Winkley Professor of Latin and Greek Barbara Weiden Boyd will be discussing the challenges and the joys of translation next week with fellow classics scholar Emily Wilson.
The two will meet in conversation on July 16 as part of the Pascal Hall Authors Series in Rockport, Maine.
An acclaimed translator, Wilson will be discussing her versions of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey with Boyd.
“The publication of Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey in 2017 was a momentous event, and not simply because it marked the first time that Homer’s remarkable poem had been translated into English by a woman,” said Boyd. She praises the “powerful and almost hypnotic strangeness” of Wilson’s translation, “especially compared to the great twentieth-century translations of the work by Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Fagles, Lombardo, and many other scholars—all of which, until now, had been staples in American education and among the reading public.”
Wilson’s translation of Homer’s Iliad in 2023, said Boyd, was considered by many critics an even greater challenge, tackling a poem noted for both its beauty and its brutality. “Wilson’s distinctive approach marks her as both a scholar and a poet, in the tradition of the great poet-scholars of antiquity.” Boyd recently taught Wilson’s Odyssey in a seminar on ancient epic and said she was struck immediately by its newness. “It caused me to read more closely this poem that I know and love so well. It also was remarkable to see my students take to it, as they began to consider the incredible challenge of translating something over 2,500 years old into compelling English verse,” said Boyd.
Boyd’s scholarly specialization is Latin poetry, especially the works of Virgil and Ovid, about whom she has written four books. In 2017, Boyd published a book on Ovid's reception of Homer, Ovid’s Homer: Authority, Repetition, and Reception (Oxford University Press).
As well as teaching courses on Greek and Latin languages and literatures, Boyd has also studied responses to classical culture after antiquity, from Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Byron to Ted Hughes, Margaret Atwood, and Ali Smith. She has a lively interest in contemporary receptions of classical themes and has published articles on the BBC-HBO series Rome and on the Odyssey theme in the AMC series Mad Men.
The July 16 event is sponsored by the Authors Guild and will be held at Pascal Hall in Rockport at 5:30 p.m. It is being held in partnership with the Lesher Family Foundation and Maine Media Workshops. The event is free, but space is limited, and registration is required to attend.
“I look forward to this fabulous opportunity to explore both the challenges and the pleasures of a uniquely creative calling,” said Boyd.
