Posted on 11/17/2017 7:49:01 PM PST by nickcarraway
Interesting.
And most importantly, does she tell the story well?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If she has balls.
I was completely unaware that one’s sex determines how a work is translated.
Learn something new every day, I suppose.
Ha! We actually studied it in junior high. 1965
I’d make a smart-@ss comment, but I was taught to R-E-S-P-E-C-T my Elders. ;)
A wise policy, vestal virgin.
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies:
They fall successive, and successive rise.
I would think that the best way to judge a translation of Homer’s epic would be to ask, “Is the story told the way Homer would have told it?”. Who would presume to improve on a work that has lasted almost three thousand years?
I welcome a new translation of the Odyssey. And I don’t often judge a book by its cover. But...
The cover shows three women in a well-known Minoan fresco. The Minoan civilization was, give or take, a thousand years before Homer. I’m in that camp which places the Trojan War at around 1200 BC. The Minoan civilization was long gone by then. Further, it was a different culture, different language altogether, from that of the Greeks depicted in the Odyssey.
Homer wouldn’t have written it down?
Sorry, dudette, but you are too late, because the greatest English interpretation of The Odyssey had already been written: Steely Dan’s ‘Home At Last’. And it is set to great music, too.
Her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy is considered one of the best, the first part was published in 1949.
If you want a "glass ceiling breaker," she would qualify.
This woman's work might be interesting or it might not but just being the "first women whatever" is no longer really anything worthy of interest.
“The Aeneid is pretty great. Try the Dryden translation.”
Yes, the Dryden translation is excellent, a joy to read. Penguin has an inexpensive edition: https://www.amazon.com/Virgils-Aeneid-Penguin-Classics-Virgil/dp/0140446273/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510981753&sr=8-1&keywords=dryden+aeneid+penguin
And I’m willing to bet that when Sarah Ruden came out with her translation of the Aeneid in 2009 - the first by a woman - that it didn’t receive the same hoopla that this Emily Wilson translation is. https://www.amazon.com/Aeneid-Vergil/dp/0300151411/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510982099&sr=1-5
Then again maybe Ruden didn’t get the star treatment because she’s a Christian, a Pauline apologist ( https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Among-People-Reinterpreted-Reimagined/dp/0385522576/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510982099&sr=1-2 ) and a fan of St. Augustine ( https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Modern-Library-Augustine/dp/0812996569/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510982099&sr=1-1
Then again, maybe I’m just being unfair to Liberals. Maybe. Probably not.
As long as the godlike Telemachus is in it. I still remember that translation from high school.
Check. This is THE ILIAD in the Loeb Classical Library, and the greek is right there if you have any questions. And I've got to tell you, they've got more answers than I have questions!
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