“Translation” Articles

Recently my sister alerted me to Emily Wilson’s new book of essays: Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys through Ancient Literature. I went right to the library to get it. The essays cover Sappho, Catullus, Aeschylus, and more. But I turned first to the one called “Translating the Odyssey.” It’s a long essay (sixty pages) and ambitious: Wilson’s purpose is to choose a few passages from the poem and follow each through several or sometimes all of its English translations, beginning with Chapman’s of 1616 and ending with her own.