Founder connections
- Ed CatmullListened to an audiobook; praised the oral storytellingCatmull describes being unable to read the verse, buying a tape of The Iliad and finding its oral storytelling captivating. This proves a listening experience and praise. The transcript garbles the translator as “Thomas Bagels”; this audit does not repair that into proof of his translation, narrator, audio edition or full completion. The Fagles print edition is a registry choice only.Source
Summary
Homer’s Iliad sets human and divine conflict within the war at Troy. Anger, honor, grief and the cost of violence shape a heroic poem in which moments of ordinary life stand beside scenes of battle.
Robert Fagles’s English verse translation attends to the movement and repeated phrases of the poem. Bernard Knox supplies an introduction and notes. This selected print edition gives readers one English rendering of a work that also has a long history of oral performance.
Why read it Our view
For founders reading poetry to study storytelling, attend to rhythm, repetition and the way conflict changes a character’s choices. Compare the experience of hearing a passage with reading it on a page.