Translator Robert Fagles is a past winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The OdysseyIntroduction
Introduction
The Spelling and Pronunciation of Homeris Names
Maps:
1. Homeric Geography: Mainland Greece
2. Homeric Geography: The Peloponnese
3. Homeric Geography: The Aegean and Asia Minor
Homer: The Odyssey
Book 1: Athena Inspires the Prince
Book 2: Telemachus Sets Sail
Book 3: King Nestor Remembers
Book 4: The King and Queen of Sparta
Book 5: Odysseus-Nymph and Shipwreck
Book 6: The Princess and the Stranger
Book 7: Phaeacia's Halls and Gardens
Book 8: A Day for Songs and Contests
Book 9: In the One-Eyed Giant's Cave
Book 10: The Bewitched Queen of Aeaea
Book 11: The Kingdom of the Dead
Book 12: The Cattle of the Sun
Book 13: Ithaca at Last
Book 14: The Loyal Swineherd
Book 15: The Prince Sets Sail for Home
Book 16: Father and Son
Book 17: Stranger at the Gates
Book 18: The Beggar-King of Ithaca
Book 19: Penelope and her Guest
Book 20: Portents Gather
Book 21: Odysseus Stings his Bow
Book 22: Slaughter in the Hall
Book 23: The Great Rooted Bed
Book 24: Peace
Notes
Translator's Postscript
Genealogies
Textual Variants from the Oxford Classical Text
Notes on the Translation
Suggestions for Further Reading
Pronouncing Glossary
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 traveller's 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.
Robert Fagles (1933-2008) was Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of
Comparative Literature, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He was
the recipient of the 1997 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation
and a 1996 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts
and Letters. His translations include Sophocles's Three Theban
Plays, Aeschylus's Oresteia (nominated for a National Book Award),
Homer's Iliad (winner of the 1991 Harold Morton Landon Translation
Award by The Academy of American Poets), Homer's Odyssey, and
Virgil's Aeneid.
Bernard Knox (1914-2010) was Director Emeritus of Harvard's Center
for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. He taught at Yale
University for many years. Among his numerous honors are awards
from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the National
Endowment for the Humanities. His works include The Heroic Temper-
Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy, Oedipus at Thebes- Sophocles' Tragic
Hero and His Time and Essays Ancient and Modern (awarded the 1989
PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award).
"[Robert Fitzgerald's translation is] a masterpiece . . . An
"Odyssey" worthy of the original." -"The Nation"
"[Fitzgerald's" Odyssey" and "Iliad"] open up once more the unique
greatness of Homer's 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
"
"[In] Robert Fitzgerald's translation . . . there is no anxious
straining after mighty effects, but rather a constant readiness for
what the occasion demands, a kind of Odyssean adequacy to the task
in hand, and this line-by-line vigilance builds up into a
completely credible imagined world."
-from the Introduction by Seamus Heaney
Ask a Question About this Product More... |