Odyssey (Robert Fagles translation)
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 First edition cover | |
| Author | Robert Fagles |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
Publication date | 1996 |
The Odyssey is a 1996 translation of Homer's Odyssey by American academic Robert Fagles. It freely uses imagery and word choices not closely constrained by the original text, and uses non-rhyming lines with an uneven poetic meter. Widely praised for Fagles' poetic skill, it became part of many American high-school curricula and sold over a million copies. Fagles was a prolific translator of ancient literature, previously translating works by Bacchylides, Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Author
Robert Fagles (1933–2008) was an academic and a translator. He gained his undergraduate degree at Amherst College in 1955 and his Ph.D. in English literature at Yale University. He joined Princeton University's English department in 1960.[1] During his career, he produced English versions of the Oresteia, Sophocles' Theban plays, and Roman poet Virgil's epic poem Aeneid.[1] He was one of the few to translate Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid,[2] forming a kind of trilogy.[1]
Style
Fagles said that he aimed in his translation to emphasize what he called the "sympathetic" depiction of women in the Odyssey.[3] In recent years, this has been speculated on by feminist critics; especially with regard to Fagles' treatment of Odysseus and Penelope's slave-girls.[4]
Fagles based the translation on a version of the Greek text by David Munro and Thomas Allen, first published in 1908 by Oxford University Press.[5] Fagles' translation has an irregular meter, typically 6 beats per line but sometimes ranging from 4 to 8.[6]
His translation of the first line reads: "Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns".[7]
