Chapman's Homer The <i>Odyssey</i> [Paperback]

George Chapman's translations of Homer are among the most famous in the English language. Keats immortalized the work of the Renaissance dramatist and poet in the sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. Swinburne praised the translations for their romantic and sometimes barbaric grandeur, their freshness, strength, and inextinguishable fire. The great critic George Saintsbury (1845-1933) wrote: For more than two centuries they were the resort of all who, unable to read Greek, wished to know what Greek was. Chapman is far nearer Homer than any modern translator in any modern language. This volume presents the original text of Chapman's translation of theOdyssey(1614-15), making only a small number of modifications to punctuation and wording where they might confuse the modern reader. The editor, Allardyce Nicoll, provides an introduction, textual notes, a glossary, and a commentary. Garry Wills's preface to theOdysseyexplores how Chapman's less strained meter lets him achieve more delicate poetic effects as compared to theIliad. Wills also examines Chapman's fine touch in translating the warm and human sense of comedy in theOdyssey.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
--John Keats

In Chapman'sWhole Works of Homer. . . English is spendthrift, inebriate with waste motion, at times precious and as yet uncertain of its coruscating force. It is also the language of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, charged with sensory, corporeal thrust. At moments, it is already exact in that manual, pragmatic vein which is the virtue of English. At others, it comes armed with lyric sorrow. Homer, as Chapman construes him . . . makes the English language know itself and impels it to cast its lexical-grammatical net over a thronging prodigality of life. ---George Steinerlc"