Emily Wilson discusses and reads from her translation of Homer’s The Odyssey at the 2018 Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference. During her lecture, she details her process of translating the work in a way that incorporates it “vividness” as well as its complexity and ambivalence towards its main character.

Wilson is a Professor in the Department of Classical Studies and Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. Her books include The Death of Socrates, 2007, and a translation of selected tragedies by Seneca, 2010. She has served as the Classics editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature for many years; the latest revised edition of the anthology appeared in January 2018. She published The Greatest Empire: A life of Seneca, in 2014, and four translations of plays by Euripides in the Modern Library The Greek Plays, 2016. Her new verse translation of the Odyssey was published in November 2017.  She is currently working on a book about translation, gender and the Graeco-Roman classics.

All Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference readings are available in their entirety online. To hear more, please visit the Bread Loaf website.