Product Description

"The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" are perhaps the most influential works in the history of western literature. This exquisite analysis of their creation and influence establishes how, precisely, these two poems, written nearly three thousand years ago, have come to resonate throughout the world.Alberto Manguel is an internationally acclaimed author. His book is a vigorous and timely analysis of Homer's seminal poetry. Penguin Classics editions of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" have sold over 30,000 copies in the last year. Rights have been sold in 15 countries. Each volume is a beautifully designed and produced B-format hardback at GBP 12.99.The stories of the Trojan war and Helen of Troy, Patrolcus and Achilles, the Sirens and the Cyclops are embedded in western culture, yet readers often fail to recognise that they were made famous by two epic poems, "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey", and one blind poet: Homer.Starting with their inception in ancient Greece, Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" demonstrates these poems reverberate through the western canon, from the Rome of Virgil and Horace to Joyce's Dublin and Derek Walcott's Carribean, via Dante and Racine. In this lyrical and graceful book, Alberto Manguel delights in the original poems and celebrates their presence throughout history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #185875 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
"* 'Alberto Manguel is to reading what Casanova was to sex.' Scotland on Sunday * 'Atlantic Books has achieved a publishing coup with its 'Books that Shook the World' series... short biographies of great books, securing the best people to write them and ensuring that the remit to produce compendious, clear and engaged accounts... this series is a big success.' A. C. Grayling, The Times"

About the Author
Alberto Manguel is a world-renowned writer, translator and editor of literary anthologies. His works include A History of Reading, published in 1997 and his novel, Stevenson Under the Palm Trees in 2005.

Customer Reviews

Masterful literary commentary
Alberto Manguel, well-known Argentinian writer and literary critic, was chosen as the commentator on the Iliad and the Odyssey in the Atlantic's excellent 'book biographies' series. He does so with the erudition, the insight, the wit, and the cultural knowledge that he has justly become renowned for. Few people love books as much as Alberto Manguel does, and fewer still are capable of conveying this love so well to the reader. Homer's epics, treasures of world literature, are for this reason the ideal playing field for Manguel's literary exploration.

The book starts with discussions of the content of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the possible nature and historical context of Homer, the works' role in oral tradition and comparisons to famous oral bardic traditions in other regions (in particular here Milman Parry's pathbreaking comparative work on Homer), and so on. Then Manguel delves into the reception of the books: in more or less chronological order tracing their status and importance, as well as their influence on other writers from Virgil to Dante to Joyce, through the ages. This is supremely interesting material, and Manguel is a serious though light-hearted guide to the wealth of material on and about Homer and his works, from Medieval Catholic reception to Margaret Atwood's feminist interpretations.

Alberto Manguel also, as might be expected, takes his time to consider some of the different translations of the poems that have been made, into English as well as other languages; choosing for this book itself the authoritative modern Penguin translation by Robert Fagles (recently deceased) whom my parents had still known. He reveals here some remarkable information about the degree to which Homer was lost in the original during the Middle Ages - Dante himself had probably not read him in Greek, nor had he ever heard of Sophocles and Aeschylus, who were also yet to be rediscovered in his time. Latin was the dominant language, especially in Catholic circles, for the transmission of Homeric culture for a long time.

At the closing of the book, Manguel reflects upon the effect of the works themselves as literary achievements, and considers why they have always, in such different times and places, made such a strong impact on the reader. He concludes that it is the tension between love of war, adventure and wildness on the one hand, and abhorrence of violence, wanton destruction (from fickle Gods) and disorder on the other hand, both equally part of the human condition, that is so forcefully expressed in the Homeric epics. Manguel's book itself will also be a delight for lovers of literature.