The Iliad of Homer - Couverture souple

Homer

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0140445048 ISBN 13 : 9780140445046

Editeur : Penguin Books Ltd, 1996

Synopsis

This is Alexander Pope's translation of "The Iliad" (1715-20) into heroic couplets. Homer's tale of the Trojan war is a compassionate view of human life lived under the shadow of suffering and death in the face of an overwhelming and often uncaring divinity.

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur

Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson.

Pope had been fascinated by Homer since childhood. In 1713, he announced his plans to publish a translation of the Iliad. The work would be available by subscription, with one volume appearing every year over the course of six years. Pope secured a revolutionary deal with the publisher Bernard Lintot, which brought him two hundred guineas (£210) a volume, equivalent to about £26,000 as of 2012, a vast sum at the time.

Encouraged by the success of the Iliad, Pope translated the Odyssey. The translation appeared in 1726, but this time, confronted with the arduousness of the task, he enlisted the help of William Broome and Elijah Fenton. Pope attempted to conceal the extent of the collaboration (he himself translated only twelve books, Broome eight and Fenton four), but the secret leaked out. It did some damage to Pope's reputation for a time, but not to his profits.

By the mid-18th century new fashions in poetry emerged. A decade after Pope's death, Joseph Warton claimed that Pope's style of poetry was not the most excellent form of the art. The Romantic movement that rose to prominence in early 19th-century England was more ambivalent towards his work. Though Lord Byron identified Pope as one of his chief influences (believing his scathing satire of contemporary English literature English Bards and Scotch Reviewers to be a continuance of Pope's tradition), William Wordsworth found Pope's style fundamentally too decadent a representation of the human condition.

In the 20th century Pope's reputation was revived. Pope's work was found to be full of references to the people and places of his time, and these aided people's understanding of the past. The postwar period stressed the power of Pope's poetry, recognising that Pope's immersion in Christian and Biblical culture lent depth to his poetry. Maynard Mack thought highly of Pope's poetry, arguing that Pope's moral vision demanded as much respect as his technical excellence. In the years 1953–1967 the production of the definitive Twickenham edition of Pope's poems was published in ten volumes.

Présentation de l'éditeur

Iliad: ISBN 9781480048348. Odyssey: ISBN 9781490516424

"Many consider [this translation] the greatest English Iliad, and one of the greatest translations of any work into English. It manages to convey not only the stateliness and grandeur of Homer’s lines, but their speed and wit and vividness." -- Daniel Mendelsohn, "Englishing the Iliad: Grading Four Rival Translations," The New Yorker Blog, 11/1/2011

When Homer's Iliad appeared in Alexander Pope's majestic translation between 1715 and 1720, it was acclaimed by Samuel Johnson as "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal." A few years later, Pope oversaw the translation of the Odyssey. Other translations have since appeared, but Pope's is unrivaled in its melodious beauty. This is the Iliad that has formed generations of British and American culture through a beauteous poetics that lends itself to easy recollection. With a clean and crisp text illustrated by the inimitable line drawings of Flaxman, this edition finally gives to audiences a fitting rendering of this monument of English verse which captures uniquely the song of Homer himself.

"The thing that best distinguishes this from all other translations of Homer is that it alone equals the original in its ceaseless pour of verbal music. . . . Pope worked miracles in highlighting the play of vowels through his lines. . . . Every word is weighted, with a pressure of mind behind it. This is a poem you can live your way into, over the years, since it yields more at every encounter." -- "On Reading Pope's Homer" New York Times, 6/1/1997

"For Homer to take his place among our classics it must be the case that a rendering could exercise the same spell over the collective ear as English-language poets. You could not memorize Fagles, or Lattimore - or Hobbes, a few phrases apart - while Pope, even at his least Homeric, is memorable. . . . Pope is not superseded." -- David Ricks, Kings College, London, Classics Ireland, vol. 4, 1997

Published by Ex Fontibus Company.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date d'édition: 1996
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0140445048
• ISBN 13: 9780140445046
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 1248
• Éditeur: Shankman Steven
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Terminal Video; n.pederzini@terminaldistribuzione.com; ; Via Bruno Buozzi, 24/26,; Granarolo dell'Emilia BO,; Italie