The Odyssey of Political Theory: The Politics of Departure and Return, by Patrick J. Deneen Patrick Deneen, an assistant professor of political science at Princeton University, sets out in this book to assess the contemporary relevance of the Homeric legacy, especially the Odyssey. He wishes to avoid both mere pious praise of Homer as the [...]
Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad Featured Book: Reading Homer’s poems is one of the purest, most inexhaustible pleasures life has to offer–a secret somewhat too well kept in our time. The aim of this book is to tell anyone who might care–first-time, second-time, or third-time readers or people who [...]
Published originally during the Second World War, Simone Weil’s “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force” and Rachel Bespaloff’s “On the Iliad” are two of the last century’s finest discussions of Western literature’s preeminent epic. The former, said Elizabeth Hardwick, “is one of the most moving and original literary essays ever written.” The other, wrote [...]
The Iliad by Homer, translated by Herbert Jordan (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008) It is noteworthy that when the freedman Livius Andronicus (c. 250 B.C.) gave the Romans their first translation of Homer it was the Odyssey, not the Iliad he chose to render in the old Saturnian verse: Virum mihi Camena, insece versutum, [...]