Translating the Odyssey, with Daniel Mendelsohn

Daniel Mendelsohn joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new translation of Homer's Odyssey, out on April 9 with the University of Chicago Press.
Daniel Mendelsohn's website (danielmendelsohn.com)
Ancient texts
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey
Also mentioned
• Previous translations of the Odyssey by Richmond Lattimore, Robert Fitzgerald, and Emily Wilson (and Alexander Pope); also Caroline Alexander's Iliad.
• Previous books by Daniel Mendelsohn: An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic (Knopf 2017), The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (Harper 2006), The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity (Knopf Doubleday 2009), and Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate (University of Virginia Press, 2020)
• The Homeric scholarship of Jenny Strauss Clay, see, e.g., The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey. Princeton University Press, 1983. (Reprint, Rowman and Littlefield, 1996)
• Anne Parry, Blameless Aegisthus: A study of αμύμων and other Homeric epithets. Leiden 1973.
• Johanna's 2017 Eidolon essay on Daniel's An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, "'Ithaca Gave to You the Beautiful Journey': Classics, An Odyssey, and a Conversation with Daniel Mendelsohn" (eidolon.pub/ithaca-gave-to-you-the-beautiful-j…)
About our guest
Daniel Mendelsohn, an award-winning memoirist, translator, and essayist, writes frequently for the New Yorker and New York Review of Books, where he is the Editor-at-large. His books include the international bestsellers "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million" and "An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic," as well as a translation of the poetry of Constantine Cavafy. His translation of Homer's Odyssey will be published in April, 2025.
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Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikilos_epitaph)," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies (brown.edu/academics/classics/classical-studies…) and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study (jnbc.brown.edu). jnbc.brown.edu
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