Emily Wilson Journeys Through Ancient Literature

From the widely celebrated translator whose renditions of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad have captured a generation's imagination

Please note this event is now taking place at St Swithin's Church. The date and time will remain the same.

In this sharp and entertaining tour through antiquity, Emily Wilson explores the complicated terrain of reading and writing about the ancient past. Drawing on twenty years of scholarship and teaching, Wilson explores the difficult choices that translators must make, the pleasures of finding new solutions to old problems, and the inevitable frustrations of never fully capturing what is in the original work.

Across chapters that range from the politics of Helen of Troy to the obscenities of Aristophanes, from Roman imitation of Greek models to contemporary debates over foreignising and domesticising styles, Wilson examines how modern norms of gender, sexuality, violence, humor, and power complicate our readings of ancient works, and how translation always risks denaturing what is unique and strange about the ancient world.

Erudite and accessible, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea is at once an introduction to the wonders of Greek and Roman literature, a manifesto for the value of translation in a rapidly changing world, and an invitation to encounter ancient cultures anew.

'With wit, passion and clarity, [Emily Wilson] invites us into each of these fascinating subjects. The final essay especially is required reading for anyone interest in translation, drawing back the veil on how a brilliant scholar and writer approaches her work.' Madeline Miller

Emily Wilson is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been named a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a MacArthur Fellow. In addition to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, she has published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca. She lives in Philadelphia.