num_pages: 816
description: Tales of Dionysus is the first English verse translation of one of the most extraordinary poems of the Greek literary tradition the Dionysiaca of Nonnus of Panopolis. By any standard the Dionysiaca is a formidable work. It is by far the longest poem surviving from the classical world a massive mythological epic stretching to over 20000 lines written in the tradition of Homer using Homers verse Homers language his narrative turns and motifs and invoking his ancient Muses. But it is also the last ancient epic to follow a Homeric model composed so late in fact that it stands as close in time to the Renaissance as it does to archaic Greece. Like its titular hero Dionysus with his fluidity of forms names and divine incarnations the poem itself is continually shifting shape. Out of its formal epic frame spills a tumult of ancient literary tragedy elegy didactic panegyric pastoral idyll and the novel are all parts of this gigantic enterprise each genre coming to the fore one after the other. Tales of Dionysus brings together forty-two translators from a wide range of backgrounds with different experiences and different potential relationships to the text of Nonnus poem. All work in their own styles and with their own individual approaches to the poem to translation and to poetic form. This variety turns Tales of Dionysus into a showcase of the multiple possibilities open to classical translation in the contemporary world.
language: English
title: Tales of Dionysus: The Dionysiaca of Nonnus of Panopolis
publisher: University of Michigan Press