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Odyssey (Emily Wilson translation)

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The Odyssey
First edition cover
AuthorEmily Wilson
PublisherW. W. Norton & Company
Publication date
7 November 2017
Pages656
ISBN978-0393655063
Followed byThe Iliad 

The Odyssey is a 2017 translation of Homer's Odyssey by American classicist Emily Wilson. It was published by W. W. Norton & Company. Wilson's translation is the first complete published translation of the Homeric Greek by a woman into English.

Wilson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, preserved the original Homeric Greek’s line count and reflected its traditional dactylic hexameter by employing the traditional English iambic pentameter meter. Her translation uses simple syntax in modern English.

Critical reception was positive. Charlotte Higgins described it as a "cultural landmark." Reviewers praised Wilson's fresh interpretation and her representation of the poem's female characters. Many critics said Wilson's translation corrected anachronistic or euphemistic language used by other translators. The language and storytelling were commended and its meter was widely described as musical. Critics highlighted the poem's accessibility compared to previous translations.

Background

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Emily Wilson was born in 1971 in Oxford, England to a family of scholars,[1] and is a professor of classics at the University of Pennsylvania.[2] Wilson completed her undergraduate degree in literae humaniores at the University of Oxford in 1994, a masters degree in English Renaissance literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1996, and a Ph.D. in classical and comparative literature at Yale University in 2001.[3]

Composition and approach

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Wilson spent five or six years working on the translation.[4] Her translation maintains the 12,110 lines of the original poem and matches them line for line.[1][5] Wilson rejected a standard set by the 18th-century translation (1725–26) by Alexander Pope that the tone be "grand, ornate, rhetorically elevated", stating this is not present in the original and prioritised simple, readable language.[6][7] She selected Iambic pentameter because it is "the conventional metre for English verse", citing the work of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron and Keats.[7] Classicist Gregory Hayes noted her approach echoes the nineteenth century Matthew Arnold.[8] Her primary motivations were to use a traditional meter, preserve the length and pace of the original,[9] and make characters sound distinct when the translation was read aloud.[10] Like most modern translators, she employs less repetition of phrases or words than the original text.[9]

Wilson's introduction covers the dating, cultural context and authorship of the poem, alongside briefly outlining the approach of previous translations.[6] She also discusses some of her translational choices; the poem's first description of Odysseus as polytropos (transl. "many turning" or "much turning") could mean Odysseus as passive (he is being turned) or active (he is "turning" other subjects). Wilson translates this as "a complicated man".[1][3] In another extract, she describes Penelope's hand as "muscular" because the original Greek pachus (transl. thick) associated Penelope's craft with the "physical competence" of male warriors.[6] Wilson retains the Homeric Greek's characterisation of Penelope as talented at word play, a trait associated with Odysseus himself, that has been omitted by some translators, such as Fitzgerald.[11]

Wilson's publisher heavily promoted the translation as the first by a woman into English verse. Previous translations by women included Anne Dacier's 1708 French prose translation; alongside her preface, her translation influenced the 18th-century translation by Alexander Pope.[12][13] Wilson's translation was published two years after Caroline Alexander became the first female translator of the Iliad into English.[14]

Reception

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The New York Times Magazine praised the translation's "radically contemporary voice".[1][6] Charlotte Higgins described Wilson's work as a "cultural landmark" that "exposes centuries of masculinist" translations.[15] Poet and translator Josephine Balmer agreed in New Statesman that previous translations had been "firmly male".[13] NPR's Annalisa Quinn describes the translation as progressivist, excising "centuries of verbal ideological buildup", citing previous translators' additions of Christianisation, sexism, and Victorian euphemisms.[16] In a review for London Review of Books, Colin Burrow described Wilson as a "moderniser", particularly highlighting her translations of epithets into phrases that provide "running commentary on emotional and social relationships". Additionally, he stated the immense challenges posed by retaining the same number of lines as the original.[17] But other critics have emphasized the traditional qualities of Wilson's poetic form: "there is absolutely no more traditional music in the history of English literature." [18]

It was praised as an accessible introduction to the poem, with critics highlighting its plain use of language.[6] Balmer calls Wilson a "careful and creative scholar" whose translation rejects the notion that ancient epics can only be translated by established poets.[13] Madeline Miller, who partially retells the Odyssey in Circe (2018), praised the translation for retaining "Homer's speed and narrative drive".[19] Miller and Quinn highlight Wilson's inclusion of the word slave, which has traditionally been translated as maids or servants. Essayist Wyatt Mason reported being "floored" by Wilson's alliterative, musical, "natural" and "subtle" treatment of the poem's first lines.[1]

Other scholars criticized Wilson's translation as a deviation from the content of the original. Richard Whitaker writes: "The two great novelties of Wilson's Odyssey are the way she represents a group of characters that we might term 'underdogs' – notably the Cyclops, and the suitors and their allies – in a sympathetic light, while representing Odysseus as, on balance, reprehensible. The big problem, however, with Wilson's heterodox approach to the characters of the Odyssey is that she can sustain it only by distorting and misrepresenting what the Greek text says."[20]

Wilson was the first woman to publish a complete translation of the Odyssey into English,[1][2] although Barbara Leonie Picard produced an English prose retelling for children in 1952.[12] In 2019, Wilson said the media's emphasis on this presented her as "unique in a way [she is] not unique"; she highlighted other female scholars of Homer and that women had translated the poem into non-English languages before.[6]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f Mason 2017.
  2. ^ a b North 2017.
  3. ^ a b Thurman 2023.
  4. ^ Foreman & Wortman 2024, p. 166.
  5. ^ Armstrong 2018, pp. 225–226.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Wood 2019.
  7. ^ a b Wilson 2018.
  8. ^ Hays 2017.
  9. ^ a b Brady 2018.
  10. ^ Wilde 2018.
  11. ^ Gibson 2019, p. 64.
  12. ^ a b Armstrong 2018, p. 225.
  13. ^ a b c Balmer 2018.
  14. ^ Gibson 2019, pp. 36–37.
  15. ^ Higgins 2017.
  16. ^ Quinn 2017.
  17. ^ Burrow 2018.
  18. ^ Gibson 2019.
  19. ^ Miller 2017.
  20. ^ Whitaker, Richard (2020). "Homer's Odyssey Three Ways: Recent Translations by Verity, Wilson, and Green". Acta Classica. 63 (1): 241–254. ISSN 2227-538X.

Bibliography

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