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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 883.01
EAN: 9780679410478
ISBN: 0679410473
Label: Everyman's Library
Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 528
Publication Date: November 03, 1992
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Release Date: November 03, 1992
Studio: Everyman's Library

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Related Items:

• The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation
• The Aeneid
• The Odyssey (Cliffs Notes)
• The Iliad of Homer
• The Three Theban Plays (Penguin Classics)
• see more

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Introduction by Seamus Heaney; Translation by Robert Fitzgerald




Rating: - Almost too readable?
Well, I'm not a Greek or Classics major. The writing program I work for assigns this edition. Now, although with a work of this bulk I feel bad complaining, but I am sure that several Greek scholars will feel much unease with Fitzgerald's translation. Why? Because it is almost too readable. A vast abyss of history opens between us and Greek Antiquity, but if you read this translation, you want to slap Odysseus on the shoulder and have a glass of wine with him. I am torn, because I love the emotional ... Read More

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Rating: - Incredible
The Odyssey will always be a classic of literature, and with good reason. With the intense battles, Odysseus's clever tricks, and Penelope and Telemachus's heart-wrenching plight, it's no wonder this poem has survived the centuries. This version goes above and beyond what should be required of a translation: the prose is beautiful and arranged, as it should be, in lines and stanzas. Hermes rhymes and Homer's memory tricks work to enrich the text rather than detract. The cover, featuring a watercolor ... Read More

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Rating: - Fitzgerald's Homer
I here consider not the story of the Odyssey itself, accounts of which abound, but rather Robert Fitzgerald's 1961 translation. Unlike recent more literal translations of the Odyssey such as Richmond Lattimore's (1962) and Albert Cook's (1967), which seek to reflect the original Greek with strict fidelity, Fitzgerald's does not confine itself to mirroring the Homeric line in syntax or parts of speech. Instead, he renders the verse of the Odyssey--which in the Greek averages roughly sixteen syllables ... Read More

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Rating: - Better Than I Remembered
I just read The Odyssey again for a literature class. Man, it was better than I remembered. I had read this back in high school in 1996 or 97, and at the time I didn't care for it all that much. However, I don't think it was the same translation. I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but this was a very enjoyable read. It has everything you could want in a heroic tale: monsters, gods, beautiful women, magic, and of course a trip into the underworld. Just make sure to look up characters ... Read More

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Rating: - The Odyssey. Homer/ Robert Fitzgerald, translator.
"Odysseus rolled his head
to one side softly, ducking the blow, and smiled
a crooked smile with teeth clenched."

It's been a few years since I read Walden, but I recall Thoreau stating that Homer's epics should be read in no language but Greek. He may have been less inclined to this view if he'd had access to Robert Fitzgerald's translation, first published in 1961. It is said, by those who know these things far better than I, that heroic dactylic hexameter cannot be justly translated, ... Read More

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