Classics and Translation

D. S. Carne-Ross (1921-2010) was one of the finest critics of classical literature in English translation after Arnold. More than four decades of Carne-Ross's writings are represented in this volume, which includes criticism of both ancient and modern writers, in addition to historical-critical studies of translation, discriminating analyses of translators widely read today, and investigations in the relationship between translation, criticism, and literary creation. This book will appeal to a wide audience including classicists, specialists in reception and translation studies, students of comparative literature, and literary readers. Two chapters give readings of the Odyssey and the Oresteia; others focus on significant and influential translators of those works. Two long essays give extended accounts of two of the most widely read twentieth-century translators of Greek and Latin, Robert Fitzgerald and Richmond Lattimore; there are also incisive studies of translations by H.D., David Ferry, Christopher Logue and others. Some essays focus on a particular work, author, or genre in translation, for example, Pindar's Pythian 12, Horace, Greek tragedy, and Greek epigram. The first and the final chapters use translation as a point of departure in order to investigate questions about transfers between ancient and modern literatures. In all the essays, translated works are considered in their relation to Greek or Roman literature and also as contributions to English literature, as a source of innovation for it, or as a way of laying bare connections between past and present moments.