Synopsis
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."
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About the Author
Alberto Manguel is the bestselling author of several award-winning books, including A Dictionary of Imaginary Places and A History of Reading.
From AudioFile
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. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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