the odyssey Robert fagles pdf free

Robert 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 Odyssey, which Jasper Griffin in the New York
Times Book Review hails as "a distinguished achievement."

This is a mixed review: The story of the Odyssey is magnificent, it’s riveting and interesting, very well
written, descriptive, the character of Odysseus is worthy of admiration and you’ll be rooting for him and
his son Telemachus. I myself was salivating in anticipation of the eventual reckoning of the “suitors”.
There’s a reason why Homer’s works have been treasured for millennia, some of the foundational,
seminal literature of western civilization.
The contents of the book are definitely worth a five star rating. However, the physical book itself is
lower quality, primarily due to the variable sizing of the pages. The pages are dissimilar in width and
roughly cut but top to bottom the pages are uniform.

One of Homer’s most well known narrative techniques is to have one of his characters tell a story within
a story. An early version of metafiction, if you will.

obert Fagles' translation is easy to read for non-scholars. It's scholarly, but not dense like books you
were forced to read for a grade. The language he uses is beautiful.

The book aesthetics are delightful. It's a great size, and the paperback has a nice texture that feels good
to hold. The typeface and layout are thoughtful. The paper is weighty with ragged edges, which adds to
the tactile aesthetic.

If you are new to The Odyssey, as I am, then find some lectures about it to enhance your enjoyment.
Each chapter revolves around a theme of hospitality. In the Greek language this is called "Xenia" which
means "guest friendship". The most memorable (and egregious) abuse of Xenia in the Odyssey occurs
with the Cyclops encounter.
An example of this takes place in the Odyssey where the local royalty have gathered amid what was
then considered finery. After dining at a banquet they first hear a bard and then Odysseus recite a lay.
The reader is supposed to be almost vicariously present—in a corner of the royal hall enraptured by the
telling of the myths and legends of Ancient Greece.

As much as any translation can bring about such an effect, Robert Fagles does successfully teleport the
reader back to Ithaca and its surrounds. We get to listen to the bard recounting the oft-told stories of
the wanderings of Odysseus. The particular stylistic techniques which make this such a successful
translation can be found in Fagles’s postscript but, even without a sophisticated appreciation, it is hard
to think of an edition that captures the attention of readers more than this one

If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, the Odyssey 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. 

. there is no anxious straining after mighty effects, but rather a constant readiness for what the occasion
demands, a kind of Odyssean adequacy to the task in hand, and this line-by-line vigilance builds up into
a completely credible imagined world."