The Shield of Achilles

The Shield of Achilles

Author: W. H. Auden

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-05-07

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 0691256586

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Back in print for the first time in decades, Auden’s National Book Award–winning poetry collection, in a critical edition that introduces it to a new generation of readers The Shield of Achilles, which won the National Book Award in 1956, may well be W. H. Auden’s most important, intricately designed, and unified book of poetry. In addition to its famous title poem, which reimagines Achilles’s shield for the modern age, when war and heroism have changed beyond recognition, the book also includes two sequences—“Bucolics” and “Horae Canonicae”—that Auden believed to be among his most significant work. Featuring an authoritative text and an introduction and notes by Alan Jacobs, this volume brings Auden’s collection back into print for the first time in decades and offers the only critical edition of the work. As Jacobs writes in the introduction, Auden’s collection “is the boldest and most intellectually assured work of his career, an achievement that has not been sufficiently acknowledged.” Describing the book’s formal qualities and careful structure, Jacobs shows why The Shield of Achilles should be seen as one of Auden’s most central poetic statements—a richly imaginative, beautifully envisioned account of what it means to live, as human beings do, simultaneously in nature and in history.


Homer

Homer

Author: Mark W. Edwards

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 1990-02-01

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780801840166

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Homer: Poet of the "Iliad" is the perfect companion both for readers deepening their appreciation of the poem and its form and for those encountering Homer's work for the first time. Mark Edwards combines the advantages of a general introduction and a detailed commentary to make the insights of recent Homeric scholarship accessible to students and general readers as well as to classicists. Since interpretation of the epic requires an understanding of the ancient oral tradition and its conventions, Edwards offers a comprehensive analysis of the poetics of the Iliad and the Odyssey. He also discusses essential elements of Homeric society -- its religion, history, and social values -- to clarify the style and substance of the poetry. In the second half of the book, Edwards's scene-by-scene explication of ten major books of the Iliad leads the reader to a greater perception of Homer's mastery and manipulation of convention.


The Iliad

The Iliad

Author: Homer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-10-11

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 1451627629

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

TOLSTOY CALLED THE ILIAD A miracle; Goethe said that it always thrust him into a state of astonishment. Homer’s story is thrilling, and his Greek is perhaps the most beautiful poetry ever sung or written. But until now, even the best English translations haven’t been able to re-create the energy and simplicity, the speed, grace, and pulsing rhythm of the original. In Stephen Mitchell’s Iliad, the epic story resounds again across 2,700 years, as if the lifeblood of its heroes Achilles and Patroclus, Hector and Priam flows in every word. And we are there with them, amid the horror and ecstasy of war, carried along by a poetry that lifts even the most devastating human events into the realm of the beautiful. Mitchell’s Iliad is the first translation based on the work of the preeminent Homeric scholar Martin L. West, whose edition of the original Greek identifies many passages that were added after the Iliad was first written down, to the detriment of the music and the story. Omitting these hundreds of interpolated lines restores a dramatically sharper, leaner text. In addition, Mitchell’s illuminating introduction opens the epic still further to our understanding and appreciation. Now, thanks to Stephen Mitchell’s scholarship and the power of his language, the Iliad’s ancient story comes to moving, vivid new life.


Homer: Iliad Book XVIII

Homer: Iliad Book XVIII

Author: Homer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-01-10

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1108594492

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Book 18 of the Iliad is an outstanding example of the range and power of Homeric epic. It describes the reaction of the hero Achilles to the death of his closest friend, and his decision to re-enter the conflict even though it means he will lose his own life. The book also includes the forging of the marvellous shield for the hero by the smith-god Hephaestus: the images on the shield are described by the poet in detail, and this description forms the archetypal ecphrasis, influential on many later writers. In an extensive introduction, R. B. Rutherford discusses the themes, style and legacy of the book. The commentary provides line-by-line guidance for readers at all levels, addressing linguistic detail and larger questions of interpretation. A substantial appendix considers the relation between Iliad 18 and the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, which has been prominent in much recent discussion.


A History of the Crusades

A History of the Crusades

Author: Steven Runciman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1987-12-03

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9780521347709

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sir Steven Runciman explores the First Crusade and the foundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem.


The Iliad of Homer

The Iliad of Homer

Author: Homer

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-09-19

Total Pages: 607

ISBN-13: 0226470385

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus / and its devastation." For sixty years, that's how Homer has begun the Iliad in English, in Richmond Lattimore's faithful translation—the gold standard for generations of students and general readers. This long-awaited new edition of Lattimore's Iliad is designed to bring the book into the twenty-first century—while leaving the poem as firmly rooted in ancient Greece as ever. Lattimore's elegant, fluent verses—with their memorably phrased heroic epithets and remarkable fidelity to the Greek—remain unchanged, but classicist Richard Martin has added a wealth of supplementary materials designed to aid new generations of readers. A new introduction sets the poem in the wider context of Greek life, warfare, society, and poetry, while line-by-line notes at the back of the volume offer explanations of unfamiliar terms, information about the Greek gods and heroes, and literary appreciation. A glossary and maps round out the book. The result is a volume that actively invites readers into Homer's poem, helping them to understand fully the worlds in which he and his heroes lived—and thus enabling them to marvel, as so many have for centuries, at Hektor and Ajax, Paris and Helen, and the devastating rage of Achilleus.


The Iliad & The Odyssey

The Iliad & The Odyssey

Author: Homer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-04-29

Total Pages: 927

ISBN-13: 1627931457

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Iliad: Join Achilles at the Gates of Troy as he slays Hector to Avenge the death of Patroclus. Here is a story of love and war, hope and despair, and honor and glory. The recent major motion picture Helen of Troy staring Brad Pitt proves that this epic is as relevant today as it was twenty five hundred years ago when it was first written. So journey back to the Trojan War with Homer and relive the grandest adventure of all times. The Odyssey: Journey with Ulysses as he battles to bring his victorious, but decimated, troops home from the Trojan War, dogged by the wrath of the god Poseidon at every turn. Having been away for twenty years, little does he know what awaits him when he finally makes his way home. These two books are some of the most import books in the literary cannon, having influenced virtually every adventure tale ever told. And yet they are still accessible and immediate and now you can have both in one binding.