The Aeneid (Barnes & Noble Classics) | 
| Author: Vergil
Creators: Sarah Spence, Christopher Pearse Cranch
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $7.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 1635112
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 1593082371
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781593082376
ASIN: 1593082371
Publication Date: March 1, 2007
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Product Description
The Aeneid, by Vergil, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Written more than two thousand years ago and one of Western literature’s indisputable masterpieces, the Aeneid is the Roman “answer” to Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The latter celebrate Greek civilization through the stories of Greek victory in the Trojan War and the exploits of Odysseus. Vergil’s Aeneid sings the triumph of Roman culture, transforming Troy’s tragedy into a step on the path toward the founding of Rome by the descendants of the last Trojan hero, Aeneas. Fleeing the fallen city with a few followers, Aeneas undergoes a series of adventures, including a passionate love affair with the ravishing Dido, queen of Carthage, a visit to the underworld to meet the spirit of his father, and mortal combat with Turnus, a powerful king. Each episode tests his courage, morality, and humanity, and proves his worthiness to be the ancestor of one of the greatest empires in history. Sarah Spence is Professor of Classics at the University of Georgia. Founding editor of the journal Literary Imagination, she has published widely on Vergil and medieval vernacular poetry. She is author of two books, Rhetorics of Reason and Desire: Vergil, Augustine, and the Troubadors and Texts and the Self in the Twelfth Century, and has edited two volumes of essays on Vergil. She lives in Athens, Georgia.
Book Description
This is the first major single-volume edition in English of Book IX of Virgil's Aeneid, a pivotal part of the poem that contains the nocturnal interlude of the ill-fated expedition of the young Trojans Nisus and Euryalus.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 in blank verse, with many jarringly bad lines November 1, 2008
Those interested in this translation may wish to consult my review of Frederick Ahl's translation of the Aeneid, where I give a detailed metrical and stylistic analysis of the opening passage of the Aeneid in Ruden's translation, among others.
This translation is somewhat better than most modern translations. Though usually uninspired and not fully familiar with English literary idiom, the translator is able, perhaps 80% of the time, to write metrically correct blank verse. The other 20% of the time, however, she writes very awkward prose masquerading as poetry.
Others have already done much better blank verse versions of the Aeneid, such as Delabere May.
 Sweeping, Poignant, Faithful. Forget Fagles. September 8, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have been a student of the classics since I was young. Naturally, I had been exposed to the Aeneid early on in the fashion that most students are: with the revered Robert Fitzgerald translation. Through the years many translations, both good and bad, have been published: Humphries, Lombardo (probably one of the best), and Mandelbaum to name a few of the most popular.
My adoration of the Ruden translation started in the most modest way. I was browsing through volumes in a used book store and came across the Yale University Press publication of the Aeneid, a translation that I had not heard of, from a translator I knew nothing about. I hopped on the internet while in the store and did some research, and came up with almost unanimously positive reviews, so I purchased it after reading a few, impressive passages.
Currently, all the rage is over the Penguin translation by Robert Fagles. To my understanding, his is the translation most widely taught in schools next to Fitzgerald. I am a fan of Fagles. His storytelling is grand and vivid. However, anyone who is versed in Classical Latin and has read the Aeneid in its original language can tell you that Fagles takes far too many liberties, embellishing Vergil's epic very subjectively (and not sparingly). This is problem to those who want a faithful reading of Vergil. Fagle's is far from a faithful translation of Vergil's poetry. Latin is a very compact, concise, and flowing language, with many subtle nuances. It is not grandiose and cumbersome like Fagles.
But Sarah Ruden has done something uncanny here. It is a popular saying that "one cannot translate poetry," which is true. It is inevitable that when translating poetry, much of the vigor and hidden meanings are lost. But Ruden's is the closest to the original one can get in modern English idiom. She avoids the flowery embellishments that Fagles is guilty of, preserves the conciseness of Vergil's Latin, without sacrificing the elegance of her or Vergil's pens (Ruden is, after all, an accomplished poet from what I understand). And, even more laudable, is the fact the Ruden's is practically a line-by-line translation, using the exact same number of lines used by Vergil. She also has a talent for preserving Vergil's meter whenever possible. The Aeneid, to some theorists, was made to be orated and heard. And Ruden's is a translation that is a pleasure hear as well as read.
Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Ruden's Aeneid, I like to say that Ruden is to Fagles, as Chickering is to Heaney. Ruden's translation might not be as famous as Fagles', but it is more scholarly, more faithful, and elegant in a different, yet more authentic way (just as Chickering's Beowulf may never achieve the status of Heaney's, yet Chickering preserves the spirit of the original in a more convincing way.
Get Ruden's Aeneid! Whether you are a novice to Vergil's Aeneid, a casual reader (it is a relatively quick read), or a full-on Latinist/Classicist, you will not be dissatisfied with this text.
Incredible! September 6, 2008
I am not a fan of Verse...I've always prefered Prose but I think this is the first time I actually fell in love with Verse!
Sarah Ruden's translation is absolutely incredible! I can't believe how powerful and exciting (not to mention poetic) it is!
It almost seems that it could have even been written in (high) English verse
After comparing multiple versions I have to say that it is perhaps the most faithful, epic and poetic translation I've come by written in Verse.
It ranks at the top together with Jackson Knight's and Stanley Lonbardo's translations.
Hats off to Sarah Ruden and all who read this magnificent version!
Ryan
Vergil extraordinaire! May 30, 2008
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
Since I first read Virgil some sixty years ago, a young Latin student in a New England prep school, I have returned again and again to renew the experience. Every time it has been meaningful. This time with this translation it makes even a more profound mark on me. The translation is brilliant, and Virgil scholars will long be indebted to Ms. Sarah Ruden for her insight and wisdom.
I sing of a great translation January 12, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Roman society was enamoured of Greek culture -- many of the best 'Roman' things were Greek; the major gods were derivative of the Greek pantheon; philosophy, literature, science, political ideals, architecture -- all this was adopted from the Greeks. It makes sense that, at the point of their ascendancy in the world, they would long for an epic history similar to the Homeric legends; the Iliad and the Odyssey, written some 500 years after the actual events they depict, tell of the heroism of the Greeks in their battle against Troy (Ilium). The Aeneid, written by Vergil 700 years after Homer, at the commission of Augustus (himself in the process of consolidating his authority over Rome), turns the heroic victory of the much-admired Greeks on its head by postulating a survivor from Troy, Aeneas, who undergoes as journey akin to the Odyssey, even further afield.
Vergil constructs Aeneas, a very minor character in the Iliad, as the princely survivor and pilgrim from Troy, on a journey through the Mediterranean in search of a new home. According to Fitzgerald, who wrote a brief postscript to the poem, Vergil created a Homeric hero set in a Homeric age, purposefully following the Iliad and Odyssey as if they were formula, in the way that many a Hollywood director follows the formulaic pattern of past successful films. Vergil did not create the Trojan legend of Roman origins, but his poem solidified the notion in popular and scholarly sentiment.
Vergil sets the seeds for future animosity between Carthage and Rome in the Aeneid, too -- the curse of queen Dido on the descendants of Aeneas of never-ending strife played into then-recent recollections of war in the Roman mind. Books I through VI are much more studied than VII through XII, but the whole of the Aeneid is a spectacular tale.
Fitzgerald's modern and accessible translation makes the Aeneid really come to life for modern readers. It is a verse translation, not forced into word-by-word construction nor into false, flowery and stuffy structured verse that would seem formal and distant. This is a language familiar to modern readers, just as Vergil's Latin would have been readily accessible to the listeners and readers of his time.
Vergil died before he could complete the story. He wished it to be burned; fortunately, Augustus had other ideas. Still, there are incomplete lines and thoughts, and occasional conflicts in the storyline that one assumes might have been worked out in the end, had more editing time been available. Despite these, the Aeneid remains a masterpiece, and Fitzgerald's translation will be a standard bearer for some time to come.
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