The Iliad: A New Prose Translation by Amazonundefined

Price last update: 10/03/2024

Description

The greatest literary achievement of Greek civilizationan epic poem without rival in world literature and a cornerstone of Western culture
The story of the Iliad centers on the critical events in the last year of the Trojan War, which lead to Achilles's killing of Hektor and determine the fate of Troy. But Homer's theme is not simply war or heroism. With compassion and humanity, he presents a universal and tragic view of the world, of human life lived under the shadow of suffering and death, set against a vast and largely unpitying divine background.
The Iliad
is the first of the great tragedies. This prose translation features an excellent introduction and textual commentary by the translator, Martin Hammond. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Recenzja
Fitzgerald has solved virtually every problem that has plagued translators of Homer. The narrative runs, the dialogue speaks, the military action is clear, and the repetitive epithets become useful text rather than exotic relics.
Atlantic Monthly
Fitzgeralds swift rhythms, bright images, and superb English make Homer live as never beforeThis is for every reader in our time and possibly for all time.
Library Journal
[Fitzgeralds
Odyssey
and
Iliad
] open up once more the unique greatness of Homers art at the level above the formula; yet at the same time they do not neglect the brilliant texture of Homeric verse at the level of the line and the phrase.
The Yale Review
What an age can read in Homer, what its translators can manage to say in his presence, is one gauge of its morale, one index to its system of exultations and reticences. The supple, the iridescent, the ironic, these modes are among our strengths, and among Mr. Fitzgeralds.
National Review
With an Introduction by Gregory Nagy
O autorze
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 travellers 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.
Martin Hammond
is headmaster of the Tonbridge School and has translated Homers
Iliad
for Penguin Classics.