Put Some English On It: Translating Greek and Latin Meter

Put Some English On It: Translating Greek and Latin Meter

Event Description

Chris Childers: Put Some English On It: Translating Greek and Latin Meter

How do poets spin their words in poems, and how can a translator get the right sort of English on them? This talk will offer a preview of a piece forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Greek and Latin Meter (/ Metre), using billiards as a metaphor for the kind of "spin" involved in "turning" the lyric meters of Greece and Rome into poetic translations in English. Specifically, it will address the choices I made (in The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric) with regard to two of my favorite meters, alcaic stanzas and elegiac couplets, and will provide examples both of "foreignizing" and "domesticating" approaches, videlicet, of imitating classical scansion in English as well as finding analogies for classical meters from the traditional repertoire of English poetry. 

Event Info

May 01, 2025 at 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM EDT

Online, May 1st, 7:00p.m. ET

Guest Speaker

RSVP