TRB Podcast: Stephen Mitchell’s Iliad for the 21st Century


 

[audio:mitchell.mp3]
Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Homer’s The Illiad, from Simon & Schuster

On October 13 at the University of Toronto’s Hart House, Stephen Mitchell spoke about his new translation of The Iliad, described in promotional material as

the first translation based on the work of the preeminent Homeric scholar Martin L. West, whose edition of the original Greek identifies many passages that were added after the Iliad was first written down, to the detriment of the music and the story. Omitting these hundreds of interpolated lines restores a dramatically sharper, leaner text.