Odyssey (Emily Wilson translation)

The Odyssey is a 2017 translation of Homer's Odyssey by classicist Emily Wilson. It was published by W. W. Norton & Company. Wilson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, retained the line count and blank verse of the original Homeric Greek but changed the meter from dactylic hexameter to iambic pentameter. Wilson's translation is the first translation of the Homeric Greek by a woman into English verse.

Critical reception was positive. Charlotte Higgins described it as a "cultural landmark." Reviewers praised Wilson's fresh interpretation compared to previous male translators' work and her attention to the poem's female characters. The translation's storytelling was commended, and its meter was widely described as musical. Critics also highlighted the poem's accessibility compared to previous translations.

Emily Wilson was born in 1971 in Oxford, England to a family of scholars,^[1] and is a professor of classics at the University of Pennsylvania.^[2] Wilson completed her undergraduate degree in literae humaniores at the University of Oxford in 1994, a masters degree in English Renaissance literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1996, and a Ph.D. in classical and comparative literature at Yale University in 2001.^[3]

Wilson spent five or six years working on the translation.^[4] Her translation maintains the 12,110 lines of the original poem and matches them line for line.^{[1] [5]} Wilson rejected a standard set by the 18th-century translation (1725–26) by Alexander Pope that the tone be "grand, ornate, rhetorically elevated", stating this is not present in the original and prioritised simple, readable language.^{[6] [7]} She selected Iambic pentameter because it is "the conventional metre for English verse", citing the work of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron and Keats.^[7] Her primary motivator for writing a new translation was to change to a regular metre and keep the length and pace of the original. She employed less repetition of phrases or words than the original text.^[8]

Wilson's introduction covers the dating, cultural context and authorship of the poem, alongside briefly outlining the approach of previous translations.^[6] She also discusses some of her translational changes; the poem's first description of Odysseus as polytropos (transl. "many turning" or "much turning") could mean Odysseus as passive (he is being turned) or active (he is "turning" other subjects). Wilson translates this as "a complicated man".^{[1] [3]} In another extract, she describes Penelope's hand as "muscular" because the original Greek pachus (transl. thick) associated Penelope's craft with the "physical competence" of male warriors.^[6] Wilson retains the Homeric Greek's characterisation of Penelope as talented at word play, a trait associated with Odysseus himself, that has been omitted by male translators.^[9]

Wilson's publisher heavily promoted the translation as the first by a woman into English verse. Previous translations by women included Anne Dacier's 1708 French prose translation in 1708; alongside her preface, her translation influenced Alexander Pope's celebrated 18th-century translation.^{[10] [11]} Wilson's translation was published two years after Caroline Alexander became the first translation of the Iliad into English by a woman in 2015.^[12]

The New York Times Magazine praised the translation's "radically contemporary voice".^{[1] [6]} Charlotte Higgins described Wilson's work as a "cultural landmark" that "exposes centuries of masculinist" translations.^[13] Poet and translator Josephine Balmer agreed in New Statesman that previous translations had been "firmly male".^[11] NPR 's Annalisa Quinn describes the translation as progressivist, excising "centuries of verbal ideological buildup", citing previous translators' additions of Christianisation, sexism, and Victorian euphemisms.^[14] In a review for London Review of Books , Colin Burrow described Wilson as a "moderniser", particularly highlighting her translations of epithets into phrases that provide "running commentary on emotional and social relationships". Additionally, he stated the immense challenges posed by retaining the same number of lines as the original.^[15]

It was praised as an accessible introduction to the poem, with critics highlighting its plain use of language.^[6] Balmer calls Wilson a "careful and creative scholar" whose translation rejects the notion that ancient epics can only be translated by established poets.^[11] Madeline Miller, who partially retells the Odyssey in Circe (2018), praised the translation for retaining "Homer's speed and narrative drive".^[16] Miller and Quinn highlight Wilson's inclusion of the word slave, which has traditionally been translated as maids or servants. Essayist Wyatt Mason reported being "floored" by Wilson's use of the word "complicated" in the poem's first line.^[1]

Many publications wrongly indicated that Wilson was the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English.^{[1] [2]} Barbara Leonie Picard produced an English prose retelling in 1952.^[10] In 2019, Wilson said the media's emphasis on this presented her as "unique in a way [she is] not unique"; she highlighted other female scholars of Homer and that women had translated the poem into non-English languages before.^[6]

• Ancient Greek religion
• Trojan War literature
• English translations of Homer

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