Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

Seeking modern adventure demanding frequent suspension of disbelief? Vivid vision? Realistic dialogue? Recognizable characters and situations? Occasional implausibility? Here, writes Green (Univ. of Texas, Austin), is a "semi-heroic adventure story ... [embellished] by folktale and fantasy." Thus, he identifies a few irresistible Homeric features in this new Odyssey translation, out just four years after his acclaimed version of the Iliad (CH, Sep'15, 53-0093). Homer's epic tale of survival, temptation, betrayal, and vengeance loses none of its verve and pathos in Green's experienced hands. Previous translators into English have taken the poet's elusive sentence structure and "chopped and changed" it to normalize it. Along with a few surprises in his interpretation, Green offers a flexible, colloquial reading of the tripartite work, making this an amazingly accessible translation for experienced or novice readers, a translation that conveys both the feeling and the sense of the original lyrical Greek. Green does this by drawing on the classical and admirable example of C. Day Lewis's "declaimable" (i.e., easily recited) and mainly dactylo-spondaic rendering (in 1952) of Virgil's Aeneid. The extensive introduction, maps of ancient Greece and Asia Minor, detailed chapter summaries, and explanatory notes make the volume eminently suitable for classroom use.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

In this remarkable book, Townsend (visiting professor, classics, Loyola Univ., New Orleans) takes on the task of providing a detailed analysis of the "woman question" in Plato's Republic and, specifically, Plato's proposal that the best of the women share in all of the tasks of the guardians and philosopher rulers of the perfectly just city-state. The proposal is considered laughable (thus labeled the "First Wave"), not only by the interlocutors in the dialogue but by most readers through the centuries. Townsend's approach differs from most accounts of Plato's text in two ways: first, she takes his proposal as serious, albeit with elements of humor, satire, and irony; second, she weaves into the discussion a rich account not only of the lives of "ordinary women" in ancient Greece but also of the paradigms of womanly "divinity" of the goddesses of Greek mythology (Athena, Bendis, Artemis, and others), many of whom are dramatic characters in Plato's dialogues. In taking this descriptive approach, Townsend is able to paint a more complete picture of women in Plato's Republic and explain why Plato thought women were crucial for the successful rule of philosophy itself. Excellent notes and bibliography.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.