Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey

by Alberto Manguel

  10 St Augustine, Confessions, op. cit., I: 13 and 16.

  11 Heinrich Heine, Sämtliche Werke, zweiter Band. Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr Ernst Elster, Leipzig und Wien, Mayers Klassiker-Ausgaben, 1890.

  Chapter 6

  1 James J. O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1979.

  2 Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. III, New York, Random House, 1983, p. 53. The earlier information on the Royal College is also to be found in Gibbon.

  3 Michel Psellus, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers (the Chronographia), translated, with an Introduction, by E. R. A. Sewter, London, Penguin Books, 1966, Book VI.

  4 William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1989.

  5 Quoted in Harris, Ancient Literacy.

  6 J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West: AD 400–1000, The Early Middle Ages, revised edition, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1962.

  7 Armando Petrucci, ‘La concezione cristiana del libro fra VI e VII secolo’ in Libri e lettori nel medioevo: Guida storica e critica, a cura di Guglielmo Cavallo, Rome, Laterza, 1989.

  8 Venetus Marcianus: Facsimile of the Codex, with a Preface by John Williams White and an Introduction by Thomas W. Allen, Boston, Mass., Archeological Institute of America, 1902.

  9 Odyssey, XI: 138–43.

  10 Cf. Alan James, Introduction to Quintus of Smyrna, The Trojan Epic: Posthomerica, Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

  11 Ibid.

  12 The information on Dictys and Dares is taken from The Trojan War: The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian, translated with Introduction and Notes by R. M. Frazer, Fr., Bloomington and London, Indiana University Press, 1966.

  13 Ronald T. Ridley, The Historical Observations of Jacob Perizonius, Rome, Bardi Editore, 1988.

  14 Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman de Troie, extraits du manuscrit Milan, Bibliothèque ambrosienne, D55, édités, présentés et traduits par Emmanuèle Baumgartner et Françoise Vieillard, Paris, Letters Gothiques, Librairie Générale Française, 1998.

  15 John Lydgate, The Troy Book [1412–20], edited by Robert R. Edwards, Kalamazoo, Western Michigan University, 1998.

  16 Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde [c. 1385] in Complete Works, edited from numerous manuscripts by Walter W. Skeat, Oxford and London, Oxford University Press, 1912.

  17 Robert Henryson, The Testament of Cresseid [c. 1500] edited by Hugh MacDiarmid, London and New York, Penguin Books, 1989.

  18 William Caxton, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye [1474] edited with a critical Introduction, index and glossary by H. O. Sommer, 2 vols, London, D. Nutt, 1894.

  19 Ben Jonson,‘To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare’ in Complete Works, edited by P. Simpson and E. Simpson, Oxford and London, Oxford University Press, 1986.

  20 William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida [1609] in Complete Works, edited by W. J. Craig, Oxford, London, New York and Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1969.

  Chapter 7

  1 Lakhdar Souami, ‘Présentation’ in Jahiz, Le cadi et la mouche: Anthologie du Livre des Animaux, Paris, Sindbad, 1988.

  2 Mas’udi, Muruj al-Dhahab, quoted in Houari Touati, L’armoire à sagesse: bibliothèques et collections en Islam, Paris, Aubier, 2003.

  3 The story is told by the tenth-century scholar Ibn al-Nadim in his al-Fihrist, quoted in Johannes Pedersen, The Arabic Book, translated by Geoffrey French, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1984.

  4 Odyssey, XII: 95.

  5 G. Strohmaier, ‘Homer in Baghdad’ in Byzantinoslavica, vol. 41, Prague, Institute of Slavonic Studies, 1980, pp. 196–200.

  6 Quoted in Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and early ‘Abbasid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th centuries), Routledge: London and New York, 1998.

  7 The ‘death-bed meditations’ are associated with the wasaya or ‘testament’ genre in Islamic medieval literature. Cf. Juan Vernet, Lo que Europa debe al Islam de España, Barcelona, El Acantilado, 1999.

  8 Cf. Jörg Kraemer, ‘Arabische Homerverse’ in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Band 106, Heft 2, Wiesbaden, Kommissionverlag Franz Steiner, 1956.

  9 Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2004, chapter XIV.

  10 Cf. Robert Irwin, Night and Horses and the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature, London, Allen Lane, 1999.

  11 Anonymous, The Subtle Ruse: The Book of Arabic Wisdom and Guile, translated by René Khawam, London, 1976, quoted in Robert Irwin, Night and Horses and the Desert.

  12 A. I. Sabra, ‘The Appropiation and Subsequent Naturalisation of Greek Science in Medieval Islam: a Preliminary Statement’ in The History of Science, vol. 25 (1987) quoted in Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought, op. cit.

  13 Wilhelm Grimm, ‘Die Sage von Polyphem’ quoted in William Hansen, Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 2002.

  14 Donald K. Fry, ‘Polyphemus in Iceland’ in The Fourteenth Century, Acta IV, 1977, quoted by Hermann Pálsson, ‘Egils Saga Einhenda ok Ásmundar Berserkjabana’ in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 4, Joseph R. Strayer (ed.), New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989.

  15 F. Gabrieli, ‘The Transmission of Learning and Literary Influences to Western Europe’ in The Cambridge History of Islam, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970.

  16 Juan de Mena, ‘Proemio’, La Ilíada de Homero, op. cit.

  Chapter 8

  1 Quoted in E. R. Curtius, Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter, XI, Bern, A. Francke AG, 1948.

  2 Francesco Petrarca, Familiarum rerum, edited by V. Rossi, Florence, 1937.

  3 Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Inferno, a cura di Emilio Pasquini e Antonio Quaglio, Milan, Garzanti, 1987, IV: 80–99.

  4 Iliad, I: 232.

  5 Cf. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

  6 Seneca, ‘On the Shortness of Life’ in The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca, translated with an Introduction by Moses Hadas, New York, Doubleday & Co., 1958.

  7 Albertino Mussato, Historia Augusta de gestis Henrici VII, quoted in Cristophe Carraud, Petrarque, La vie solitaire, préface de Nicholas Mann, introduction, traduction et notes de Christophe Carraud, Grenoble, Jérôme Millon, 1999.

  8 Francesco Petrarca, Secretum meum in Prose, edited by Guido Martellotti et al. Milan, R. Ricciardi, 1955.

  9 Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Paradiso, II: 7–9.

  10 Virgil, Aeneid, I: 8.

  11 Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Inferno I: 7–9.

  12 G. K. Chesterton, ‘Tricks of Memory’ in The Glass Walking Stick and Other Essays by G. K. Chesterton, London, Methuen, 1955.

  13 Jean-Christophe Saladin, La Bataille du grec à la Renaissance, 2e tirage revu et corrigé, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2000.

  14 Francesco Petrarca, Familiarum rerum, XVIII: 2.

  15 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, translated by S. G. C. Middlemore, New York, Random House, 1954.

  16 George Steiner, ‘Introduction’ to Homer in English, op. cit.

  Chapter 9

  1 Odyssey, X: 539–41 and 550–52.

  2 Odyssey, X: 553–95.

  3 Odyssey, XI.

  4 Odyssey, XXIV: 13–14.

  5 Pindar, fragment 129 in Works, edited by Sir J. E. Sandys, Cambridge, Mass., and New York, Harvard University Press and William Heinemann, 1972.

  6 Odyssey, XI: 555–8.

  7 Odyssey, XI: 43–8.

  8 Odyssey, XI: 723–6.

  9 Jean le Fèvre uses the expression danse macabré [sic] for the first time in 1376, in his poem Le respit de la mort. Cf. Paul Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation,
Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1996.

  10 Hellmut Rosenfeld, Der mittelalteriche Totentanz, Wien, Böhlau Verlag, 1954.

  11 Iliad, VI: 171–5.

  12 Virgil, Aeneid, A New Verse Translation by C. Day Lewis, op. cit., VI: 306–14.

  13 Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Inferno, III: 112–14.

  14 André Malraux, La voie royale, Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1930.

  15 Cf. Eugenio N. Frongia, ‘Canto III: The Gate of Hell’ in Lectura Dantis: Inferno, edited by Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn and Charles Ross, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998.

  16 John Milton, Paradise Lost [1667], in Paradise Lost and Other Poems (newly annotated by Edward Le Comte), New York, New American Library, 1961, Book I, lines 302–4.

  17 Paul Verlaine, ‘Chanson d’Automne’ in Poèmes saturniens, Paris, Alphonse Lemerre, 1866.

  18 Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘Spring and Fall’ in Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, selected with an Introduction and Notes by W. H. Gardner, London, Penguin Books, 1953.

  19 Dante Alighieri, Le Opere di Dante. Testo critico della Società Dantesca Italiana, ed. M. Barbi et al., Milan, Società Dantesca Italiana, 1921/22.

  20 Ecclesiastes, I: 4.

  21 Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Ode to Naples’, The Complete Poems, with Notes by Mary Shelley, New York, Random House, 1994, I: 1.

  22 For the first observation, cf. E. Auerbach, Dante als Dichter der irdischen Welt, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1969; for the second, C. S. Singleton (translator), Introduction to The Divine Comedy, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971–5.

  23 Cf. Claude Fauriel, Dante et les origines de la langue et de la littérature italiennes: Cours faits à la Faculté de lettres de Paris, Paris, Jules Mohl, 1854.

  Chapter 10

  1 Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Inferno, IV: 143–4.

  2 Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Inferno, IV: 76–8.

  3 Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Inferno, IV: 37–9.

  4 John Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1979.

  5 Raphael completed this particular room in 1511. Cf. Jean-Pierre Cuzin, Raphaël, vie et oeuvre, Paris, Bibliothèque des arts, 1983.

  6 Susy Marcon and Marino Zorzi (eds), Aldo Manuzio e l’ambiente veneziano 1494–1515, Venice, Il Cardo, 1994.

  7 Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite di uomini illustri, edited by P. d’Ancona e E. Aeschlimann, Milan, Arnoldo Mondadori, 1951.

  8 Leonardo Bruni, ‘The Study of Literature’ in Humanist Educational Treatises, edited and translated by Craig W. Kallendorf, Cambridge, Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 2002, §20.

  9 Battista Guarino, ‘A Program of Teaching and Learning’ in Humanist Educational Treatises, op. cit., §19.

  10 Aeneas Silvius Piccolimini, ‘The Education of Boys’ in Humanist Educational Treatises, op. cit., §33.

  11 Francisco Bethencourt, ‘A fundação’ in História das Inquisições: Portugal, Espanha e Itália, séculos XV-XIX, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 2000.

  12 J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1988.

  13 Jean-Christophe Saladin provides a breakdown of these terms by author in La Bataille du grec à la Renaissance, op. cit.

  14 Quoted in Jean-Christophe Saladin, La Bataille du grec à la Renaissance, op. cit.

  15 Neil Kent, The Soul of the North: A Social, Architectural and Cultural History of the Nordic Countries, 1700–1940, London, Reaktion Books, 2000.

  16 Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield [1766], Introduction by Frederick W. Hilles, New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1951.

  17 Quoted in Henry Kamen, The Disinherited: The Exiles Who Created Spanish Culture, Penguin/Allen Lane: London, 2007.

  18 Pedro Mexía, Silva de varia lección, edición de Isaías Lerner, Madrid, Editorial Castalia, 2003.

  19 Isaías Lerner, ‘Prólogo’ a Pedro Mexía, Silva de varia lección, op. cit.

  20 Francisco de Quevedo, Las zahúrdas de Platón, quoted in Raimundo Lida, Prosas de Quevedo, Barcelona, Editorial Crítica, 1980.

  21 Francisco de Quevedo, Defensa de Epicuro, quoted in Lida, op. cit.

  22 Cf. Octavio Paz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, o Las trampas de la fe, Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988.

  23 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, ‘El Sueño’ in Antología poética, selección e introducción José Miguel Oviedo, Madrid, Alianza, 2004.

  24 Francis Bacon, ‘De Sapientia Veterum’ [1609] translated into English as ‘The Wisdom of the Ancients’ [1619] in Bacon’s Essays including his Moral and Historical Works, London and New York, Frederick Warne and Co., 1892.

  Chapter 11

  1 Michel de Montaigne, ‘Les Essais’ in Collection de moralistes français, publié avec des commentaires par Amaury Duval, vol. IV, Paris, Chez Chassériau, 1822, II: 36.

  2 Charles Perrault, Parallèle des anciens et des modernes [1688–97], Geneva, Slatkine, 1971.

  3 Iliad, XI: 656.

  4 Princess Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinous, in Odyssey, VI: 70–73.

  5 Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Réflexions sur les lettres, Paris, Plon, 1941.

  6 Jean Racine, ‘Remarques sur l’Odysée’ in Oeuvres complètes, présentation, notes et commentaires par Raymond Picard, Paris, Gallimard, 1950, tome II: VI, 2.

  7 Louis Racine, ‘Mémoires contenant quelques particularités sur la vie et les ouvrages de Jean Racine’ in Oeuvres complètes, tome I.

  8 Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, Paris, Gallimard, 1954–5, vol. I: II [1867].

  9 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, nouvelle édition revue avec soin, Paris, Imprimerie d’Auguste Delalain, 1820, II: XIV: 11.

  10 Iliad, VI: 580–84.

  11 Jean Racine, Andromaque in Oeuvres complètes, tome I, op. cit., I: 1.

  12 Raymond Picard, introduction à Jean Racine, Andromaque in Oeuvres complètes, tome I, op. cit.

  13 Jean-Pierre Vernant, ‘Catégories de l’agent et de l’action en Grèce ancienne’ in Religions, histoires, raisons, Paris, François Maspero, 1979.

  14 Odyssey, XII: 278.

  15 Odyssey, XII: 336.

  16 Aldous Huxley, ‘Tragedy and the Whole Truth’ in The Complete Essays, vol. III, 1930–35, edited with commentary by Robert S. Baker and James Sexton, Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 2001.

  17 Jean Racine, Andromaque in Oeuvres complètes, tome I, op. cit., V: 3.

  18 Odyssey, V: 436–8.

  19 Odyssey, V: 476–7.

  20 Odyssey, V: 490–97.

  21 Jean Racine, ‘Remarques sur l’Odysée’ in Oeuvres complètes, op. cit.

  22 Anne Dacier, Des causes de la corruption du goût [1714], Geneva, Sladkine, 1970.

  23 Jean-Robert Armogathe, Le Quiétisme, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1973.

  24 François de Fénelon, Explication des maximes des saints, in Oeuvres, 2 vols, Paris, Gallimard, 1997.

  25 François de Fénelon, Les Aventures de Télémaque, in Oeuvres, op. cit.

  26 James Herbert Davis, Jr., Fénelon, Boston, Twayne, 1979.

  27 Montesquieu, Lettres persanes, XXXVI, Établissement du texte, prèface, chronologie, bibliographie et notes par Laurent Versini, Paris, GF-Flammarion, 1995.

  28 Baron Frédéric-Melchior Grimm, ‘Lettre du 1er juin 1757’ in Correspondance littéraire, II [1820], Paris, Mercure de France, 2001.

  Chapter 12

  1 All information on the painting is taken from Simon Schama’s Rembrandt’s Eyes, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

  2 Julius S. Held, ‘Rembrandt’s Aristotle’ in Rembrandt Studies, Princeton, 1991, quoted by Simon Schama.

  3 Plutarch, ‘Alexander’ in Lives, vol. II.

  4 Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy [1595] in The Renaissance in England, edited by H. E. Rowlands and H. Baker, Lexington, Mass., D. C. Heath, 1954.

  5 Sir Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning [1605] edited by Michael Kiernan, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2000.
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  6 T. S. Eliot, ‘Poetry in the Eighteenth Century’ in The Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol. 4, edited by Boris Ford, London, Penguin Books, 1957.

  7 Alexander Pope, The Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, edited by the Revd H. F. Cary, New York, George Routledge and Sons, 1872.

  8 Richard Outram, private correspondence.

  9 Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life, edited by Betty Radice, London, Penguin Books, 1998.

  10 Samuel Johnson, ‘Pope’ in Lives of the English Poets [1779–81], vol. II, with an Introduction by Arthur Waugh, Oxford and London, Oxford University Press, 1912.

  11 Henry Fielding, ‘A Journey from This World to the Next’ [1743] in The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, Esq. with an Essay on the Life, Genius and Achievement of the Author, by William Ernest Henley, London, William Heinemann, 1903.

  12 William Hazlitt, Lectures on English Poets in Selected Essays, edited by Geoffrey Keynes, London, The Nonesuch Press, 1946.

  13 Leslie Stephen, Pope, London, Macmillan and Co., 1909.

  14 Pope, The Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, op. cit.

  15 Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Las versiones homéricas’ in Discusión, Buenos Aires, Manuel Gleizer, 1932.

  16 Pope, The Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, op. cit., Book XXIII.

  17 Homer, The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles, Introduction and Notes by Bernard Knox, London, Penguin Books, 1990, XXIII: 243–8.

  18 Pope, Essay on Criticism, lines 68–9, 74–5, in The Poems of Alexander Pope (ed. John Butt), London, Methuen & Co, 1963.

  19 Samuel Johnson, ‘Pope’ in Lives of the English Poets, op. cit.

  20 William Cowper, Table Talk, London, John Sharpe, 1825, Book I, section 656.

  21 Homer in English, edited with an Introduction and Notes by George Steiner, London, Penguin Books, 1996.

  22 Matthew Arnold, On Translating Homer, London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1896.

  23 Ibid.

  24 Ibid.

  25 Ibid.

  26 A. E. Housman, ‘Introductory Lecture’ [1892] in The Name and Nature of Poetry and Other Selected Prose, edited by John Carter, Cambridge and London, Cambridge University Press, 1961.