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The Aeneid, Volume 1: Introduction, Books I - VIII
Virgil's story of Aeneas, exiled from fallen Troy and leading his people to a new life through the founding of Rome, was familiar in the middle ages. The first true and full translation into any form of English was completed in Scotland in 1513 by Gavin Douglas and published in print forty years later. His version (still considered by some to be the finest of all) is significant historically but also for its intrinsic qualities: vigour, faithfulness, and a remarkable flair for language.
Douglas was a scholar as well as a poet and brought to his task a detailed knowledge of the Latin text and of its major commentators, together with a sensitive mastery of his own language, both Scots and English, contemporary and archaic. The present edition is the first to regularise his spelling and make access easier for the modern reader without compromising the authentic Scots-English blend of his language. Glossaries (side- and end-) explain obscurities in his vocabulary while the introduction and notes set the work in context and indicate how Douglas understands and refocusses the great Virgilian epic. It will be of interest to medievalists and Renaissance scholars, to classicists and to students of the English language, and not least to the general reader whom Douglas had especially in mind. Gordon Kendal is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of English, University of St Andrews.
Douglas was a scholar as well as a poet and brought to his task a detailed knowledge of the Latin text and of its major commentators, together with a sensitive mastery of his own language, both Scots and English, contemporary and archaic. The present edition is the first to regularise his spelling and make access easier for the modern reader without compromising the authentic Scots-English blend of his language. Glossaries (side- and end-) explain obscurities in his vocabulary while the introduction and notes set the work in context and indicate how Douglas understands and refocusses the great Virgilian epic. It will be of interest to medievalists and Renaissance scholars, to classicists and to students of the English language, and not least to the general reader whom Douglas had especially in mind. Gordon Kendal is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of English, University of St Andrews.
409 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2011
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About the author
Virgil
3,762 books1,863 followersborn 15 October 70 BC
died 21 September 19 BC
Roman poet Virgil, also Vergil, originally Publius Vergilius Maro, composed the Aeneid , an epic telling after the sack of Troy of the wanderings of Aeneas.
Work of Virgil greatly influenced on western literature; in most notably Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.
died 21 September 19 BC
Roman poet Virgil, also Vergil, originally Publius Vergilius Maro, composed the Aeneid , an epic telling after the sack of Troy of the wanderings of Aeneas.
Work of Virgil greatly influenced on western literature; in most notably Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.
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January 2, 2015
New paperbacks of a legendary work, Gavin Douglas' translation of the Aeneid from 1513. It's in a Scots/English blend, not too hard for the unScottish. Often - more often than not, I find - you don't need a specific word definition. Context tells you most of them, or a suggestiveness. Example: of the winds let loose, They umbeset the seas busteously. See? Don't bother with the glossary, read uninterrupted and enjoy the gist. And the gusto, for like the Elizabethan translators of Homer and Ovid, gusto and gorgeous language, true poetry, uninhibited originality, and yet with that a belief in what they're writing about, a conviction... these are what you come for. They haven't been bettered. Ezra Pound thought so: he said of this translation, "Better than the original, as Douglas had heard the sea."
So here's snatches of sea poetry from the first book. This edition has glosses on the page, conveniently, but I'm going to give you the (mostly) unglossed. Listen to the words, swim along with them...
Soon after this, of men the clamour rase,
The tackles graisles, cables gan freet and frais.
Swith with the clouds heaven, sun, and day's licht
Hid, and brist out of the Trojans' sicht;
Darkness as nicht beset the seas about;
The firmament gan rumblin, rair, and rowt,
The skies oft lichtnit with fiery levin,
And shortly baith air, sea, and heaven,
And everything menaced the men to dee,
Shawing the death present tofore their ee.
....
A blustering bub, out frae the north braying,
Gan ower the foreship in the back-sail ding,
And to the stars up the flood gan cast.
The ayrs, hatches, and the tackles brast,
The ship's steven frawart her went gan writhe,
And turnit her braid side to the waws swithe. [waws - waves]
Heich as a hill the jaw of water brak,
And in a heap cam on them with a swack.
Some heezit hovering on the waws' heicht,
And some the sucking sea sae law gart licht
Them seemit the earth openit amid the flood;
The stour up bullerit sand as it were wuid. [bullerit - boiled]
...
Before his een hastily frae the north wind
A hideous sea shippit at her stern behind:
Smat furth the skipper (clepit Leucaspis),
His heid down warpit; and the ship with this
Thrice there the flood whirlit about round,
The sucking swelch sank under sea and drowned.
So here's snatches of sea poetry from the first book. This edition has glosses on the page, conveniently, but I'm going to give you the (mostly) unglossed. Listen to the words, swim along with them...
Soon after this, of men the clamour rase,
The tackles graisles, cables gan freet and frais.
Swith with the clouds heaven, sun, and day's licht
Hid, and brist out of the Trojans' sicht;
Darkness as nicht beset the seas about;
The firmament gan rumblin, rair, and rowt,
The skies oft lichtnit with fiery levin,
And shortly baith air, sea, and heaven,
And everything menaced the men to dee,
Shawing the death present tofore their ee.
....
A blustering bub, out frae the north braying,
Gan ower the foreship in the back-sail ding,
And to the stars up the flood gan cast.
The ayrs, hatches, and the tackles brast,
The ship's steven frawart her went gan writhe,
And turnit her braid side to the waws swithe. [waws - waves]
Heich as a hill the jaw of water brak,
And in a heap cam on them with a swack.
Some heezit hovering on the waws' heicht,
And some the sucking sea sae law gart licht
Them seemit the earth openit amid the flood;
The stour up bullerit sand as it were wuid. [bullerit - boiled]
...
Before his een hastily frae the north wind
A hideous sea shippit at her stern behind:
Smat furth the skipper (clepit Leucaspis),
His heid down warpit; and the ship with this
Thrice there the flood whirlit about round,
The sucking swelch sank under sea and drowned.
Displaying 1 of 1 review