The Odyssey - Hardcover

Homer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520070216 ISBN 13: 9780520070219

Publisher: University of California Press, 1992

Synopsis

A highly regarded translator of Virgil and Dante bends his efforts to Homer's masterful work, offering a new verse translation that is at once precise and vigorous

About this title

Review:

"A splendid achievement outstripping all competitors."--Anthony A. Long, author of Hellenistic Philosophy

"With real poetic power...his book is one no lover of living poetry should miss."--The New York Times Book Review

About the Author:

Homer was probably born around 725BC on the Coast of Asia Minor, now the coast of Turkey, but then really a part of Greece. Homer was the first Greek writer whose work survives.

He was one of a long line of bards, or poets, who worked in the oral tradition. Homer and other bards of the time could recite, or chant, long epic poems. Both works attributed to Homer – the Iliad and the Odyssey – are over ten thousand lines long in the original. Homer must have had an amazing memory but was helped by the formulaic poetry style of the time.

In the Iliad Homer sang of death and glory, of a few days in the struggle between the Greeks and the Trojans. Mortal men played out their fate under the gaze of the gods. The Odyssey is the original collection of tall traveller’s tales. Odysseus, on his way home from the Trojan War, encounters all kinds of marvels from one-eyed giants to witches and beautiful temptresses. His adventures are many and memorable before he gets back to Ithaca and his faithful wife Penelope.

We can never be certain that both these stories belonged to Homer. In fact ‘Homer’ may not be a real name but a kind of nickname meaning perhaps ‘the hostage’ or ‘the blind one’. Whatever the truth of their origin, the two stories, developed around three thousand years ago, may well still be read in three thousand years’ time.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0520070216
• ISBN 13: 9780520070219
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 526