Good reading

I have been reading for my own research and came across some interesting comments by Alastair Blanshard (Hercules, a Heroic Life, London: Granta Books, 2005) p. 39-61 on Hercules' madness and Euripides' and Seneca's plays on the subject. Blanshard's larger theme in the book is the ambiguity of Hercules as a model from antiquity to the modern day. Someone might want to EZBorrow it for a report or use it as a source for papers. We don't have it in the library here. Blanshard discusses various incidents in the myths of Hercules and examines ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and modern treatments of the episodes in literature, in other arts, and even in politics and pop culture.

Other items of general interest on the literary importance of Heracles include:

Anderson, A. R. (1928) “Heracles and his successors. A study of a heroic ideal and the recurrence of a heroic type,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 39: 7-58.

Galinsky, G. K. (1972) The Heracles Theme: The Adaptations of the Hero in Literature from Homer to the Twentieth Century, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.