Emily Wilson - The Odyssey

 Wilson, E. (2017). The Odyssey (Homer). W. W. Norton & Company.


Caroline Alexander wrote a translation of the Iliad in 2015. However, it did not receive the public attention garnered by Emily Wilson whose translation of the Odyssey was published in 2017. Wilson wrote a long introduction explaining her rationale for her approach to the translation and its importance. She was widely interviewed and travelled to promote her book. 


She says in the introduction, and in her article in Homer’s Daughters (2019), that her approach to the translation is feminist. She felt a responsibility to provide a reliable version of Homer’s text to readers who have no Greek without continuing the assumptions about sex and gender embodied in male translations. She wanted to explore the fissures within the text itself, the open elements since there are points within the Odyssey where the text seems to challenge or undermine its own set of values; there are ambiguities. In her article she presents her seven strategies for feminist translation practices, which she applies in her translation, and three passages from the Odyssey are discussed in detail: the description of Helen when Telemachus visits Sparta (Book 4), the hanging of the slave women, who were called maids or sluts in previous translations (Book 22); and the reunion of Penelope and Odysseus, specifically the test of their bed (Book 23). She compares her decisions to those of male translators.


She says feminist translation theory is an underdeveloped area of study. 


Wilson’s translation of the Iliad is being published in 2023. 

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