Tales of Dionysus is the first English verse translation of one of the most extraordinary poems of the Greek literary tradition, the Dionysiaca of Nonnus of Panopolis. By any standard, the Dionysiaca is a formidable work. It is by far the longest poem surviving from the classical world, a massive mythological epic stretching to over 20,000 lines, written in the tradition of Homer, using Homer’s verse, Homer’s language, his narrative turns and motifs, and invoking his ancient Muses. But it is also the last ancient epic to follow a Homeric model, composed so late in fact that it stands as close in time to the Renaissance as it does to archaic Greece. Like its titular hero, Dionysus, with his fluidity of forms, names, and divine incarnations, the poem itself is continually shifting shape. Out of its formal epic frame spills a tumult of ancient literary types: tragedy, elegy, didactic, panegyric, pastoral idyll, and the novel are all parts of this gigantic enterprise, each genre coming to the fore one after the other. 
Tales of Dionysus brings together forty-two translators from a wide range of backgrounds, with different experiences and different potential relationships to the text of Nonnus’ poem. All work in their own styles and with their own individual approaches to the poem, to translation, and to poetic form. This variety turns Tales of Dionysus into a showcase of the multiple possibilities open to classical translation in the contemporary world.

Tales of Dionysus: The Dionysiaca of Nonnus of Panopolis

Literature & Fiction

Lombardo, Stanley

Levitan, William

History & Criticism

University of Michigan Press

<div> Tales of Dionysus is the first English verse translation of one of the most extraordinary poems of the Greek literary tradition, the Dionysiaca of Nonnus of Panopolis. By any standard, the Dionysiaca is a formidable work. It is by far the longest poem surviving from the classical world, a massive mythological epic stretching to over 20,000 lines, written in the tradition of Homer, using Homer's verse, Homer's language, his narrative turns and motifs, and invoking his ancient Muses. But it is also the last ancient epic to follow a Homeric model, composed so late in fact that it stands as close in time to the Renaissance as it does to archaic Greece. Like its titular hero, Dionysus, with his fluidity of forms, names, and divine incarnations, the poem itself is continually shifting shape. Out of its formal epic frame spills a tumult of ancient literary types: tragedy, elegy, didactic, panegyric, pastoral idyll, and the novel are all parts of this gigantic enterprise, each genre coming to the fore one after the other. Tales of Dionysus brings together forty-two translators from a wide range of backgrounds, with different experiences and different potential relationships to the text of Nonnus' poem. All work in their own styles and with their own individual approaches to the poem, to translation, and to poetic form. This variety turns Tales of Dionysus into a showcase of the multiple possibilities open to classical translation in the contemporary world. </div>

This translation captures the terse and enigmatic beauty of the ancient original and resists the tendency toward interpretive paraphrase found in many other editions. Along with the complete translation, Lombardo and Addiss provide one or more key lines from the original Chinese for each of the eighty-one sections, together with a transliteration of the Chinese characters and a glossary commenting on the pronunciation and meaning of each Chinese character displayed. This greatly enhances the reader's appreciation of how the Chinese text works and feels and the different ways it can be translated into English.

Tao Te Ching (Hackett Classics)

Politics & Social Sciences

Addiss, Stephen

Watson, Burton

Lao, Tzu

Philosophy

Hackett Publishers

Tao Te Ching, also commonly known as Lao Tzu, is one of the most important Chinese classics and has had great influence on Chinese thought. It is regarded as the bible of Taoism and is by far the most frequently translated Chinese classic, with over thirty translations into English alone.

Tao Te Ching

Hackett Pub Co Inc

Lombardo's Odyssey offers the distinctive speed, clarity, and boldness that so distinguished his 1997 Iliad. "[Lombardo] has brought his laconic wit and love of the ribald . . . to his version of the Odyssey. His carefully honed syntax gives the narrative energy and a whirlwind pace. The lines, rhythmic and clipped, have the tautness and force of Odysseus' bow." —Chris Hedges, The New York Times Book Review

Odyssey (Hackett Publishing Co.)

Stanley Lombardo

HOMER

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Abelard and Heloise: The Letters and Other Writings (Hackett Classics)

The most comprehensive compilation of the works of Abelard and Heloise ever presented in a single volume in English, The Letters and Other Writings features an accurate and stylistically faithful new translation of both The Calamities of Peter Abelard and the remarkable letters it sparked between the ill-fated twelfth-century philosopher and his brilliant former student and lover―an exchange whose intellectual passion, formal virtuosity, and psychological drama distinguish it as one of the most extraordinary correspondences in European history. Thanks to this edition, Latin-less readers will be better placed than ever to see why this undisputed milestone in the intellectual life of medieval France is also a masterpiece of Western literature.
In addition to the The Calamities and the letters--the first complete English translation of all seven in more than eighty years--this volume includes an Introduction, a map, and a chronology, Abelard's Confession of Faith, letters between Heloise and Peter the Venerable, the Introduction to The Questions of Heloise, and selected songs and poems by Abelard, among them a previously untranslated shaped poem, Open Wide Your Eyes. Extracts of lost letters sometimes ascribed to Abelard and Heloise are given in appendixes.

Biographies & Memoirs

Héloïse

Abélard, Peter

Arts & Literature

A Rumor of Innocents: The Return of the Nephilim

Genre Fiction

Independently published

In the tradition of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars novels, medievalist Stanley Lombardo’s Paxton at Bosworth Field delivers a tale of high adventure and romance across Space and Time. Pursued by an Apache war party, Carter Paxton rides through a medicine cave in Arizona and emerges in medieval England. His survival tools include not only his Sharps buffalo rifle and a pair of Colt revolvers, but – more importantly -- three books that will change the course of history. Upon arriving, Paxton rescues a lone hunter and learns that he is none other than Richard III, who in no way resembles Shakespeare’s hunchbacked monster. Beset by enemies, Richard welcomes the aid of this mysterious stranger -- while the King’s niece, the beautiful Lady Joanna, welcomes her handsome new suitor. When Joanna discovers the copy of Shakespeare’s plays that Paxton has brought with him, he reveals to her his past and his determination to help Richard win the crucial Battle of Bosworth Field. With Bosworth mere months away, and limited to the materials and techniques of the time, Paxton and Joanna strive to bring nineteenth-century technology to the fifteenth century. Assisting their efforts are Master Printer William Caxton, former soldier of fortune Brother Tranquillus, and scholarly warrior Anthony, Earl Rivers. But will their help be sufficient -- and timely enough – as the insidious and arrogant Bishop Morton, Duke of Buckingham, and Lord Stanley plot to bring the rapacious Pretender Henry Tudor to the throne? With the discovery of King Richard III's remains, modern defenders of the White Boar are rallying to PAXTON AT BOSWORTH FIELD as a glorious glimpse of what might have been if Fate had been kind and brought the right kind ot help to Richard in his time of need.

Paxton at Bosworth Field

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Parmenides and Empedocles: The fragments in verse translation

Parmenides and Empedocles, along with Heraclitus the most important of the pre-Socratic philosophers, were at the same time among the greatest poets of the ancient world. But their work is rarely treated and still more rarely translated in its original form--as poetry. The complete extant fragments of Parmenides and Empedocles are collected here for the first time in a translation responsive to the original verse texts. Parmenides' philosophical fragments are here given as the poetic remains of the thinker from Elea in Southern Italy whom Socrates wondered at and Plato held in awe. What emerges from the poetry is at once an uncompromising vision of absolute Being and a compassionate understanding of the human cosmos: It is the body grows to Mind. All men desire the same thing, apprehend the same The plenum is thought, and thought preponderates. The poetry of Empedocles--reincarnationist, naturalist, cosmologist, religious leader, physiologist, and a metaphysician--is presented here in the personal idiom of the fifth-century Sicilian who has been called the last of the Greek shamans: I have already been A bush and a bird A boy and a girl A mute fish in the sea.

Parmenides and Empedocles: The Fragments in Verse Translation

Wipf and Stock

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