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The Odyssey

by Homer and Robert Fagles

The Odyssey Cover

ISBN13: 9780140268867
ISBN10: 0140268863
Condition: Standard
All Product Details

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Awards

A Time magazine Best Book of 1996
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man
of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once
he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of The Odyssey, which Jasper Griffin in The New York Review of Books hails as "a distinguished achievement."

If The Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then The Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey through life. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once the timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance.

In the myths and legends that are retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.

Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles' translation.

This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the public at large, and to captivate a new generation of Homer's students.

Review:

"The greatest strength of Fagles' Homeric translations is that they do nothing to slow the narrative. If anything, they argue that, used well, verse can move faster than prose....Altogether, an outstanding piece of work." Stuart Whitwell, Booklist

Review:

"Robert Fagles' new translation of the Odyssey restores the original joys of the performing bard." Paul Gray, Time

Review:

"Wonderfully readable....Just the right blend of sophistication and roughness it seems to me." Ted Hughes

Review:

"Did the world need one more translation of The Odyssey? Yes. In Robert Fagles' lucid, muscular verse, these ancient measures stalk across the page in march time, from the first sight of 'young Dawn with her rose-red fingers' to the moment when the last suitor has been slaughtered and Odysseus takes Penelope to bed." Newsweek

Synopsis:

This is a new translation of Homer's epic about Odysseus and his encounters with both natural and divine forces on the ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. It contains an introduction and notes by Bernard Knox.
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About the Author

Robert Fagles, the winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, is Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature, Emeritus, at Princeton University and received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Yale University.

Bernard Knox is Director Emeritus of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C.

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
dougnlis, December 8, 2009 (view all comments by dougnlis)
waitingtoleave compares various translations, and I can't comment on Greek words or metrical sense. I can say that Fagles propels his story along swiftly and entices the reader into his form of metrical rendering of the text.

The Odyssey is an intensely modern work in its structure. Presenting it as a collection of short stories or isolated events has insulted the genius of its story telling. A few lines after the beginning, rendered by Fagles as "Sing to me of the man, Muse," comes the odd direction, "launch out where you will - sing for our time too." In ancient times that may have allowed an oral presenter to take up the story at any point, but hints that the story doesn't have to unwind chronologically so long as the beginning and end are included. So the story twists and turns.

The Odyssey is told with a cinematic sense of scene cuts and flashbacks and questionably reliable narrators. Fagles makes of this epic a book that lets readers plow through as with a modern novel, allowing the metric arrangement of lines the text to provide a sense of antiquity while translating a sense of the original text so it sings for our time too.

"Translator's Postscript" and "Notes on the Translation" satisfied my need for detail on how other times might have taken in The Odyssey for their own times.

I bow to waitingtoleave for his ability to compare translations. I embrace this Fagles translation as utterly fulfilling for me reading in my time. Knowing the Odyssey only through renderings of isolated bits and pieces (tricking the Cyclops, threading Scylla and Charybdis, etc., etc.) might meet the command to "launch where you will," but fails to tell anything like the tale of the man of twists and turns that Fagles presents, and doesn't hint at the other plot threads following the wife and son of Odysseus that twine together to make the complete tale.
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waitingtoleave, September 29, 2007 (view all comments by waitingtoleave)
this is an amazing book, with something for anyone. if you are interested in studying philosophy, you'll find it here. but, you can also read a great adventure story with fables and a love story written in. in that sense, this is a great translation; if you want to read this for the sake of entertainment, Fagles is a great translator. if you want to read for philosophical discussion, however, he might not serve your purposes. the thing you have to know about Fagles is, he often inserts adjectives and the feel of the entire story changes. so, if you want fidelity to the Greek words, try Lattimore. if you want fidelity to the Greek metrical sense, try Mandelbaum or Pope. and if you want fidelity to the Greek adventure epic, Fagles is your guy.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780140268867
Translator:
Fagles, Robert
Introduction:
Knox, Bernard MacGregor Walke
Translator:
Fagles, Robert
Introduction:
Knox, Bernard MacGregor Walke
Author:
Fagles, Robert
Author:
Knox, Bernard
Author:
Homer
Publisher:
Penguin Books
Location:
London
Subject:
Classics
Subject:
Poetry
Subject:
Poetry (poetic works by one author)
Subject:
Continental european
Subject:
Odysseus (Greek mythology)
Subject:
Epic poetry, Greek
Subject:
Ancient, Classical & Medieval
Subject:
Epic literature
Subject:
Classical literature
Subject:
Odysseus
Copyright:
1999
Edition Description:
Includes bibliographical references.
Series Volume:
EPA-650/2-74-081
Publication Date:
January 2003
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Yes
Pages:
541
Dimensions:
8.39x5.76x1.48 in. 1.48 lbs.
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