- HOME
- INTRO TO THE FORUM
- USE AND MISUSE
- BADLY WRITTEN, BADLY SPOKEN
- GETTING
TO KNOW ENGLISH - PREPARING FOR ENGLISH PROFICIENCY TESTS
- GOING DEEPER INTO ENGLISH
- YOU ASKED ME THIS QUESTION
- EDUCATION AND TEACHING FORUM
- ADVICE AND DISSENT
- MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH
- STUDENTS' SOUNDING BOARD
- LANGUAGE HUMOR AT ITS FINEST
- THE LOUNGE
- NOTABLE WORKS BY OUR VERY OWN
- ESSAYS BY JOSE CARILLO
- Long Noun Forms Make Sentences Exasperatingly Difficult To Grasp
- Good Conversationalists Phrase Their Tag Questions With Finesse
- The Pronoun “None” Can Mean Either “Not One” Or “Not Any”
- A Rather Curious State Of Affairs In The Grammar Of “Do”-Questions
- Why I Consistently Use The Serial Comma
- Misuse Of “Lie” And “Lay” Punctures Many Writers’ Command Of English
- ABOUT JOSE CARILLO
- READINGS ABOUT LANGUAGE
- TIME OUT FROM ENGLISH GRAMMAR
- NEWS AND COMMENTARY
- BOOKSHOP
- ARCHIVES
Click here to recommend us!
READINGS IN LANGUAGE
This section features links to interesting, instructive, or thought-provoking readings about the English language and related disciplines. The selections could be anywhere from light and humorous to serious and scholarly, and they range widely from the reading, writing, listening, and speaking disciplines to the teaching and learning of English.
From Greek, Homer’s Iliad rendered in 4 English language registers
If you still haven’t found the time or the resolve to read one of the greatest literary legacies of Western civilization, you’ll be glad to know that Homer’s Iliad now has no less than four modern-day translations in as many English language registers from the original Greek.
You can take your pick from the following choices:
1. Richmond Lattimore’s lucid and scholarly verse translation, The Iliad of Homer, originally published in 1951 but reissued recently with a new introduction (University of Chicago Press, 608 pages). This version has become the standard text in North America.
2. Anthony Verity’s far more restrained and scholarly but nonpoetic translation, The Iliad (Oxford University Press, 512 pages), which is due for release this November of 2011.
3. Stephen Mitchell’s translation in more colloquial English, The Iliad (Free Press, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 466 pages), which the author says is more reliable as it is based on a different edition of the text from Lattimore’s.
4. Alice Oswald’s bare-bones paraphrased verse translation, Memorial (Faber and Faber, 84 pages), which nevertheless manages to capture the shocking brutality of the siege of Troy as Homer had depicted it.
The Economist in the UK has made a comparative review of these four translations in its October 15, 2011 issue, recommending Lattimore’s translation for capturing the epic scale and narrative of Homer’s poem, and Alice Oswald’s for its audacious feat of bringing the ancient poem’s violence shockingly to life in just one-eighth of the length of the original Greek.
Read “Winged Words” in The Economist’s Culture Section now!
Click to read comments or post a comment
View the complete list of postings in this section
(requires registration to post)
