The literalist provides the reader, or at least the student, with the comfortable assurance that for the vast designative tapestry of the original a pink thread may sometimes do duty for a red one, or a blurred one for a blurred one--but never a blue one for a red one, and never a polychrome burst for a single color of the original~ Impressionists, on the other hand, for all the rationales they can muster, can never free themselves of the charge leveled by T. S. Eliot at Gilbert Murray (who translates rather more literally than most of the impressionists of recent decades):"So here are two striking phrases which we owe to Mr. Murray; it is he who has sapped our soul and shattered the cup of all life for Euripides.... Professor Murray has simply interposed between Euripides and ourselves a barrier more impenetrable than the Greek language."
...
The Second Edition of this Norton Critical Edition continues to be based on Albert Cook’s translation, widely acclaimed for its poetic phrasing and linguistic curacy.The English translation of Homer’s masterpiece matches the Greek line for line; no other translation is more faithful to the original. The result is a melodic version that preserves Homer’s style.A glossary and a map of the Greek world accompany the text.
The Odyssey in Antiquity provides contextual materials and commentary to increase readers’ appreciation for literature and life in the Homeric age.A collection of nine assessments of The Odyssey by ancient and medieval writers, including Pindar, Aristotle, Seneca, and Scholia, is featured.Essays by G. S. Kirk and Martin P. Nilsson, respectively, discuss poetic conventions and the cioreligious order Homer depicts.
Criticism provides sixteen wide-ranging interpretations of The Odyssey.Included are seminal essays by Jean Racine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ezra Pound, Cedric H. Whitman, and A. C. Goodson.Albert Cook, Elizabeth Storz, Norman Austin, and John Peradotto provide new perspectives on the poem.
An updated Selected Bibliography is also included.
Foreword
Preface on the Translation
The Text of The Odyssey
The Odyssey
Glossary
Map: The Greek World, with places mentioned in The Odyssey
Backgrounds
THE ODYSSEY IN ANTIQUITY
Pindar · Nemean VII
Proclus · The Telegony
Porphyry · De Antro Nympharum in Opuscula Selecta
Aristotle · From Poetics
Seneca · From Epistles
Longinus · On the Sublime
Demetrius · On Style
Scholia · Graeca in Homeri Odysseam
Eustathius · Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam
G. S. Kirk · Heroic Age and Heroic Poetry
Martin P. Nilsson · [Homeric Anthropomorphism and Rationalism]
Criticism
Jean Racine · [Homer Begins Modestly]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · From Letters
Ezra Pound · [The Homeric World]
Gabriel Germain · Polyphemus and African Initiation Rites
T. W. Adorno · Odysseus, or Mythos and Enlightenment
Cedric H. Whitman · The Odyssey and Change
Anne Amory · The Reunion of Odysseus and Penelope
Albert Cook · The Man of Many Turns · Visual Aspects of the Homeric Simile in Indo-European Context
John H. Finley, Jr. · The Heroic Mind
Charles Segal · Bard and Audience in Homer
Paolo Vivante · Time and Life in Homer
Elizabeth Storz · The Beginning of the Odyssey
Edwin Dolin · Odysseus in Phaeacia
Norman Austin · Intimations of Order
John Peradotto · Man in the Middle Voice: Name and Narration in the Odyssey
A. C. Goodson · Homer and Ouranos
Selected Bibliography
