texts, Dictated Texts, and Wild Texts (Oxford UP, 2019), explores the complex history of Homeric texts long before the emergence of standardized written texts. My fourth book, Immersion, Identification, and the Iliad (Oxford UP, 2023) aims to get at why we care about what happens in the poem by applying research in communications, media studies, and psychology on our experience of gripping narratives.

My current book project is on how recipients side with or against characters when watching (or reading) a Greek tragedy. I am also at present editing the Oxford Critical Guide to Homer’s Iliad. I co-edit the Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic (Brill) with Christos Tsagalis of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and Christos and I co-edited Homer in Performance: Rhapsodes, Narrators, and Characters (Univ. of Texas Press, 2018).

Prior to arriving at Michigan in 2020, I taught at the University of Miami for two years and at Indiana University for fourteen years.

Fields of Study:

• Ancient Greek Literature and Culture
• Homeric Poetry
• Greek Tragedy
• Narrative Theory
• Folkloristic Approaches to Ancient Texts