Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore

by Norman Postlethwaite

Overview

This book introduces the general reader, as well as the student of Classics, to one of the masterpieces of European literature, the Iliad of Homer, in the English translation of Richmond Lattimore. It offers the background which readers need to understand the poem's detail of story and characters, and it provides a step-by-step guide to the story's unravelling and to the literary features which have ensured its enduring popularity since its composition in 750 BC. The edition is designed specifically for the reader who has neither Greek nor any previous knowledge of Homer and approaches the poem as a literary text, seeking to identify the poet's techniques and to assess their effects. It can be used both as a continous reading alongside Lattimore's (or any other) translation and as a reference work for specific points of textual understanding or interpretation. There is a comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography and a guide to further reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780859896849
Publisher:	Liverpool University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2000
Series:	Exeter Studies in History Ser.
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 5.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Norman Postlethwaite is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the School of Classics, Ancient History and Theology, University of Exeter. He is co-editor of Reciprocity in Ancient Greece (Oxford, 1998)

Table of Contents

PREFACE
MAPS OF GREECE
INTRODUCTION
1. HOMER
2. THE HOMERIC EPICS
3. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
4. THE TROJAN WAR
5. COMPOSITION
6. THE HOMERIC QUESTION
7. SOME FEATURES OF STYLE
8. THE HERO
9. THE GODS
COMMENTARY
ILIAD ONE
ILIAD TWO
ILIAD THREE
ILIAD FOUR
ILIAD FIVE
ILIAD SIX
ILIAD SEVEN
ILIAD EIGHT
ILIAD NINE
ILIAD TEN
ILIAD ELEVEN
ILIAD TWELVE
ILIAD THIRTEEN
ILIAD FOURTEEN
ILIAD FIFTEEN
ILIAD SIXTEEN
ILIAD SEVENTEEN
ILIAD EIGHTEEN
ILIAD NINETEEN
ILIAD TWENTY
ILIAD TWENTY-ONE
ILIAD TWENTY-TWO
ILIAD TWENTY-THREE
ILIAD TWENTY-FOUR
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Editorial Reviews

With clarity and dispatch Postlethwaite manages to provide the background knowledge that an ancient audience would have brought to the poem, noting as well significant thematic developments and directing the reader to a wide range of present-day Homeric studies. Teachers and readers for whom Lattimores stately cadences capture Homers Greek most directly will find here an indispensable companion to that most literally faithful of modern translations.

Andrew Ford