Translating the Iliad, with Emily Wilson

Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

Emily Wilson, acclaimed translator, joins me in the Lesche to discuss the challenges and pleasures of translating the Iliad.
We discuss the Greek of two passages in detail: Book 6 lines 482-502 and Book 22 lines 199-204 (lines as in the OCT).
About our guest

Emily Wilson is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, holding the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities. Wilson attended Oxford University (Balliol College B.A. in Classics and Corpus Christi College M.Phil. in Renaissance English Literature) and Yale University (Ph.D. in Classics and Comparative Literature). She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow.
Emily's substack
Emily on Blue Sky
Ancient texts

• Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
• Plato, Hippias Minor
• Longinus, On the Sublime (ch. 9)

Also mentioned

• Karen Emmerich, Literary Translation and the Making of Originals. Bloomsbury 2017.
• "Munro's Law", i.e., D. B. Munro's observation that there is no overlap in the content of the Iliad and the Odyssey (more info here).
• Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. A (5th ed.)
• Johanna's review of Emily's translation of the Iliad for Slate (here)

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Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!
Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius
This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: [email protected]
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