The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Homer, circa 7th/8th century BCE.

It is not certain that the works attributed to Homer were the work of one poet, but there are two extant epic poems under his name, on the subject of the Trojan War and its aftermath:
The Iliad
The Odyssey

We are planning an informal group read of the Odyssey, probably for early 2020. Most participants would like to read the new translation by Emily Wilson (published by Norton). You are welcome to join in using other translations as well, and to comment later if you don't read it at the same time.

Wikipedia: English translations of Homer

I would love to join in but can't promise at this time if I would be able to keep pace. The next few months seem to be going to be very busy, for non-book reasons.

I'd like to know the learned members' opinions about Fagles vs Emily Wilson, or a third translator. How do you choose which translation to read, and why?

Thanks.

The choice of Emily Wilson, a new, much-talked-about translation, emerged from the other thread, but it rather fits with the group's usual focus. If we're going to read a 3000-year-old text, it's not surprising it turns out it's in the newest, buzziest version, ha.

What I've most often seen said about Wilson's so far - but this *is* based on tweets rather than multiple in-depth reviews - is what her version highlights about female characters, experiences and perceptions of women which wasn't so visible in other translations. However there are also, reader reviews, e.g. on Amazon which praise the scholarship, one saying it was worthwhile for the introduction alone, and the poetry. It does look like good verse from the little I've read.

(One might say, but it was by a man originally, so why does a female translator matter? But with a text like this arising from an oral tradition and woven together from folktales built by many contributors over centuries, it will have origins with creators and storytellers of both sexes, even if one poet may have synthesised and written down the version known from the oldest Greek texts.)

My own interest in the Odyssey is in its influence on other literature, and on wider culture via its being a cornerstone of western education for hundreds of years until c.1950. As such, it would make most sense for me to read Chapman or Pope. But I know I'd find them slow reads, and I just want to finish stuff when I've put off reading it for a long time. And to that end I got Fagles' translation of the Iliad & Odyssey circa maybe 2002.

I read the Iliad in Fagles' version, and I like to have the same voice for a writer across books where possible and therefore read the same translator where possible. (This also unfortunately means I should read P&V for minor Tolstoy works.) Even though Fagles' translation wasn't around a hundred or more years ago, it was still blatantly obvious in his version of the Iliad how the text would have fuelled the imperialist mindset of countless 19th century schoolboys. So some of the cultural insight I wanted was there, even if it wasn't in Chapman's and Pope's lines that must have been quoted and paraphrased in myriad other works.

The other great benefit of modern translations like Fagles and Wilson - as far as I'm concerned - with their annotations and other scholarly material, is that they are more informative about Ancient Greece and the Bronze Age itself. So although you don't get the early modern cultural history embedded in Chapman or Pope, you get other historical content instead: swings and roundabouts.

I am also interested enough in the differences that have been talked about between Wilson's and male translators' to *want* to read both Fagles' and hers (though whether time will allow...?) - and I am sure there is more to it than just gender. For it just to be that seems a disservice to Wilson's scholarship and poetic translation skill.

As it turns out, even after dumping two copies at the used book shop, apparently I was sufficiently concerned to keep the Fagles translation. I still have a combination Iliad/Odyssey critical edition translated by Robert Fagles and with commentary/introductions by Bernard Knox - so the one we all had before the Wilson came along. I'm torn actually - which to read. It seems like if I read Iliad translated by Fagles, I maybe should stick to him. But I'll decide later.

Either way, I think it's a good thing to have us reading different translations - because that can only add to the conversation. When I've read other books w/ loads of people using different translations, some great discussions have come about simply by comparing the various reads. (I find this all the time in Russian translations, that a bad translation can make a great book mediocre and vice versa, I presume.)

Apparently I dumped a Rouse translation (according to that helpful wikipedia page, it was from the early-mid 20th century, and while I don't have a note, I'd be willing to bet that Lang was the other one I gave away. But I don't have a note about that one.

Interesting to try and figure it out. Often I spend a fair amount of time searching online for some smart people's opinions. (In the olden days, Amazon was actually useful for this sort of thing.) I got the Wilson just because everyone seemed to be talking about it, but clearly that wasn't enough to get me to read it.

Another interesting thing is that Fagles was (is?) American, and Wilson British. Dunno how much of a difference that should make, but it could make some.

One more note: Lookit what I just found whilst searching the web for comparisons on translations - Norton is issuing a critical edition of Wilson's "definitive" translation: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

Making me very much wish that I had my (current and recent) policy in place when I bought the copy I have. I now only buy books I plan on reading immediately (or within a month at the longest.) Saves me $ and space. I'd much rather have the critical edition. Maybe it means another trip to the book shop... Unfortunately, it's not due out until March of 2020.

Here's another interesting (not sure how updated) page on translations of Homer: https://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/h...

And on it, you'll find a link to this "which translation is for you" site:
http://timlabs.org/odyssey/

And just for fun: greek comix site: https://greekmythcomix.com/odyssey-co...

Which has a great infographic (seen here on GR more than once) about deaths in Iliad: https://greekmythcomix.com/comic/deat...

OK, I'm going to try and sleep again now...

Ella wrote: "Making me very much wish that I had my (current and recent) policy in place when I bought the copy I have. I now only buy books I plan on reading immediately (or within a month at the longest.) Saves me $ and space. I'd much rather have the critical edition. Maybe it means another trip to the book shop... Unfortunately, it's not due out until March of 2020."

Is that definitely a new edition, or just the existing one with a new cover? As it is, it already has quite a lot of notes, but I'm not too familiar with Norton's critical editions as we don't have them so much here, other than the anthologies which are standard university texts. Would they put even more stuff in it?

Fagles' style seems to have imprinted on me, as it was my second-highest score on the timlabs site. For the one which had the highest score, Huddleston, more of the quotations were just least bad of the pair to me, than ones I actively liked.

This morning I found this LRB review of Wilson, Peter Green and another recent translation, Anthony Verity:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n...
The reviewer has a few reservations about the Wilson. It's also clear from the examples why her version found affinity with #metoo online.
It has also made me curious about the Green translation as I like seeing metaphors that are close to the original, rather than anglicised. Green is as a scholar is such a mainstay of classics (he was the only one I could have named before Mary Beard became famous) and I've still never read anything of his despite hearing of him over 20 years ago.

There is an audio of the Fagles translation, read by Ian McKellan. It's on Scribd in the UK, don't know about elsewhere. I can't see how I won't listen to this fairly soon, though I will need to read text as well. Not sure how daft this is, but it just seems Christmassy to listen to him reading / declaiming something, like this.

I wouldn't mind, at all, listening to the audio then reading the book. I'm bad at doing them in tandem, but this seems like a nice way to put myself in the right frame of mind and also "read" without the pull to go off and check various other sources, then when I actually read it, I can do that in a (hopefully) more grounded way. I'll check US scribd and the various libraries too.

As for whether the Norton edition is just a new cover, I doubt it. They are fairly similar to Oxford Critical eds (I think- it's been a while since I actually compared 1:1) They usually have several full articles and much more scholarly input, including timelines and comparisons (variations in translations or editions/text notes.) So basically it usually ends up being many more pages and more interpretations of the material. Of course, what those additions are is vital - and there is no way to know right now. I'd imagine they'll leave her many notes and add to them. Norton published her original edition, and I would hope they wouldn't just slap another cover on it. Unfortunately, I didn't find a TOC or anything yet, so it's really just a pretty cover and the words "critical edition" that I can see at this point. I'll have to go look at Norton's page for this book and see if I can find more info. Either way, I doubt I'll buy yet another copy. I can use the university library from my hospital and maybe they'll have one.

If I thought I was about to become a great lover of classics, maybe, but no reason to put it off even longer when I'm positive I'll be able to find the Norton eventually and there is plenty of scholarly material already out there about this particular text.

The final line of that LRB article is what has been nagging at my mind since we started talking about this, "Readers who want to get a feeling for the poem will find Wilson’s translation full of insights, but it needs to be read alongside a version such as Green’s or Verity’s, which does not so overtly seek to embed Homer in the present." That worries me. So perhaps I'll listen to one and read the other. Dunno, but I very much like the idea of listening first, and usually I just listen to news or whatever in other languages to keep me ears up. So I could use a Greek poem instead for a change.

That was easy enough- on the Norton page for the book, not a lot of information yet, but this is what they say:

DESCRIPTION
“A revelation. Never have I been so aware at once of the beauty of the poetry, the physicality of Homer’s world, and the moral ambiguity of those who inhabit it.” —Susan Chira, The New York Times Book Review, “New & Noteworthy"

This Norton Critical Edition includes:

Emily Wilson’s authoritative translation of Homer’s masterpiece, accompanied by her informative introduction, explanatory footnotes and book-by-book summaries.

Four maps, created especially for this translation. Contextual materials including sources and analogues by Homer, Sappho, Pindar and others. Also included are carefully chosen passages from (mainly) ancient texts that provide insight into The Odyssey and its reception by Plato, Aristotle, Ovid, Pseudo-Longinus, Lucian, Apollodorus, Heraclitus, Porphyry, Proclus, Hyginus, Dante Alighieri, Alfred Lord Tennyson, C. P. Cavafy, Derek Walcott and Margaret Atwood.

Nine critical essays addressing key topics—composition; representation of religion and the gods; class and slavery; gender; colonisation and the meaning of home; trickery, intelligence, lying; and more— essential to the study of The Odyssey. Essays by Robert Fowler, Laurel Fulkerson, Barbara Graziosi, Laura M. Slatkin, Sheila Murnaghan, Patrice Rankine, Helene P. Foley, Egbert J. Bakker and Lillian Eileen Doherty are included.

A glossary and a list of suggested further readings.

--

So that's the difference b/c on the original it just says nice things about Wilson's translation and the fact that she's the first woman to translate to English (which for me is not really a plus or a minus - it's almost a bit, I dunno, condescending in some way.)

Norton Critical Editions are very in-depth – I’ve bought more than a few over the years, especially of works that I really like to dig deep into. Abundant footnotes. Prefaces, introductions, and then the critical essays tend to amount to more pages than the actual text. If I had to compare Norton to Oxford or Penguin, the difference essentially is that Norton has footnotes instead of endnotes and carry all those essays at the back. Sometimes they’re daunting to read (compared to Oxford/Penguin) especially if you’re not that into the text.

Like many of you, I bought the Wilson translation a year ago and have not read it yet – I’ve planned to read it together with my wife but somehow we’ve procrastinated for 12 months. This group read might be a good motivator, so I might chime in. I’ve read The Odyssey in two different Finnish translations, one in prose and one in verse, but my memory is hazy, as often happens with survey course reading in uni, and would love to finally read it in English translation.

It is woderful to see the enthusiasm for this. I am one who likes to read more than one translation at one time. Rather than seeing the versions in a hierarchical order, I see them as different interpretations of the work, much in the same way I view different productions of classic plays or operas, or renditions of musical compsitions. I think we tend to favor those that are created and created in our lifetime, so my favorite translation is the Fitzgerald with the Lattimore, Mandelbaum, and Fagles all preferred when they first came out. Has anyone read the Kemball-Cook? I think that will be the translation I read with the Wilson for this go round if I can find a cheap copy.

I'd love to join the discussion about Homer and the merits or not of the various translations.
I read both the Fagles translations a few years ago, and then bought the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey when it came out. I only read half of it a couple years back, so finding a good excuse to complete the journey is good. I only stopped due to time pressures, not because there was anything wrong with the translation.
I have multiple other translations of Homer, including one of the Odyssey by T E Shaw (Lawrence of Arabia). Rather than reading them cover to cover, I like to consult them all on various favourite passages to see how different translators have tacked the same passage. One of my favourites is the description of Calypso's home in Book 5, the wooded island and the lonely beach where Odysseus watches out to sea.
My interest in Homer is both literary and historical - I studied Ancient History at university years ago, and tied that into archaeology. I love the fact there are many missing passages from Homer which are known to us from painted Greek pottery. This shows missing scenes, and sometimes fragments of papyrus will add a few missing lines. The scene where Achillies and Ajax play some kind of board game together, resting on their weapons, appears so often that it must have been a favourite scene or dialogue from Homer, much loved in the 5th century BC.
My other interest, as mentioned by Antonomasia, is where these works have inspired new stories - Ransom The Songs Of The Kings Circe and The Silence of the Girls. I have A Thousand Ships still waiting to read. Others have Homer as a template or an inspiration, but are not an explicit retelling or focus on a specific event. I do love the way these stories continue to inspire more and more stories.

I hope to join this read. The Odyssey was my sweet dad’s favorite (he was always jealous that his brother Homer got the best name of the Whidden brothers, Dad was Kenneth, I always felt my Uncle Hugh had the best name) and after he developed Lewy Body dementia (which mercifully does not rob people of their memories, it just makes them very childlike) I would read it to him every night. Even though the dementia had progressed a great deal he could
correct my mispronounced names, tell me their relationships to each other and their roles in the stories. Dad died just as Odysseus made it home, and while Dad already knew how it ended I did not, not from the original source anyway, so I should finish it.

Of the books Marcus mentioned I think Ransom is the most beautifully written. I have not read A Thousand Ships.
Marcus, are you familiar with Bright Air Black? It’s the story of Medea with Jason and the Argonauts as she throws pieces of her beloved brother into the sea behind her to torment her father. It’s also poetic, but a bit gory!

Heh - my father loves spy novels (and is the reason I love spy novels. He shared them with me from the time I was like 10 years old.) I'm going to ask him if he knows what the Odyssey is at Christmas. My guess - he will confuse it with something that sounds similar and was written by an Irish writer.

There's an Iliad rewrite about the Troubles which has amazing reviews and didn't get nearly enough publicity - not sure if that's something that might be of interest to him or you
Country by Michael Hughes

Anto - you may have just solved a puzzle as to what to buy my father for the holidays. (I made an "I owe you a gift you will actually use" coupon...) Also, my library has a copy available in 12 days, so I will read it. I'm always interested in the Troubles. Oddly, while growing up, when we'd visit N Ireland, I thought that was just "normal" for the country - banging bin lids, tanks, soldiers, etc. It was "fun" as a kid with zero understanding of the situation. No wonder my father was always so irritated with me during/after those trips. Thanks!

Thank you, Anto! I like to read any and all good novelized Greek myths. I will get this too.

Wendy, not familiar with Bright Air Black, but will certainly look out for it.
I have a couple of other recommendations for you all - and given all the talk about fathers, this one may really hit a note. Daniel Mendelsohn's delightful An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic is a heart warming read. Mendelsohn junior is both author and critic and teaches a grad school course on the Odyssey. His eighty-four year old father decides to take the course and let's say he 'dislikes' Odysseus. The wisdom gained by both father and son during the classes and after, on a modern-day ocean voyage around the Mediterranean, is priceless. I learnt a great deal about the Odyssey itself, as well as enjoying the memorial of a relationship between father and son.

And there is also Zachary Mason's The Lost Books of the Odyssey which is a wonderful piece of fiction. Good enough to rank in my top thirty books.
And one more before I go, this time history and commentary - The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War will give you a quite different view on The Iliad and how it was all driven by Achillies' anger. I think since this book was published Caroline Alexander has also published her own translation of the Iliad. I haven't read it to know how good it is.

Thank you, Marcus. I heard a few podcast interviews with Daniel Mendelsohn’s discussing that experience and it is heartwarming, I agree.

I just ordered Country, based on the Iliad at Anto’s suggestion and The Lost Books of the Odyssey sounds very good as well.
The War that Killed Achilles.... might be the only novel based on Homer that I could have talked my dad into reading. He wouldn’t read novels when the original was there to be plumbed. I need that book too!

Marcus! You just added a heap of books to my TBR! I think I'll wait until after we've made a pass through Odyssey to read Zachary Mason's and Caroline Alexander's books, but I ordered Daniel Mendelsohn's from the library just now.

I've been wondering about Caroline Alexander's translation of the Iliad (it came out in 2015-16-ish, if I'm remembering correctly?) because I do remember the reception was pretty good at the time of publication, but I didn't hear much about it afterward. And in fact, I rarely hear her mentioned these days (but I rarely talk about the Iliad w/ anyone, so not very surprising.) I am actually more interested in that book about the Iliad that she wrote. I read a fascinating book she wrote about Ernest Shackleton ages ago, and that's really all I know of her, Thankfully, I remember enough of Iliad to be able to at least, if pressed, summarize. (War, right? ;-)

This reminds me that a patient recently asked me about the Trojan Horse. I was testing him and I couldn't go off script to discuss, but he was adamant that it was not Aeneid - absolutely was in Iliad. (Frankly, I was shocked he could remember any of this, as he had a brain injury, and all I could do was direct him back to the proverbs we'd been discussing - which was how he got there "I know a proverb: beware of Greeks bearing gifts!" Sometimes my job is truly so fun and interesting.) Anyway, I meant to visit him to discuss (and to bring the books) but I forgot the books... You reminded me, so thanks!

Ella, the Trojan horse doesn't actually turn up in the Iliad, but does gets a mention in the Odyssey as Odysseus retells the story. It does turn up in the Aeneid. It is one of those missing stories, of which there are many, that gets used by lots of later classical writers but is not found in what has come down to us as Homer's original.

I apologise in advance if I'm adding to TBRs. If it is any consolation my pile by the bed got so tall and dangerous that it became a small bookshelf (3 shelves) and then next to the small bookshelf I had to add a tall one of 7 shelves.

Lol. It is small consolation, but we know none of us will finish our TBR. I’m waiting for my husband to figure out the soft dings he hears when I’m on my iPad are email receipt alerts for books I order after reading recommendations here. In the hour or so I’ve been on this site, this group, I’ve ordered 4 books: Problems, Country, The Mating Habits Of Stags and The War that Killed Achilles. I think it shows real discipline that I added The Lost Books of the Odyssey to my wish list instead of ordering it too.

I was writing a piece of journalism about this year's reading, which for the first time in my life has extended over 100 books. Next year I am reading less and writing a novel, so I started to list the 12 small reading projects I will allow myself, based around books that I have bought this year. Before I knew it the 12 projects had become 20 and I had a list of 88 books to read which I already own. Serveral by Penelope Fitzgerald, a cluster by Angela Carter and a small Clive James retrospective & tribute. At least I'll be saving money on second-hand book buying. Perhaps I need to spread the projects over two years!

By contrast I have my TBR pile down to zero.

May the muses attend you, Marcus.

There must be a trick to that, Gumble’s Yard.

Hi everyone, I'm a member of this group, but most definitely a lurker rather than participant. (and I really should go back to the "introduce yourself" thread to so do). But I recognize several of you from the NYRB group -- hey there, Trevor, Wendy and Antonomasia! When Antonomasia started this thread, I immediately paid attention. The Odyssey is a touchstone for me, and I try to read it every few years. And I'd love to do a read-along with this group.

Plus, since I live in the Northern hemisphere, there is something about this time a year, with its short days, long nights --- I crave to read pure story. It is for that reason that every year I ask my husband to give me a different collection of fairy tales or myths for Christmas. (This year it's Stephen Fry's Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold and Maria Tatar's Beauty and the Beast: Classic Tales About Animal Brides and Grooms from Around the World.

So, I'm all in! Also wanted to mention that there is a wonderful free Coursera online MOCC course that just started today called Greek and Roman Mythology taught by Peter Struck, University of Pennsylvania. SEE: https://www.coursera.org/learn/mythology

I took this course several years ago and have decided to re-take it. Struck's lectures are quite good. The reading in the course includes The Odyssey as well as my all-time favorite, Ovid's Metamorphoses. RE: Odyssey, for this online course, It doesn't matter what edition you choose to read, although, since I own Fagles, I'll stick to Fagles. It's a 10 - week course with very good lectures. If you take it, you won't be disappointed, and weaving the reading into a 10-week course kept me honest about keeping up.

RE: other interesting reads -- there is a very good NYRB classic called The World of Odysseus that came out first in 1954 and has been reprinted several times. No doubt there is more current scholarship, but M. I. Finley is a delightful writer - highly recommended.

And finally, since the discussion of re-tellings of ancient myths came up, there is Caribbean poet Derek Walcott's Omeros - ( I believe a Nobel prize winner) - I confess that I have wanted to read but haven't tackled yet. But what better time to take in the full sun of the Caribbean than in winter!

Looking forward to this,

Janet

Hello, Janet! I love your tradition of requesting collections of fairy tales and myths. I’m going to check your shelves for the collections you like best.

Happy Winter Solstice!

Classicist, Elizabeth Vandiver also recorded a series of lectures on the Odyssey for The Teaching Company , now Great Courses. I have listened to he Lectures on Greek Tragedies and enjoyed her.

The Odyssey of Homer

Janet - I just joined the Struck course, so I'll be there with you! (There right now, in fact.)

1) Is anyone bothered about spoilers for The Odyssey?

2) Do people want a fixed start date?
I was thinking about simply putting it in the group's Currently Reading from 1st January, and people can begin and start talking about it as it fits with their plans - a couple of you have said you won't be starting until a bit later in the month.
Quite a few of us here don't tend to get on with the strict schedules of group reads with set chapters for set weeks - hopefully this can accommodate that to an extent

Likewise an end date is vague and approximate (thinking of removing it from the Currently Reading shelf when the Women's Prize longlist is announced - 3 March - but of course you don't have to have finished it then). And also others can join in with discussion in subsequent months if they didn't have time to read/finish in Jan-Feb.

Some stuff I looked up about weaving a few days ago when I started listening to the Ian McKellen audio.

The type of vertical warp-weighted loom seen on Greek vases:
- http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/XDB/ASP/r...
- https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
- http://www.ancient-greek-pottery.com/...
- https://minusplato.com/2017/03/songs-...
was still in use in Norway and Iceland into the 20th century.

First I watched a couple of short videos of modern re-enactors, thinking they must have just started using the looms, as they were very slow. Eventually I found this 1956 Norwegian film of lifelong weavers using these looms at home - but it also looks like a very slow process there. I can't see how you can get up a sense of flow working like this:
https://youtu.be/a19lGJGOZWY?t=1054
(video is 26 minutes including setting up, but this link goes to a caption just before they are actually weaving.)

It's very rare I see some kind of historical re-enactment type thing and *don't* think I'd really want to do that if I were fit and healthy enough, but this looks unutterably tedious to me!
If you didn't know any different - no acquaintance with other types of loom, or hand-knitting as it is currently done, I guess you wouldn't mind so much, or think it so slow, but I still have a great deal of respect for anybody able to concentrate on that for hours.

All that standing up and shuffling about with the vertical warp-weighted looms uses up a lot of time and energy compared with backstrap looms, which are still in use in parts of Asia and Central and South America - this is more like what I had expected.
This film shows backstrap weavers working at home so there are kids and animals wandering around, as weaving would have been done for most of history:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx0IE...
and this bit shows how fast someone skilled can be with this type:
https://youtu.be/2Jq_Xo5EkK8?t=126

This schedule sounds just right for me. I started listening to The Iliad-translated by Alexander-to prepare.

Thank you for the info about weaving. What a fascinating topic!

I will probably be lurking -- I have commitments to several other groups/buddy reads, including the Iliad.

But I took part in a previous discussion of the Odyssey, from which I may be able to extract links to secondary literature that might be helpful, whether or not you've read it before.

If I do, I'll try to keep it simple -- there was some feeling that what I was doing was overkill. (Such as using technical commentaries to explain why translations could differ without one or more being wrong.)

Ian wrote: "I will probably be lurking -- I have commitments to several other groups/buddy reads, including the Iliad.

But I took part in a previous discussion of the Odyssey, from which I may be able to extr..."

Those technical commentaries will be welcome here.

That sounds like the sort of thing that may be welcome here, Ian.

One of the group's ongoing interests is translated fiction so
a) many participants will be familiar with general basic issues involved in translation, via essays by translators previously read, and those probably don't need to be explained (and some posters speak more than one language themselves) but
b) it's worth highlighting particularly interesting examples.

In the group/buddy reads of Richard Powers that were happening earlier this year, academic papers were posted in the thread. We are interested in that level of material - however obviously there is not a great deal about Powers academically, whereas about Homer there is a vast quantity. I think it is not about the level of the material, rather it may be a question of not overdoing it in terms of volume.

For those interested in online courses, there’s a course version of this book by Gregory Nagy starting Jan 9 2020 that is free to enroll in

https://www.edx.org/course/the-ancien...

About this course
Explore what it means to be human today by studying what it meant to be a hero in ancient Greek times.

In this introduction to ancient Greek culture and literature, learners will experience, in English translation, some of the most beautiful works of ancient Greek literature and song-making spanning over a thousand years from the 8th century BCE through the 3rd century CE: the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey ; tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; songs of Sappho and Pindar; dialogues of Plato, and On Heroes by Philostratus. All of the resources are free and designed to be equally accessible and transformative for a wide audience.

You will gain access to a supportive learning community led by Professor Gregory Nagy and his Board of Readers, who model techniques for "reading out" of ancient texts. This approach allows readers with little or even no experience in the subject matter to begin seeing this literature as an exquisite, perfected system of communication.

No previous knowledge of Greek history, literature, or language is required. This is a project for students of any age, culture, and geographic location, and its profoundly humanistic message can be easily received without previous acquaintance with Western Classical literature.

I was in the other GR discussion with Ian, I mainly used Emily Wilson’s translation for that, but I’ve also read other translations. I look forward to reading your discussion and possibly participating. I’m caught up in something in real life and can’t commit to any group project, I hope it’s alright for me to jump in sporadically anyway 🙈

BTW, what is the spoiler policy here? I tend to think about Homer in terms of his use of repetitions, so I might comment on subtle gestures or setup that I think of as significant because it parallels something that gets repeated later, should I put spoiler tags on that kind of comments?

Lia, the general board policy on spoilers is that they are allowed - and spoiler tags are not expected, because they don't work on mobile anyway.

I was double-checking if people here were bothered about them, but provisionally would assume that for such a well-known story, it is not likely to be an issue, especially for regulars who participate in spoiler-containing threads about brand new fiction.

What a proliferation of courses. I have already listened to the Peter Meineck one recently, as well as a long chapter on Homer (plus those on a few other major Greek books) in another Great Courses audio The Western Literary Canon in Context, so I probably won't do any more for now - though it might be interesting to skim some transcripts if these others have them.

I have had those Vandiver Great Courses - that Sam mentioned - on my wishlist for a few months and listened to the samples quite a few times. (Listening to Great Courses samples is a weird thing I do during breaks or meals when I know I won't be stopping long enough for e.g. a whole radio programme.) But as they are only 6 hours each and you have to get the Iliad and Odyssey separately, I have been reluctant to use credits on them. In the UK we never get Great Courses in 2 for 1 or 3 for 2 offers.

Thanks Anto, I thought I’d double check!

As for free transcripts, you can get Nagy’s here
https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/d...

WndyJW wrote: "Hello, Janet! I love your tradition of requesting collections of fairy tales and myths. I’m going to check your shelves for the collections you like best.

Happy Winter Solstice!"

Wendy, it's funny, I just looked over my collection of fairy tales and myths and realized that they've really never made it onto my GR shelves either as "To Read" or "Read." Probably because I dip into them and don't read them cover to cover, but a few are : The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, The Classic Fairy Tales. They're useful to have around (and have lovely illustrations). My book group read Barbara Comyns ' The Juniper Tree last year - and it was helpful to have the fairy tale to read while reading the novel.

One collection I did read cover-to-cover was Philip Pullman's Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version because he managed to put his own spin on the tales. Other than that collection, most of mine are edited either by Marina Warner or Maria Tatar -- they seem to have the market cornered in this area, at least in English. And while I know Tolkien and Bettlelheim both wrote about fairy tales, they are on other shelves in my house. (might have gotten rid of Bettelheim, come to think of it). Tatar's Classic Fairy Tales also includes many variants done by contemporary or 20th Century authors - Roald Dahl, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, etc. Fun to read the variants!

Janet

Ella wrote: "Janet - I just joined the Struck course, so I'll be there with you! (There right now, in fact.)"

Woohoo! Good to know. I think you'll like it!
Janet

Antonomasia wrote: "That sounds like the sort of thing that may be welcome here, Ian. ..."

Okay I'll take you at your word. I've modified a posting from the upcoming Iliad discussion of translations, etc. It has links which will take you to a whole bunch of resources.

This is directed at those who:
(a) are already familiar with the Odyssy, and would like some fresh critical insights into it, or its place in ancient Greek culture:
and/or
(b) feel at home with somewhat academic criticism. (Some of which can be stupefying or utterly wrong-headed: but some of it really does help get more out of the literature.):
or
(c) are curious, and willing to try something unfamiliar, which is probably why you are planning to read the Odyssey in the first place.

It will help tremendously if, although you haven't read it before, you already know the basic plot of the Odyssey, since you will be running into a whole bunch of what could be spoilers. And some of the discussions may be hard to follow.

You also may want to ignore it if you don't like reading e-books on-line (on your browser, rather than downloaded to your device). On requirements for platforms, see below.

Harvard University is affiliated with the Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS: confusingly enough, it is based in Washington, D.C.), which offers a whole lot of Harvard University Press books in on-line format (free, although many of which are also still available for sale in hard copies).

To use it, you must have a compatible device, with a browser that is able to handle Unicode, and some other requirements explained in the "Introduction to Online Publications" (https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/d...), such as at least Windows 2000 or MacOs 10.2 (which are pretty archaic in computer terms). Besides my Mac, I've tried it on an older model iPhone and an aging iPad: I wouldn't like to use the tiny phone screen for prolonged reading, but it works. As for the android platforms, I've also tried it on a 7" Fire Tablet, which is fine (although of course a bigger screen would help).

They are mostly concerning Greek literature, but with a few "outliers" dealing with, e.g., Old Norse literature, especially its relationship to oral tradition, which is a live issue in Homeric studies.

The complete list can be found as the "Hellenic Studies Series," at https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/d...

Some of these are pretty technical, and aimed at specialists at the graduate level or above, but others should be quite intelligible. (E.g., for the sake of the general reader, any Greek words both are transliterated and translated, and all quoted passages are also translated.) The brief descriptions may help sort them out.

Of the books on Homer in the whole, long, list I would suggest Gregory Nagy's "The Best of the Achaeans," at https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/d...

It will help if you know the Iliad, as well -- Nagy deals with the characterizations of some of the heroes in both epics. He also investigates the poetry attributed to Hesiod, three of the "Homeric Hymns," and some of the early lyric poetry. This one is definitely spoiler territory.

Nagy says in the Foreword to the Second Edition it is aimed at both specialists and non-specialists. In my experience, it doesn't require even my extremely rudimentary (and almost forgotten) Greek to follow the argument, but it might help if you had some literature courses in college. Even that may not be necessary, though. I've known it to be enjoyed by some bright High School students, although they already had some background in ancient Greek literature in translation.

But you may find that others look interesting, and it will only cost you a little time to try them out. There is, for example, "Hippota Nestor," a whole book on the garrulous old king who appears in both epics. (I'm just mentioning it as an example: it took me considerable patience to get through it.)

The CHS also offers free on-line versions of books by other publishers, some just old standards that are out of print, but some very recent, as "Curated Books," at https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/d...

This includes a long list of other writings by Gregory Nagy, most of them dealing with Homer in one way or another. Some are pretty technical, especially, I suspect, the collections of his articles, mostly published in classical journals, but others are reasonably accessible.

Janet, I read The Juniper Tree recently and loved it. I would like to find fairy and folk tales for adults and have pre-ordered Of Cats and Elfins: Short Tales and Fantasies. Have you heard of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories?

edit - I found the right thread & copied it over there.

I’ve been so excited by this thread. Homer’s work is also very important to me, and I love reading all kinds of supplemental material. On that note, Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic was a wonderful book from a few years ago. It was a lovely way to go through they Odyssey with a lovely, nuanced look at Mendelsohn’s relationship with his father (Mendelsohn was teaching The Odyssey one semester when his father enrolled).

Anyway, I’m in!

Holy Cow, Ian! That's an awesome resource. There's a whole book on Time-Telling in the Iliad.... /This is where Ella seriously considers figuring out how to retire before January and just read for about a decade.../ Ah, that was a nice little daydream.

WndyJW wrote: "Have you heard of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories?.."

This is a brilliant little book, but probably only if you have read the long novel (about 800 pages) to which it is a sort of companion: Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell," which was a great popular success in 2004.

This was a bit surprising, in that it is a fantasy novel which has not the least resemblance to Tolkien, but its success was, in my opinion, well deserved, besides being encouraging to fantasy lovers who were looking for a little more variety.

The Goodreads "add book/author" function is not working at the moment: you can find it on Amazon, of course:
https://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Stran...

The premise of the novel is that, back in the Middle Ages, England was home to (a) magic, and (b) Fairies, and, as of the Napoleonic Wars, both have long been missing.

A good deal of the book is concerned with explaining this situation, and attempts to correct it, or preserve the status quo. Some of "Ladies" concerns off-stage incidents during the time frame of the novel, and some, if memory serves, just involve the (rather peculiar) Fairies, and the difficulties of practicing magic.

Some of the non-fantasy elements may be a bit esoteric for some readers, although a lot of the real-world stuff is fairly easily traced in reference books.

And elsewhere in popular fiction, too. For instance, a portion of the novel is set in Spain during the Peninsular War, something which I know doesn't get much attention in American schools. But if you happen to have read Georgette Heyer's long historical novel (not a Regency Romance, strictly speaking) "The Spanish Bride" you will have been filled in on Wellington's campaigns in Spain and Portugal, and the wretched conditions with which both sets of armies had to contend.

(Heyer made extensive use of memoirs, diaries, and letters, so the book is usually pretty accurate in detail, so far as the limits of her English sources allowed.)