★ Reviews for Sophocles

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Book reviews for "Sophocles" sorted by average review score:

Sophocles, 1 : Ajax, Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes (Penn Greek Drama Series)

Published in Hardcover by University of Pennsylvania Press (1998)

Authors: Frederick Raphael, Palmer Bovie, David R. Slavitt, Kenneth McLeish, E. A. Sophocles, Brendan Galvin, Henry Taylor, and Armand Schwerner

Amazon base price: $45.00
Used price: $19.06

Average review score:

hmmm.

These stroies are worth reading,but the translations in this book are fairly bland. In fact, the translation for Ajax is pretty bad. I don't think I've ever seen the word twinkie used in a Greek trajedy before. I would recomend picking up other versions of these plays.

Sophocles, 2 : King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone (Penn Greek Drama Series)

Published in Hardcover by University of Pennsylvania Press (1999)

Authors: George Garrett, David R. Slavitt, Palmer Bovie, Smith Palmer Bovie, E. A. Sophocles, Jascha Frederick Kessler, and Kelly Cherry

Amazon base price: $45.00

Average review score:

An excellent work, but a poor translation.

I do not mean, by giving this book a poor rating, to dissuade anyone from reading Sophocles' greatest works. Rather, I would instead urge everyone to avoid the Slavitt & Bovie translations specifically. Examples of the excessive liberties that they have taken with other Attic dramas include inserting puns and one liners into the Chorus of Agamemnon, adding references to Black American hymns to the Chorus of the Libation Bearers, as well as many smaller, but still significant translation crimes. Get the Grene & Lattimore or almost any other version of these works, but do not get the Slavitt & Bovie