Literary Imagination, Ancient and Modern

Perhaps best known for his widely acclaimed translations of the Greek tragedies and Herodotus's "History," as well as his edition of Hobbes's "Thucydides," David Grene has also had a major impact as a teacher and interpreter of texts both ancient and modern. In this book, distinguished colleagues and former students explore the imaginative force of literature and history in articulating and illuminating the human condition. Ranging as widely as Grene's own interests in Greek and Roman antiquity, in drama, poetry, and the novel, in the art of translation, and in English history, these essays include discussions of the "Odyssey" and "Ulysses," the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid and Apuleius, Mallarme's English and T.S. Eliot's religion, and the mutually antipathetic minds of Edmund Burke and Thomas Jefferson.