Excellent historical and literary examination of Homer and his greatest poem. Full review at Miller's Book Reviewhere.Excellent historical and literary examination of Homer and his greatest poem. Full review at Miller's Book Reviewhere....more
Raffel is one of the only translators to attempt rendering the Nibelungenlied’s unusual verse in English verseAn old favorite. Read it if you haven’t.
Raffel is one of the only translators to attempt rendering the Nibelungenlied’s unusual verse in English verse, and his is easily the best such translation. There are more accurate prose translations but they lose a little something in the conversion to paragraphs. Hatto’s and Whobrey’s are the two prose translations I’m most familiar with. I’d still recommend Raffel to get a sense of the rhythm and structure of the original.
This is my second time through Raffel, the first since I first got the paperback as a poor college graduate waiting on my acceptance letter from Clemson in early 2008. Memories, man. ...more
Very good kids' version of the story of the Trojan War, with special attention given to the events that make up the Iliad. Beautifully illustrated by Very good kids' version of the story of the Trojan War, with special attention given to the events that make up the Iliad. Beautifully illustrated by Alan Lee. Full review on my blog....more
Very good prose translation of the Nibelungenlied that also includes the Klage—a 4,000-line sequel that is included in all the complete manuscripts ofVery good prose translation of the Nibelungenlied that also includes the Klage—a 4,000-line sequel that is included in all the complete manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied—as well as a good twenty or thirty pages of manuscript variants for the main work. These variants come mostly from one later complete manuscript (the C manuscript), whose author (referred to as “the redactor”) added lots of interpolations and emendations, often to interesting effect.
This was my first time reading the Klage, and I’m glad Whobrey included it here as the manuscript tradition clearly indicates it was meant to be packaged with the longer—and better—Nibelungenlied. The Klage (meaning “lament” in the sense of overwhelming ritual grief; the Old Testament book of Lamentations is called the Klagelieder in German Bibles) details the aftermath of the showdown in King Etzel’s lands at the end of the Nibelungenlied, with the “wall” of bodies untangled and sorted and prepared for burial and word of the slaughter delivered to widows and orphans all over southern Germany and the Rhineland. Though some stretches are just recaps of the longer epic, it has profoundly moving scenes and offers some resolution to the plot of the Nibelungenlied, which ends abruptly.
Of course the main draw in this volume is the Nibelungenlied itself, which doesn’t disappoint. Definitely check this edition out if you’re looking for a readable recent edition of the poem with a good bit of scholarly apparatus and some interesting appendices....more
Excellent. One of the best of the VSI series and a book I’d recommend to both newcomers to and longtime readers of the Iliad and Odyssey without hesitExcellent. One of the best of the VSI series and a book I’d recommend to both newcomers to and longtime readers of the Iliad and Odyssey without hesitation....more
A collection I’ve returned to again and again over the years. (Amazon informs me that I ordered this at the beginning of 2007!) Good translations, andA collection I’ve returned to again and again over the years. (Amazon informs me that I ordered this at the beginning of 2007!) Good translations, and a good variety of selections from the corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature, including the Exeter Book riddles, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Brunanburh, The Dream of the Rood, and some small excerpts from Beowulf. If I could improve the anthology at all, I’d include more religious poetry (seriously—the Anglo-Saxon Genesis is like John Milton after six months in the gym). Alexander’s notes and introductions to each selection are excellent. ...more
Five stars as always for Beowulf, a great piece of literature that never fails to show me something new when I reread it, and four stars for this deceFive stars as always for Beowulf, a great piece of literature that never fails to show me something new when I reread it, and four stars for this decent, readable, but not great translation.
Mitchell retains alliteration without forcing any consistent scheme on the text, which is one of the better possible choices. More questionable to me is the choice to smooth out the rhythms of the lines, glossing the original’s terse syntax in the interest of clarity. I understand why Mitchell did it this way, but at some point one loses the character and flavor of the original, and that happens quite a bit here; the result is readable but feels more classical and less Anglo-Saxon.
This translation has a nice, short introduction. The notes are so-so—most substantial explanatory notes are just quotations from other scholars (Klaeber, Fulk, Tolkien), while most of Mitchell’s are interesting but ultimately pointless comparisons with other works. Beowulf’s fight with Grendel, for instance, has one endnote, which quotes Gilgamesh’s fight with Enkidu. Okay.
Recommended as a good contemporary intro to Beowulf. Given the choice, I’d still recommend Heaney for his poetry and Alexander or Chickering for a taste of the original....more
Achilleid is a fragmentary epic in Latin by Statius, who lived in the late first century AD. Only the first book and the first few hundred lines of thAchilleid is a fragmentary epic in Latin by Statius, who lived in the late first century AD. Only the first book and the first few hundred lines of the second survives, for about 1100 lines of poetry.
Statius apparently intended to tell the whole story of Achilles in the Trojan War, expanding beyond the events of the Iliad, and began in medias res, with the onset of war and Thetis's inability to prevent it. Desperate, she retrieves her son from Chiron, his centaur tutor, and takes him to the peaceful isle of Scyros, where she has him hide, in drag, in the women's quarters of king Lycomedes's palace, where he is passed off as the tallest and most unladylike of the king's daughters. While incognito, Achilles rapes and impregnates a very confused Deidamia, Lycomedes's eldest and most beautiful daughter, and she bears Achilles a son in secret. Only when Ulysses (Odysseus) and Diomedes are dispatched to find Achilles is the ruse exposed. Achilles makes an honest woman of poor Deidamia and they spend one lawful night together before he is hustled off to Troy. At the beginning of book two, Odysseus recaps the causes of the war and tries to make it personal for Achilles, and that's where Statius leaves off.
This translation by Stanley Lombardo is fast-paced and easy to read, and a good way to dig into the broader Trojan War mythos. Achilleid and another complete work by Statius, Thebaid, though almost unknown now, were popular during the Middle Ages--Statius even accompanies Dante for part of his climb up Mount Purgatory in The Divine Comedy.
The tedious introduction by classicist Peter Heslin is almost as long as the extant portion of Achilleid itself. Heslin essentially recaps the events the poem, blow by blow, with a lot of modern postmodern-ish interrogation of the text and Statius's intentions. Heslin thinks Statius is trying to undermine the authority of Homer's epic and call the seriousness of the Trojan War story into question, or something. He repeatedly refers to events in Statius's poem as having been "suppressed" by Homer, who lived at least eight- or nine-hundred years before Statius, on the early end of what is essentially an ancient fandom that was revised, retconned, and expanded upon long before those were vogueish internet activities. "As he narrates the events that have been whitewashed out of the epic canon," Heslin writes, "Statius demonstrates the mechanisms by which they came to be erased."
And so forth. Yawn.
This is absolutely worth checking out, but only for the text of the epic itself....more
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