The first volume of its kind to integrate trends in Translation Studies with Classical Reception Studies
A Companion to the Translation of Classical Epic provides a comprehensive and wide-ranging account of key debates and case studies centered the translation of Greek and Latin epics. Rather than situating translation studies as a complementary field or an aspect of classical reception, the Companion offers a systematic framework for adapting and incorporating translation studies fully into classical studies. Its many chapters elaborate how translation is a central element in the epic's reception trajectories across the globe and addresses theoretical and methodological concerns arising from this conjunction.
The Companion does not just provide a comprehensive overview of the translation theories it covers, but also offers fresh insights into theoretical and methodological issues currently at the top of the interdisciplinary agenda of scholars studying the global routes of ancient epic. In its sections, leading classicists, translation theorists, classical reception scholars, and cultural historians from Europe and North and South America reconfigure questions this research faces today, highlighting methods for an integrated approach. It explores how this integrated perspective responds to key challenges in the study of the epic's reception, emphasizing topics of temporality, gender, agency, community, target-language politics, and material production. A special section also features detailed dialogues with active translators such as Emily Wilson, Stanley Lombardo, and Susanna Braund, who speak extensively and frankly about their work.
This is a key volume for all students and scholars who want to engage with research reflecting the contemporary agenda in classical reception, translation studies, and the study of epic in its global literary and cultural routes.
Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors xi
Acknowledgements xvi
1 General Introduction 1
Richard H. Armstrong
Part I Disciplinary Openings 19
2 Introduction to Part I: Conceptual Openings In and Through Epic Translation Histories 21
Alexandra Lianeri
3 Defying the Odds: How Classical Epics Continue to Survive in the Modern World 26
Susan Bassnett
4 Between Translation and Reception: Reading and Writing Forward and Backward in Translations ofEpic 36
Lorna Hardwick
5 Entangling Historical Time In and Through the Epics' Translated Presence 52
Alexandra Lianeri
Part II Explorations in Reception 69
6 Introduction to Part II 71
Richard H. Armstrong
7 What Is Translation in the Ancient World? 77
Siobhán McElduff
8 Reading the Aeneid in the Italian Middle Ages: Vernacularizations and Abridgements 94
Veronica Ricotta and Giulio Vaccaro
9 The Ideological Significance of Choice of Meter in Translations of the Aeneid 109
Susanna Braund
10 The Fighting Words Business: Thoughts on Equivalence, Localization, and Epic in English Translation 129
Richard H. Armstrong
11 Women and the Translation of Classical Texts in the Italian Renaissance: Between Humanism and Divulgation, Academies, and the Printing Press 148
Francesca D'Alessandro Behr
12 Anne Dacier's Homer: Epic Force 164
Julie Candler Hayes
13 Marie Cosnay – Les Métamorphoses 179
Fiona Cox
14 Translating on the Edge: Irish- Language Translations of Greek and Roman Epic 188
Michael Cronin
15 "Intreat them Gently, Trayne them to that Ayre"; George Sandys's Savage Verses and Civilized Commentary at Jamestown 198
Benjamin Haller
16 The Translation of Greek and Latin Epic into the Other Languages of Spain 215
Ramiro González Delgado
17 From Scheria: An Emerging Tradition of Portuguese Translations of the Odyssey 231
Leonardo Antunes
18 An Epic Leap: Translating The Iliad to the Stage in the Twenty- First Century 243
Thomas E. Jenkins
19 Film Translations of Greek and Roman Epic 257
Benjamin E. Stevens
20 Epic Translation and Self- Scrutiny in Imperial Britain 281
Annmarie Drury
21 Lucretius in Modern Greek Costume: Language and Ideology in Konstantinos Theotokis' Περß Φýσεως 295
George Kazantzidis
22 Epic, Translation, and World Literature 313
Alexander Beecroft
Part III Dialogues with Translators 323
23 Introduction to Part III: Dialogues with Translators: A Voice Too Many 325
Alexandra Lianeri
24 Stanley Lombardo, Interviewed by Richard H. Armstrong 330
25 Emily Wilson, Interviewed by Fiona Cox 343
26 Dialogue with Susanna Braund 357
27 Dialogue with Herbert Jordan 362
28 Dialogue with Theodore Papanghelis 365
Part IV Future Prospects 371
29 Global Sideways of Epic Translation and Critical Cosmopolitanism 373
Alexandra Lianeri
Index 389
