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Title details for Homer's the Iliad and the Odyssey by Alberto Manguel - Available

Homer's the Iliad and the Odyssey

A Biography

by Alberto Manguel
Michael Prichard
Audiobook
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No one knows if there was a man named Homer, but there is little doubt that the epic poems assembled under his name form the cornerstone of Western literature. The Iliad and the Odyssey-with their incomparable tales of the Trojan War, Achilles, Ulysses and Penelope, the Cyclops, the beautiful Helen of Troy, and the petulant gods-are familiar to most people because they are so pervasive. They have fed our imaginations for over two and a half millennia, inspiring everyone from Plato to Virgil, Pope to Joyce, Dante to Wolfgang Petersen. In this graceful and sweeping addition to the Books that Changed the World series, Alberto Manguel traces the lineage of these epic poems. He considers their original purpose, either as allegory or record of history; surveys the challenges the pagan poems presented to the early Christian world; and traces their spread after the Reformation. Following Homer through the greatest literature ever created, Manguel's book above all delights in the poems themselves, the "primordial spring without which there would have been no culture."

  • Creators

  • Series

    Books That Changed the World

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 5, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400123933
      • File size: 199772 KB
      • Duration: 06:56:11

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Alberto Manguel's meticulous appreciation of Homer starts before the bard's epics were written and continues to the present. He discusses Homer's influence on a range of cultures and writers, down to the level of single metaphorical phrases. This sounds exhausting, but his love for his subject keeps it hypnotic, and Michael Prichard's delivery captures that emotional investment. Prichard evokes Homer's majesty as he reads the verse, and Manguel's admiration for the poet as well. A number of selections in the original Greek are included, as well as numerous translations and passages in other languages. Prichard declaims them all with a strong feel for cadence. He knows how to shift from a line describing intense violence to a scholarly gloss on the line without losing his listeners. G.T.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 1, 2007
      It's a great idea: a survey history of how Homer has been read throughout history, taking in Roman Homer, Christian Homer, Alexander Pope's Homer and Homer in Islam, among others. And Manguel (A History of Reading
      ) is perfectly cut out for the job, armed as he is with a wealth of stories about scholars and translators through the ages. But most of his anecdotes, though engaging, are disconnected from any central argument. In one Arabic telling of the Trojan War, Agamemnon is made the “secret protagonist,” we are told. But why? Specifics are scarce, while great claims are made—“The epic of Gilgamesh and the stories of the ancient Egyptians stir in our prehistory, but Homer and his poems are the beginning of all our stories”—supported only with more bald assertions. Things pick up in a chapter examining Homer's imagery, but once again, Manguel trails off without taking his ideas anywhere. It's hard to imagine that this latest entry in the Books That Changed the World series will do much to excite further interest in the student or first-time reader of Homer.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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