A Guide to The Odyssey: A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald [Paperback]

Ralph Hexter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0679728473 | ISBN-13: 978-0679728474 | Edition: 1st

For those of us who know and love the incomparable Odyssey of Homer (and there are many), Dr. Hexter has created a valuable, detailed analysis, taking into account many of Homer's most fascinating subtleties.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st edition (November 30, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679728473
• ISBN-13: 978-0679728474
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #350,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, inspiring exploration of Homer's Odyssey, February 18, 2008

By 

Joan Sutton "juna" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Guide to The Odyssey: A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald (Paperback)

For those of us who know and love the incomparable Odyssey of Homer (and there are many), Dr. Hexter has created a valuable, detailed analysis, taking into account many of Homer's most fascinating subtleties. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to spend time thinking about Homer's meanings and intentions as well as those of his intellectually and emotionally brilliant heroes, Penelope and Odysseus.

19 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Normal Structure for a Commentary, March 6, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: A Guide to The Odyssey: A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald (Paperback)

It is the usual nature of a commentary that it is structured with notes keyed to terms in each line. If you want a good introductory discussion of the Odyssey, see Camps, An Introduction to Homer (or for something a little more spicy, though less traditional, see Paolo Vivante's book Homer in the Yale/Hermes series). The introduction to the Penguin translation of the Iliad by Fagles is good, too (though the translation itself is problematic).

Commentaries are primarily intended for close reading; but close reading a work in translation (especially in a very literary translation like Fitzgerald's, which takes a few liberties: but the principle is true for *all* translations) is a dangerous game. This book is probably best for giving you some idea of how you *could* apply close reading to the Odyssey if you knew Greek, or for helping a student with weak Greek skills to narrow something down before looking in the original, maybe; the commentaries on the Greek text are more likely to keep you on the straight and narrow (because of their nature; nothing to blame Prof. Hexter for).