9. Homer, The Iliad

Chapter 9 proposes that Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad can be fruitfully read as perhaps the most significant of all contributions to a cultural history of maintaining the tradition of epic. The key principle driving this endeavour is that the authentic voice of ancient epic should be preserved and made comprehensible for a readership living in the ethos of, and accustomed to the poetic modes of, a different world. Two passages, one from book eight and one from book twelve of the Iliad , are examined alongside versions by Sir John Denham (seventeenth century), William Cowper (later eighteenth century) and Alice Oswald (twenty-first century) to show how the inner voice of the original is maintained within living language.