-
Seasonal Offer:
This title is part of our Seasonal Offers promotion.
| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Oresteia (Oxford World's Classics) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"These two new additions to Oxford's 'Greek Tragedy in New Translations' series only add to the luster of the previous releases. Each is firmly packed with insightful introductions, comprehensive and numbered notes, glossaries, and up-to-date bibliographies (the plays' texts take up about half of each volume). The collaboration of poet and scholar in each volume produces a language that is easy to read and easy to speak (compare, for instance, the Watchman's first lines in Shapiro and Burian's Agamemnon with those in Lattimore's 1947 translation). Each volume's introduction presents the play's action and themes with some detail. The translators' notes describe the linguistic twists and turns involved in rendering the text into a modern poetic language. Both volumes are enthusiastically recommended for academic libraries, theatre groups, and theatre departments."--Library Journal [starred review of Oresteia and Antigone&R]
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"A wonderful collaboration of scholar and poet...vividly responsive to the variety and power of Aeschylus' writing.... A great achievement."--David Ferry, poet and translator, and author of Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations
"Enthusiastically recommended...produces a language that is easy to read and easy to speak."--Library Journal [starred review]
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Readable and Persuasive
23 Dec 2007
Format:Paperback
This translation of Aeschylus' "Oresteia" kept me reading from beginning to end. I found Alan Shapiro's rendition of "Agamemnon" with its opaque vocabulary and imagery compelling, especially the hypnotic rhythms and repetitions of the long parodos and the second choral ode. He also has captured the incantatory vocabulary and imagery of Clytemnestra's "estin thalassa" speech: "There is a sea--who will drain it dry?" I have only one tiny criticism: I do wish he had preserved Aeschylus' word order at the end of "Agamemnon", "<ego> kai su"--"I and you" [instead of "you and I will rule the house"], which to me demonstrates that the playwright is depicting Clytemnestra--with her high hopes and heart that manages like a man--as the female usurper who will continue to wield power over Aegisthus.
Nevertheless, I am using this book in the classroom, and I recommend it highly.
Nevertheless, I am using this book in the classroom, and I recommend it highly.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
A Monumental Edition
29 Jan 2009
Format:Paperback
This is a compelling new edition of the Oresteia. It rivals all existing Oresteia's and perhaps comes closest to Lattimore's version in accuracy and completeness of text. It is my favorite Oresteian Trilogy alongside Peter Meineck's version.
Christopher Collard preserves the intricacy of Aeschylus's language while keeping the drama moving naturally. He does not force poetry or ideas into Aeschylus nor does he subtract, edit or delete words from the text (as often is done and can be seen in Fagels's and Vellacott's translations). The poetry comes out magically by itself.
How Collard wins over Lattimore's version though is through the translation. The realism of the drama, the sentences structures, and the speeches all form naturally and normally. In Lattimore, the speeches and the drama becomes congested, contricted and (unnecessarily) complicated through how he structures the wording and poetry of Aeschylus's text. Collard does not use the tired and old fashion English like Lattimore, nor does he update the idom by using modern American English or slang. You can't really pinpoint which language style he's using, but indeed it is beautiful, readible and contemporary English. It's like he has become a transparent mouthpiece for Aeschylus and not mask of his own creation.
There are also some very intriguing and very interesting touches Collard does within the plays. Throughout are descriptive italic markings, brackets and hyphens, indicating detailed stage directions and emotive expressions. He freely uses lyric, prose, and verse in his translation as Aeschylus does in various settings and scenarios.
His is the most scholarly version as it incorporates the most up-to-date findings and research into Aeschylus and the Oresteia. From original to copied manuscripts, he compared many ancient and modern editions of the Oresteia and so some of his version includes subtle changes and slight differences when compared to other translations. He informs you of missing lines and includes passages that appear as fragments in the originals, which have been glossed over or not noticed by other translators.
His explanatory notes and introduction are immensely extensive. They include so much research and attention to detail that one wonders how one man could know so much about Aeschylus and the Oresteia!
The Contents not only have 4 incredible essays on Aeschylus and the Oresteia, but also include summaries of the plots, text & translation notes, a massive bibliography, a chronology of Aeschylus' life, family trees, and even a map of ancient Greece!
I believe it is safe to say that Christopher Collard is now the leading interpreter of Aeschylus, and a milestone in the history of Aeschylean translation and scholarship.
Christopher Collard preserves the intricacy of Aeschylus's language while keeping the drama moving naturally. He does not force poetry or ideas into Aeschylus nor does he subtract, edit or delete words from the text (as often is done and can be seen in Fagels's and Vellacott's translations). The poetry comes out magically by itself.
How Collard wins over Lattimore's version though is through the translation. The realism of the drama, the sentences structures, and the speeches all form naturally and normally. In Lattimore, the speeches and the drama becomes congested, contricted and (unnecessarily) complicated through how he structures the wording and poetry of Aeschylus's text. Collard does not use the tired and old fashion English like Lattimore, nor does he update the idom by using modern American English or slang. You can't really pinpoint which language style he's using, but indeed it is beautiful, readible and contemporary English. It's like he has become a transparent mouthpiece for Aeschylus and not mask of his own creation.
There are also some very intriguing and very interesting touches Collard does within the plays. Throughout are descriptive italic markings, brackets and hyphens, indicating detailed stage directions and emotive expressions. He freely uses lyric, prose, and verse in his translation as Aeschylus does in various settings and scenarios.
His is the most scholarly version as it incorporates the most up-to-date findings and research into Aeschylus and the Oresteia. From original to copied manuscripts, he compared many ancient and modern editions of the Oresteia and so some of his version includes subtle changes and slight differences when compared to other translations. He informs you of missing lines and includes passages that appear as fragments in the originals, which have been glossed over or not noticed by other translators.
His explanatory notes and introduction are immensely extensive. They include so much research and attention to detail that one wonders how one man could know so much about Aeschylus and the Oresteia!
The Contents not only have 4 incredible essays on Aeschylus and the Oresteia, but also include summaries of the plots, text & translation notes, a massive bibliography, a chronology of Aeschylus' life, family trees, and even a map of ancient Greece!
I believe it is safe to say that Christopher Collard is now the leading interpreter of Aeschylus, and a milestone in the history of Aeschylean translation and scholarship.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
The Oresteia as a poem in English
30 Jun 2003
Format:Hardcover
The Shapiro/Burian translation of The Oresteia, one of the seminal texts of Western Civilization, combines scholarly exactitude with poetic intensity. Whereas other renderings seem at best like successful translations from one language to another, this one comes across as a carrying over of one poetry into another. This ought to be the standard version of this crucial trilogy for a long time to come.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
