Reviews
McCrorie's new translation can be recommended without reservation to the generations of students to whom it is bound to be assigned and to any reader who'd like to get as close to the original as is possible without reading the original Greek. It is refreshing, accurate, and direct.
Edward McCrorie's translation of the Odyssey into English hexameter has much to recommend it... I have developed an appreciation for the clarity and briskness of McCrorie's verse.
A lively and engaging version of Homer's Odyssey that brilliantly blends pleasurable readability with fidelity to the original... McCrorie has simplified the choice of an English Odyssey even in a field of very skillful competitors (Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Mandelbaum, Fagles, Lombardo), providing the best available verse translation of the Odyssey for Greekless readers.
McCrorie has produced an epic with its own rhythms, idioms and developing pleasures.
Bold new translation.
This is a fine, fast-moving version of the liveliest epic of classical antiquity. With a bracing economy, accuracy, and poetic control, Edward McCrorie conveys the freshness and challenge of the original in clear, sensitive, and direct language. Instead of the uncertain solemnity of some previous translations or the free re-creation of others, McCrorie has managed a version that will have immediate appeal to this generation of students and general readers alike.
Edward McCrorie's translation of the Odyssey answers the demands of movement and accuracy in a rendition of the poem. His verse line is brisk and efficient, often captures the rhythm and the sound of the Greek, and functions well as an English equivalent of the Greek hexameter. Unlike most translators, he wishes to preserve at least some of the sound of the Greek, and his rendition of the formula glaukôpis Athene as glow-eyed Athene is inspired. He remains true to the formulae of Homeric verse, and several of his choices—such as rose-fingered daylight or words had a feathery swiftness—delight. Homer, Zeus-like, would have nodded his approval.
Book Details
Translator's Preface
Introduction, by Richard P. Martin
The ODYSSEY
1. Trouble at Home
2. A Gathering and a Parting
3. In the Great Hall of Nestor
4. With Menelaos and Helen
5. A Raft on the High Seas
6
Translator's Preface
Introduction, by Richard P. Martin
The ODYSSEY
1. Trouble at Home
2. A Gathering and a Parting
3. In the Great Hall of Nestor
4. With Menelaos and Helen
5. A Raft on the High Seas
6. Laundry Friends
7. The Warmest Welcome
8. Songs, Challenges, Dances, and Gifts
9. A Battle, the Lotos, and a Savage's Cave
10. Mad Winds, Laistrugonians, and an Enchantress
11. The Land of the Dead
12. Evil Song, a Deadly Strait, and Forbidden Herds
13. A Strange Arrival Home
14. The House of the Swineherd
15. Son and Father Converging
16. Father and Son Reunite
17. Unknown in His Own House
18. Fights in the Great Hall
19. Memory and Dream in the Palace
20. Dawn of the Death-Day
21. The Stringing of the Bow
22. Revenge in the Great Hall
23. Husband and Wife at Last
24. Last Tensions and Peace
Notes, by Richard P. Martin
Names in the Odyssey
Bibliography, by Richard P. Martin