This book is about the Homeric figure Nestor. This study is important because it reveals a level of deliberate irony in the Homeric poems that has hitherto not been suspected, and because Nestor’s role in the poems, which is built on this irony, is a key to the circumstances of the poems’ composition. Interpreted in the context of the Indo-European twin myth, Nestor’s role clearly points beyond itself to the key question in Homeric studies: the circumstances of the poems’ composition.

The world has long wished for more of Sappho’s poetry, which exists mostly in tantalizing fragments. This volume is the first collection of essays in English devoted to discussion of a newly recovered Sappho poem and two other incomplete texts on the same papyri. Using different approaches, the contributions demonstrate how the “New Sappho” can be appreciated as a complete, gracefully spare poetic statement regarding the painful inevitability of death and aging.

Jacopo Sannazaro (1456–1530) is most famous for having written, in Italian, the first pastoral romance in European literature, the Arcadia (1504). But after this early work, Sannazaro devoted himself entirely to Latin poetry modeled on his beloved Vergil. In addition to his epic The Virgin Birth (1526), which earned him the title of “the Christian Vergil,” he also composed Piscatory Eclogues, an innovative adaption of the eclogue form. This volume contains the first complete English translation of all of Sannazaro’s poetry in Latin, accompanied by extensive notes.

There is perhaps no superior edition of Donne’s Songs and Sonets than Theodore Redpath’s wonderful annotated volume. Out of print for a decade, the book is reprinted here in its second, revised edition. The book’s twofold origin is evident on every page of Redpath’s limpid commentary: it arises partly out of a life of scholarship and partly from Redpath’s experiences and concerns as a teacher.