{"product_id":"the-odyssey-isbn-9780140268867","title":"The Odyssey","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe great epic of Western literature, translated by the acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSoon to be a major motion picture directed by Christopher Nolan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Penguin Classic\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRobert Fagles, winner of the PEN\/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning modern-verse translation. \"Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.\" So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the \u003ci\u003eOdyssey\u003c\/i\u003e, which Jasper Griffin in the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e hails as \"a distinguished achievement.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf the \u003ci\u003eIliad\u003c\/i\u003e is the world's greatest war epic, the \u003ci\u003eOdyssey\u003c\/i\u003e is literature's grandest evocation of an everyman's journey through life. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the myths and legends retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an \u003ci\u003eOdyssey\u003c\/i\u003e to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb introduction and textual commentary provide insightful background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles's translation. This is an \u003ci\u003eOdyssey\u003c\/i\u003e to delight both the classicist and the general reader, to captivate a new generation of Homer's students. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition features French flaps and deckle-edged paper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.The Odyssey\u003cb\u003eIntroduction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntroduction\u003cbr\u003eThe Spelling and Pronunciation of Homeris Names\u003cbr\u003eMaps:\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e1. Homeric Geography: Mainland Greece\u003cbr\u003e2. Homeric Geography: The Peloponnese\u003cbr\u003e3. Homeric Geography: The Aegean and Asia Minor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eHomer: The Odyssey\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook 1: Athena Inspires the Prince\u003cbr\u003eBook 2: Telemachus Sets Sail\u003cbr\u003eBook 3: King Nestor Remembers\u003cbr\u003eBook 4: The King and Queen of Sparta\u003cbr\u003eBook 5: Odysseus-Nymph and Shipwreck\u003cbr\u003eBook 6: The Princess and the Stranger\u003cbr\u003eBook 7: Phaeacia's Halls and Gardens\u003cbr\u003eBook 8: A Day for Songs and Contests\u003cbr\u003eBook 9: In the One-Eyed Giant's Cave\u003cbr\u003eBook 10: The Bewitched Queen of Aeaea\u003cbr\u003eBook 11: The Kingdom of the Dead\u003cbr\u003eBook 12: The Cattle of the Sun\u003cbr\u003eBook 13: Ithaca at Last\u003cbr\u003eBook 14: The Loyal Swineherd\u003cbr\u003eBook 15: The Prince Sets Sail for Home\u003cbr\u003eBook 16: Father and Son\u003cbr\u003eBook 17: Stranger at the Gates\u003cbr\u003eBook 18: The Beggar-King of Ithaca\u003cbr\u003eBook 19: Penelope and her Guest\u003cbr\u003eBook 20: Portents Gather\u003cbr\u003eBook 21: Odysseus Stings his Bow\u003cbr\u003eBook 22: Slaughter in the Hall\u003cbr\u003eBook 23: The Great Rooted Bed\u003cbr\u003eBook 24: Peace\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNotes\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTranslator's Postscript\u003cbr\u003eGenealogies\u003cbr\u003eTextual Variants from the Oxford Classical Text\u003cbr\u003eNotes on the Translation\u003cbr\u003eSuggestions for Further Reading\u003cbr\u003ePronouncing Glossary\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for Robert Fagles Translation of \u003ci\u003eThe Odyssey\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Wonderfully readable... Just the right blend of roughness and sophistication.”—Ted Hughes\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Robert Fagles is the best living translator of ancient Greek drama, lyric poetry, and epic into modern English.”—Garry Wills, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mr. Fagles has been remarkably successful in finding a style that is of our time and yet timeless.”—Richard Jenkyns, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eHomer\u003c\/b\u003e was probably born around 725BC on the Coast of Asia Minor, now the coast of Turkey, but then really a part of Greece. Homer was the first Greek writer whose work survives. He was one of a long line of bards, or poets, who worked in the oral tradition. Homer and other bards of the time could recite, or chant, long epic poems. Both works attributed to Homer – the \u003ci\u003eIliad\u003c\/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003eOdyssey\u003c\/i\u003e – are over ten thousand lines long in the original. Homer must have had an amazing memory but was helped by the formulaic poetry style of the time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Iliad\u003c\/i\u003e Homer sang of death and glory, of a few days in the struggle between the Greeks and the Trojans. Mortal men played out their fate under the gaze of the gods. \u003ci\u003eThe Odyssey\u003c\/i\u003e is the original collection of tall traveller’s tales. Odysseus, on his way home from the Trojan War, encounters all kinds of marvels from one-eyed giants to witches and beautiful temptresses. His adventures are many and memorable before he gets back to Ithaca and his faithful wife Penelope. We can never be certain that both these stories belonged to Homer. In fact ‘Homer’ may not be a real name but a kind of nickname meaning perhaps ‘the hostage’ or ‘the blind one’. Whatever the truth of their origin, the two stories, developed around three thousand years ago, may well still be read in three thousand years’ time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobert Fagles \u003c\/b\u003e(1933-2008) was Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Comparative Literature, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He was the recipient of the 1997 PEN\/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His translations include Sophocles’s \u003ci\u003eThree Theban Plays\u003c\/i\u003e, Aeschylus’s \u003ci\u003eOresteia\u003c\/i\u003e (nominated for a National Book Award), Homer’s \u003ci\u003eIliad\u003c\/i\u003e (winner of the 1991 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award by The Academy of American Poets), Homer’s \u003ci\u003eOdyssey\u003c\/i\u003e, and Virgil's \u003ci\u003eAeneid\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBernard Knox\u003c\/b\u003e (1914-2010) was Director Emeritus of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. He taught at Yale University for many years. Among his numerous honors are awards from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His works include \u003ci\u003eThe Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy, Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles’ Tragic Hero and His Time \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eEssays Ancient and Modern \u003c\/i\u003e(awarded the 1989 PEN\/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award).I\u003cp\u003eAthene Visits Telemachus\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTell me, Muse, the story of that resourceful man who was driven to wander far and wide after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy. He saw the cities of many people and he learnt their ways. He suffered great anguish on the high seas in his struggles to preserve his life and bring his comrades home. But he failed to save those comrades, in spite of all his efforts. It was their own transgression that brought them to their doom, for in their folly they devoured the oxen of Hyperion the Sun-god and he saw to it that they would never return. Tell us this story, goddess daughter of Zeus, beginning at whatever point you will.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll the survivors of the war had reached their homes by now and so put the perils of battle and the sea behind them. Odysseus alone was prevented from returning to the home and wife he yearned for by that powerful goddess, the Nymph Calypso, who longed for him to marry her, and kept him in her vaulted cave. Not even when the rolling seasons brought in the year which the gods had chosen for his homecoming to Ithaca was he clear of his troubles and safe among his friends. Yet all the gods pitied him, except Poseidon, who pursued the heroic Odysseus with relentless malice till the day when he reached his own country.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePoseidon, however, was now gone on a visit to the distant Ethiopians, in the most remote part of the world, half of whom live where the Sun goes down, and half where he rises. He had gone to accept a sacrifice of bulls and rams, and there he sat and enjoyed the pleasures of the feast. Meanwhile the rest of the gods had assembled in the palace of Olympian Zeus, and the Father of men and gods opened a discussion among them. He had been thinking of the handsome Aegisthus, whom Agamemnon’s far-famed son Orestes killed; and it was with Aegisthus in his mind that Zeus now addressed the immortals:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own transgressions which bring them suffering that was not their destiny. Consider Aegisthus: it was not his destiny to steal Agamemnon’s wife and murder her husband when he came home. He knew the result would be utter disaster, since we ourselves had sent Hermes, the keen-eyed Giant-slayer, to warn him neither to kill the man nor to court his wife. For Orestes, as Hermes told him, was bound to avenge Agamemnon as soon as he grew up and thought with longing of his home. Yet with all his friendly counsel Hermes failed to dissuade him. And now Aegisthus has paid the final price for all his sins.’\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300102688997,"sku":"NP9780140268867","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780140268867.jpg?v=1767740770","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-odyssey-isbn-9780140268867","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}