Epic Poetry | Arlington Public Library

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1) Beowulf: a new translation

Author

Headley, Maria Dahvana

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

"A new, feminist translation of Beowulf by the author of the much-buzzed-about novel The Mere Wife"-- Provided by publisher. Headley provides a radical new verse translation of the epic poem. She brings to light elements that have never before been translated into English, recontextualizing the binary narrative of monsters and heroes into a tale in which the two categories often entwine, justice is rarely served, and dragons live among us. The familiar...

Author

Series

Vintage classics

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

This book tells the story of an epic voyage in which Aeneas crosses stormy seas, becomes entangled in a tragic love affair with Dido of Carthage, descends to the world of the dead - all the way tormented by the vengeful Juno, Queen of the Gods - and finally reaches Italy, where he will fulfill his destiny: to found the Roman people.

Author

Mitchell, Stephen

Formats:

Description

Vivid, enjoyable and comprehensible, the poet and pre-eminent translator Stephen Mitchell makes the oldest epic poem in the world accessible for the first time. Gilgamesh is a born leader, but in an attempt to control his growing arrogance, the Gods create Enkidu, a wild man, his equal in strength and courage. Enkidu is trapped by a temple prostitute, civilised through sexual experience and brought to Gilgamesh. They become best friends and battle...

Author

5) Metamorphoses

Author

Series

Oxford world's classics

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

Ovid's sensuous and witty poem brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation, often as a result of love or lust, in which men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome, including

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6) The song of Roland

7) The sagas of Icelanders: a selection

Series

World of the sagas

Description

Presents a collection of Viking "sagas" to commemorate the adventures of the people who first settled Iceland, and then explored Greenland and North America.

8) Orlando Furioso: The Frenzy of Orlando

Author

Lodovico Ariosto

Formats:

Description

Orlando Furioso ("The Frenzy of Orlando", more literally "Mad Orlando") is an Italian romantic epic by Ludovico Ariosto, published in its complete form in 1532 and exerting a wide influence on later culture. It is a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's unfinished romance Orlando Innamorato ("Orlando in Love"). From the backdrop of war between Charlemagne and his Christian paladins, and the Saracen army attempting to invade Europe, the

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9) The divine comedy

Author

Dante Alighieri

Series

Vintage classics

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

"'The Divine Comedy' begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity. Allen Mandelbaum's astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece that genius whom...

10) The faerie queene

Author

Spenser, Edmund

Series

Penguin classics

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

This remarkable poem, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I, was Spenser's finest achievement. The first epic poem in modern English, The Faerie Queene combines dramatic narratives of chivalrous adventure with exquisite and picturesque episodes of pageantry. At the same time, Spenser is expounding a deeply-felt allegory of the eternal struggle between Truth and Error...

11) Paradise lost

Author

Series

Oxford world's classics

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

Milton's epic poem about the Creation and the Fall, complete with notes discussing his use of language and blank verse.

12) Don Quixote

Author

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

"Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain."--BOOK JACKET.

Author

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eBook, Kindle

Description

"When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017-revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that was "fresh, unpretentious and lean" (Madeline Miller, Washington Post)-critics lauded it as "a revelation" (Susan Chira, New York Times) and "a cultural landmark" (Charlotte Higgins, Guardian) that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer's other great...

14) The Odyssey

Author

Series

Everyman's library (Alfred A. Knopf Inc.) volume 94

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

Odysseus--soldier, sailor, trickster, and everyman--is one of the most recognizable characters in world literature. His arduous, ten-year journey home after the Trojan War, the subject of Homer's Odyssey, is the most accessible tale to survive from ancient Greece, and its impact is still felt today across many different cultures. This lively free verse translation, from one of today's leading Homeric scholars, preserves the clarity and simplicity...

15) The Ramayana: a shortened modern prose version of the Indian epic (suggested by the Tamil version of Kamban)

Author

16) Jason and the Argonauts

Author

Apollonius, Rhodius

Series

Penguin classics

Description

Now in a riveting new verse translation Jason and the Argonauts (also known as the Argonautica), is the only surviving full account of Jason's voyage on the Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece aided by the sorceress princess Medea. Written in third century B.C., this epic story of one of the most beloved heroes of Greek mythology, with its combination of the fantastical and the real, its engagement with traditions of science, astronomy and medicine,...

17) The Lusíads

Author

Camões, Luís de

Series

Oxford world's classics (Oxford University Press)

Description

First published in 1572, The Lusiads is one of the greatest epic poems of the Renaissance, immortalizing Portugal's voyages of discovery with an unrivalled freshness of observation. At the centre of The Lusiads is Vasco da Gama's pioneer voyage via southern Africa to India in 1497-98. The first European artist to cross the equator, Camoes's narrative reflects the novelty and fascination of that original encounter with Africa, India and the Far East....

Author

Description

In his satiric poem Don Juan, Lord Byron refigures the legend as a man easily seduced by women, rather than as a dangerous womanizer. When the first two cantos were anonymously published in 1819, they were criticized for being immoral. They were also immensely popular. Byron only completed 16 cantos, leaving the 17th unwritten when he died in 1824. Don Juan is commonly considered to be his masterpiece.

19) Poguemahone

Author

Description

"A verse epic for the 21st century, Poguemahone combines the fragmentation of cummings and Williams and the spontaneity of Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti with a soundtrack by Mott the Hoople, then douses it in whisky and sets it on fire. Ancient as myth and wholly original, Poguemahone is a masterpiece of formal invention with the rollicking clip of a drinking song and the devastating story of one familys history and the forces, seen and unseen, that make...