Kategoria BISAC: Poetry >> Ancient & Classical

Presented in their original medieval Latin and with commentary and notes in English, this is a translation of thirty poems from Carmina Burana.

The Carmina Burana is a collection of poems, songs and sung religious drama from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Often described as the work of wandering scholars, it actually contains many pieces by famous clerics of the period. The verses are lively, uninhibited celebrations of the joys of wine, women and gambling, but there are also serious poems on the pains of love and the moral corruption of the Church.

Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84-54 BCE), one of the finest lyrical poets of classical times, was also among the bawdiest. He was capable of producing poems of such forthright and ribald sensuality that until recently they were all too often relegated to collections of erotica to protect the innocent minds of impressionable students. This collection of Catullus' poems incorporates the original Latin text and a facing English translation by James Michie, which is contemporary and lively, matching the spirit of the original, and also reveals the poets as he really was: a worldly, lusty man...

Little remains today of the writings of the archaic Greek poet Sappho (fl. late 7th and early 6th centuries B.C.E.), whose work is said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some 500 years after her death. The surviving texts consist of a lamentably small and fragmented body of lyric poetry--among them, poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, resignation, and remembrance--that nevertheless enables us to hear the living voice of the poet Plato called the tenth Muse.

Stanley Lombardo's translations give us a virtuoso embodiment of Sappho's voice,...

Little remains today of the writings of the archaic Greek poet Sappho (fl. late 7th and early 6th centuries B.C.E.), whose work is said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some 500 years after her death. The surviving texts consist of a lamentably small and fragmented body of lyric poetry--among them, poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, resignation, and remembrance--that nevertheless enables us to hear the living voice of the poet Plato called the tenth Muse.

Stanley Lombardo's translations give us a virtuoso embodiment of Sappho's voice,...

Successfully integrating elegance and a close fidelity to the Greek, these new translations aim to provide Greekless students with as close a sense as possible of how the Greeks themselves thought and wrote about the world. Miller's skillful introduction places the works in historical context and briefly describes the different metrical forms represented in the selections. Headnotes to each section highlight the background of the poet whose works follows. Complete with a glossary of names and a select bibliography.

Long a master of the crafts of Homeric translation and of rhapsodic performance, Stanley Lombardo now turns to the quintessential epic of Roman antiquity, a work with deep roots in the Homeric tradition. With characteristic virtuosity, he delivers a rendering of the "Aeneid" as compelling as his groundbreaking translations of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," yet one that--like the "Aeneid" itself--conveys a unique epic sensibility and a haunting artistry all its own.

W. R. Johnson's Introduction makes an ideal companion to the translation, offering brilliant insight into the legend of...

Long a master of the crafts of Homeric translation and of rhapsodic performance, Stanley Lombardo now turns to the quintessential epic of Roman antiquity, a work with deep roots in the Homeric tradition. With characteristic virtuosity, he delivers a rendering of the "Aeneid" as compelling as his groundbreaking translations of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," yet one that--like the "Aeneid" itself--conveys a unique epic sensibility and a haunting artistry all its own.

W. R. Johnson's Introduction makes an ideal companion to the translation, offering brilliant insight into the legend of...

In this new translation of the "Homeric Hymns," Sarah Ruden employs a melodious and flexible non-rhyming line of eleven syllables, offering a close approximation of Greek hexameter verse in natural English rhythms. The result is a Homeric Hymns marked by its accuracy, simplicity, and economy of movement.

Sheila Murnaghan's Introduction situates the "Hymns" within the mythological and performative traditions that gave rise to them. Focusing on the longer "Hymns," she perceptively illuminates these oddly charming and sometimes grave accounts of defining episodes in the evolution of the...

Successfully integrating elegance and a close fidelity to the Greek, these new translations aim to provide Greekless students with as close a sense as possible of how the Greeks themselves thought and wrote about the world. Miller's skillful introduction places the works in historical context and briefly describes the different metrical forms represented in the selections. Headnotes to each section highlight the background of the poet whose works follows. Complete with a glossary of names and a select bibliography.

The Thebaid, a Latin epic in twelve books by Statius (c. 45 96 C. E.) reexamines events following the abdication of Oedipus, focusing on the civil war between the brothers Eteocles, King of Thebes, and Polynices, who comes at the head of an army from Argos to claim his share of royal power. The poem is long each of the twelve books comprises over eight hundred lines and complex, and it exploits a broad range of literary works, both Greek and Latin. Severely curtailed though he was by the emperor Domitian and his Reign of Terror, Statius nevertheless created a meditation on...