a companion to translations studies and ancient epic

The first volume of its kind to integrate trends in Translation Studies with Classical Reception Studies

A Companion to the Translation of Classical Epic provides a comprehensive and wide-ranging account of key debates and case studies centered the translation of Greek and Latin epics. Rather than situating translation studies as a complementary field or an aspect of classical reception, the Companion offers a systematic framework for adapting and incorporating translation studies fully into classical studies. Its many chapters elaborate how translation is a central element in the epic’s reception trajectories across the globe and addresses theoretical and methodological concerns arising from this conjunction.

The Companion does not just provide a comprehensive overview of the translation theories it covers, but also offers fresh insights into theoretical and methodological issues currently at the top of the interdisciplinary agenda of scholars studying the global routes of ancient epic. In its sections, leading classicists, translation theorists, classical reception scholars, and cultural historians from Europe and North and South America reconfigure questions this research faces today, highlighting methods for an integrated approach. It explores how this integrated perspective responds to key challenges in the study of the epic’s reception, emphasizing topics of temporality, gender, agency, community, target-language politics, and material production. A special section also features detailed dialogues with active translators such as Emily Wilson, Stanley Lombardo, and Susanna Braund, who speak extensively and frankly about their work.

This is a key volume for all students and scholars who want to engage with research reflecting the contemporary agenda in classical reception, translation studies, and the study of epic in its global literary and cultural routes.

Richard H. Armstrong is Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, and Fellow, The Honors College, University of Houston, USA. He is co-editor of Remusings: Essays on the Translation of Classical Poetry and author of A Compulsion for Antiquity: Freud and the Ancient World.

Alexandra Lianeri is Assistant Professor, School of Philology, The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She is the editor of Knowing Future Time in and through Greek Historiography and The Western Time of Ancient History. Historiographical Encounters with the Greek and Roman Pasts.