Aristophanes: Four Comedies
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Book Overview
New English versions of Lysistrata, The Frogs, The Birds, and Ladies' Day. "Thanks to Dudley Fitts...we can appreciate Aristophanes' vigor, his robust style, his scorching wit, his earthy humor, his... This description may be from another edition of this product.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0156079003
ISBN13:9780156079006
Release Date:October 1962
Publisher:Mariner Books
Length:400 Pages
Weight:0.85 lbs.
Dimensions:1.1" x 5.3" x 8.0"
Customer Reviews
2 ratings
Big yuks in Old Greece
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
Years (many years) ago when I was an English major at UMass, we were given two translations of Aristophanes "The Birds" to read in order to make a point about reading translations. One was by a translator whose name I forgot (and gladly so). The other was by Mr. Fitts. The first was as boring as the ininitiated would expect a Greek comedy to be. But Fitts version, far truer to the original according to our professor, was totally bizarre and remarkably funny. It is as vibrant and eye-opening as Fagles translations of Homer.
The Ultimate Aristophanes
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
"Whiiiine, I don't want to read old Greek plays...they're so booooring", you say? Well, you might think that is true, especially if one your teachers bludgeoned you with the horrible British translations of Aristophanes that were done in the nineteenth century. The Victorian prudes of the nineteenth century were deeply embarrassed by the content of the Greek comedies. They felt that penis jokes were not the sort of morally uplifting things that the ancients should have talked about. All that changes with the Dudley Fitts translation. Fitts bring life back to old Aristophanes. The pace is quick and the dialogue is hysterically funny. Aristophanes was the leading wit of his time. If you can imagine a mix of P.J. O'Rourke and Jim Carrey, then you'd be close to getting at Aristophanes. The humor is sharp and often over the top, often with very earthy overtones; essentially, Greek. You really haven't read Aristophanes until you've Fitts' "Aristophanes:F! our Comedies." This is a translation to be enjoyed by all and not to dreaded as a crime to assign and punishment to read.
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