If The Iliad was written down in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, then why was it that the first translation into English by a woman only appeared in 2015, by classicist Caroline Alexander? The ostensible absence of women is dispiriting to say the least, but women have in fact been working in translation for much longer than we think. Beginning with Anne Le Fèvre Dacier, a late 17th and early 18th century French classicist, up to Emily Wilson’s acclaimed The Odyssey in 2018 and The Iliad in 2023, there is a visible thread connecting these women as translators of much lauded texts.
Whereas the debate around female translators was much more potent at the time of Dacier, when published women writers were rare and often only elite women ‘of letters’, modern day feminist offerings of The Odyssey and The Iliad breathe new life into the source material and aim for a broader readership. The place of women translators was up for interrogation in the 18th century, whereas now attention is given to making the classics more relevant to contemporary readers, in Wilson's case by showing how The Odyssey provides a richly intersectional view of life during the Trojan War (12th or 13th century BCE).
The Iliad and The Odyssey and Women
To begin with, The Iliad and The Odyssey are stalwarts of the Western literary canon. The great tales of war and ancient civilisation are reflected in the epic scale of The Iliad, spanning the origins and course of the Trojan War, and The Odyssey, the twenty-year journey home from the war following a central hero, Odysseus. They are both epic poems, written in dactylic hexameter, in Greek, and believed to be written by ‘Homer’, who may have been one or several writers (this debate is known as the Homeric question). Narratively, questions around humanity are central to the conflicts of the poems, and the fervent belief in fate, gods, and mythical creatures ensures the legacy of the poems as fantastical and centred around journeys and family relationships. These epic poems primarily concern men, their acts of violence and the societies they sought to defend, but the female characters in these poems are not one-dimensional. Helen of Troy, Penelope, Circe and Nausicaa for example are all women with certain status, demonised or loved, who occupy a complex role as they are not simply wives or daughters.
Importantly, the work of modern female classicists like Mary Beard, Edith Hall and Nathalie Haynes has aimed to revise a culturally dominant view of Ancient Greece as a solely masculine world, bringing new life to the words of these epics. Therefore, the issue of women and Homer’s poems goes beyond the relatively secondary role they occupy in both epics, since translations by women are part of the broad reassessment of classical studies. And it emerges that an earlier strand in our story of translating Homer takes us back to the 1670s.
Anne Le Fèvre Dacier: The first female translator of Homer
Anne Le Fèvre Dacier, born c. 1651 in Northern France, is our first heroine, who appeared on the translation scene uninvited and ambitious. Her published defences of her Neoclassical style and choices as a writer reflect the uneasy place she held as an educated and privileged person who was nevertheless going against the norm by entering the male-dominated domain of translation. Taught Greek and Latin by her father, a professor of classics, her education was unusual for this time (Lauren Hepburn). She was invited to contribute to the special editions of Greek and Roman texts prepared for the Dauphin, The Delphin Classics, in the 1670s (Hepburn). Access to the highest ranks of French society gave Dacier certain freedoms and privileges as an academic, as she was highly educated in a time where classical education was withheld from most women. The publication of The Iliad in 1699 made Dacier the first woman to translate Homer’s poem into French, followed by The Odyssey (1708). Alexander Pope, a much better-known writer today, was her contemporary, and Dacier found much to criticise in his translation of The Iliad. He had a respected place in the literary sphere, and so Dacier’s decision to critique him indicated her gutsy aim. Taylor outlines her unique position, as a purveyor of the Ancient school of Classicism, therefore retaining Homer’s style. According to French and Comparative Literature Professor Helena Taylor, ‘Her status as savante, often a contested identity, was accepted’, so the choice of Dacier to publicly critique her male contemporaries underlines her self motivation to carve out a place in the ‘querelle d’Homèr, an academic debate that was largely comprised of male writers (22). She was keen to quarrel and engage in lively debate which was traditionally masculine, but many critics have rather narrowly viewed her as misguided ‘in her old age’ and unfeminine (24).
Thus she entered into the public debate over women’s status, known as the ‘querelles des femmes’, by publishing Une Défense d’Homère (A Defence of Homer) (1715) and Réflexions sur la Préface de Pope (Reflections on the Preface of Pope, 1719).
Erika Harlitz-Kern notes that, ‘In her line-by-line commentary to The Odyssey, Dacier mocks her male colleagues for using bombastic language in their translations in contrast to Homer's straightforward and humble poetry’. Her objective as a translator was to remain faithful to Homer’s style and language, and Dacier outlined how the beauty of his poem lay ‘dans la clarté & dans la noblesse; elle est claire par les mots propres, & noble par les mots empruntés’ (in its clarity and nobility; it is clear through its own words, and noble through the words that are borrowed) (Dacier 7).
In her prefaces Dacier defended the classical style of Homer and argued its superiority to Pope’s modern version; Her own position as a vessel for translation was to adopt a humble position. She wrote that ‘je me sens obligée de le defendre encore contre les reproches d’un homme plus eclairé’(I feel obliged to once more defend my translation against the criticisms of a brighter man) (35). She had to feign humility by claiming her male peers are ‘brighter’, and Marie-Pascale Pieretti underlined that she had to appear self-deprecating due to the contested place of women in the translation sphere: ‘Claiming to restore the integrity of Homer for her contemporaries, Anne Dacier, for example, presents her audacious project to translate the Iliad as writing for her own amusement’ (475-6). Even though Dacier was a ‘savante’, her expertise was still up for debate due to the quarrels surrounding women writers. Pope was reduced to humility in his response to Dacier, saying that ‘ my whole desire is but to pre- serve the humble character of a faithful Translator, and a quiet subject’ (Weinbrot 22). His rhetoric can only portray Dacier in fiery opposition to himself, a law-abiding and humble servant, as Dacier’s outspokenness would frustratingly be held against her as a female translator.
Despite staunch criticism, she firmly established herself as a knowledgeable classicist, and brought Homer’s epics to a wider and primarily female readership. She certainly had supporters, and Mary Astell’s ‘A Serious Proposal to the Ladies’ in 1694 praised her intelligence, calling upon her readership to ‘Remember, I pray you… the more modern Dacier!’ (Astell). Dacier then was considered a symbol of aspiration for women to be educated, even ‘modern’, an indicator of her role in the constant fight for women’s voices to be heard in education. Pieretti added that ‘Dacier had also presented these translations as a way to remedy female readers' lack of access to Greek antiquity’ (477). Dacier’s intellect was iconised in the cartoon Wonder Woman, where she was sketched out as a feminist hero and brought to a new generation of readers in 1951. The artists of Wonder Woman dramatised Dacier’s education as a young girl, with her father remarking ‘a girl with the mind of a brilliant man’, and this satirical representation of an extraordinary talent emphasises how she defied stereotypes of ‘feminine’ knowledge (DC Comics).
Moving to the present day, translation studies continue the project of widening the field of translated texts; in particular, the #womenintranslation project established in 2013 encourages publication and recognition for women writers and translators from around the world. Elsewhere, Emily Wilson, the British-American translator widely known for her fast-paced, inventive translations of Homer since she rose to popular attention with her new translation of The Odyssey in 2017, has commented on the gender bias that is pervasive in the world of classical studies: ‘The legacy of male domination is still with us – inside the discipline of classics itself and in how non-specialist general readers gain access’ as ‘the works of dead, white elite men have largely been translated by living, white elite men’ (Wilson). She calls up people to reclaim these texts, as they should be accessible to all.
The Iliad and its translators
The story of The Iliad attracted women translators who sought to demonstrate the accessibility of Greek classics for a wider readership. Women have great influence in the poem, even if their active voices are not laid out in the lines of the poems. The project of female translators has changed over the ages, and the possibilities of The Iliad lie in the universality of the story. Translators from Dacier to Emily Wilson have adapted the Greek to reflect societal and political concerns of their era. There is a legacy of male translators which female translators have worked against and subverted by decentering the patriarchal story of The Iliad.
Despite the homosocial vision of The Iliad, the irony lies in the fact that this great war between the Trojans and the Achaeans originated in the pursuit of a woman. Achilles identifies Helen as the source of the war in The Iliad, wondering why ‘we, for all our hearts’ sorrow, quarrelled together for the sake of a girl in soul-perishing hatred?’ (Homer 19.58-9). The cause of the Trojan war boiled down to ‘the sake of a girl’ is simplistic but illuminating (19.59). American literary critic George Steiner writes about Dacier’s contemporary, Pope, whose 1715-20 translation of The Iliad was followed by a succession of notable ‘Homers’: the Modernist ‘masters, such as D. H. Lawrence, W. H. Auden and, supremely, Joyce’, as well as Derek Walcott’s Omeros (372). Steiner only references Mme Dacier in passing and focuses more attention on the importance of George Chapman’s The Illiads (1598), so this near-absence emphasises the need to commemorate the important work of female translators and writers (367).
A gap of several hundred years separates Dacier’s translation in 1699, and the first English translation of The Iliad by a woman, Caroline Alexander in 2015. Emily Wilson’s translation is the newest, having been published in 2023. The epic poem benefits from such retellings as the role of women in The Iliad is significant.
Besides line by line translation, fiction retellings by female writers expose aspects of The Iliad which are pertinent to modern society. Amongst the fictional retellings of The Iliad, Alice Oswald’s poetic reimagining, Memorial (2011), focuses on the fatalities and brutality of warfare, whilst Pat Barker offer a feminist retelling from the perspective of Briseis in The Silence of the Girls (2018). These female-centric adaptations of The Iliad nonetheless represent translations of the poem, but demonstrate the creative potential to modernise the story.
Caroline Alexander’s translation has been criticised as too traditional, as she uses free verse so that the lines can replicate the language of the Greek. Sometimes viewed as a more old-fashioned manner of translating, Alexander wrote that ‘the offering of a complete translation of The Iliad should strive to replicate the Greek original in as many ways as the English language allows’ (51). Her traditional approach can make for a less fluid read in modern English, but as we have seen before with Dacier, when handling such an iconic poem, any translation choices are held up for questioning. The debate is much less gender-based than Dacier’s time, but Alexander’s choice was unique and was founded in her principles as a translator.
Moving onto Emily Wilson’s text, it is the newest in the translations of The Iliad. Naoíse Mac Sweeney noted in her review that Wilson’s The Iliad avoids ‘an unwarranted glorification of violence on the one hand and tedium on the other’ (Mac Sweeney). The tedium which was criticised in Dacier and even Alexander’s work indicates a key difference with Wilson’s translation. She differs from the two other translators’ intention to retain the original meaning and style as she modernises the poem in places, and like Alexander she uses a freer iambic pentameter which does not limit her lines to an archaic meter. Mac Sweeney also remarks that a ‘key element in Wilson’s style is the register, poised between the high epic and the everyday’, which is far removed from Dacier’s Neoclassical style. Building upon this, the importance of Wilson’s often colloquial style is paramount as her Odyssey is refreshing, lyrical and evocative of ancient times but importantly modern. Coupled with the quick pace, Wilson’s translation attests to the transformation from Dacier’s aim to retain Homer’s voice to Wilson’s much more modern voice.
However, Wilson is aware of her place in a long line of translators and the project of women working within the classics. For example, Wilson herself identified several important words in her translation, including a term which Helen uses to refer to herself, ‘my dog-face self’, in Book Three (Wilson 3.223). She noted that a famous American translator before her, Richmond Lattimore, chose ‘slut that I am’ which Wilson avoided (Homer trans. Lattimore). As an example of Homeric insult, this phrase has been translated as all manner of derogatory words typically attributed to women, like ‘bitch’ and ‘wanton’, but the actual Greek is not necessarily interpreted as a sexist insult. Wilson’s choice to avoid the gendered derogatory insult suggests Helen’s sense of irony towards her role in the war rather than a sexist self-reprimand. It is, in any case, an oxymoron, and so can be interpreted with some freedom. This is not to say that Homer’s texts are free from misogynistic thinking, but that a modern translation can reframe the way in which female characters in particular view themselves and can be presented as three-dimensional beings.
The Iliad’s many translators have grappled with the key issues around retaining the original style, meter and meanings in their language. Oswald herself argues that female translators feel a ‘strange and potentially productive sense of intimate alienation’ through working with classic texts written by men, and Wilson concurs that ‘female translators often stand at a critical distance when approaching authors who are…male ’ (Oswald, in Gibson 58; Wilson). Alexander and Wilson are aware of the need to carve out a space for women to enter the world of classics, and in this way continue Dacier’s aim to widen the readership of Homer. Their removal from the story is much more due to historical bias against female translators than the tale itself, and so their work adds significantly to the modern critical understanding of The Odyssey and The Iliad.
Emily Wilson’s Odyssey and Atwood’s Penelopiad
Emily Wilson’s The Odyssey in 2018 was the first translation into English by a woman, another milestone in the world of classics, which aims to modernise the story whilst retaining its swift pace.
In Book 22, twelve young women working in Odysseus’ palace are suspected of disloyalty and are killed without any real justification or mercy. Wilson’s translation describes how ‘They gasped, feet twitching for a while, but not for long’ (22.473-4). The cruelty of their killing is emphasised, however the conjunction ‘but’ reassures the reader that they do not suffer for long. Wilson spoke about the translation of violence, particular gender-based acts in the poem, and criticised how ‘contemporary translators and commentators often present the massacre of these women as if it were quite ordinary, and entirely justified’. This moment in the tale requires careful reading in modern day society, as contemporary concerns around gender violence demand that the culture of victim blaming is changed. Wilson’s translation can be read in light of the widely recognised translations, as she uses the words to garner new meaning which sympathises with the women rather than suggesting culpability.
Looking back at another famous translation, Alexander Pope went further by offering a misogynistic outlook of the enslaved women in The Odyssey. In his 1726 translation, he used defamatory language, calling the slave-girls the ‘nightly prostitutes’ and ‘base revilers of our house and name’ . He overtly demonises the women, portraying them as immoral and explicitly to blame. His version may be a product of his time, but nonetheless presents a merciless approach to the women in the story. Wilson stated that she wanted to ‘bring out the horror of what happened to these women’ and restore dignity to them, which is evident in her brutal yet emotional treatment of the enslaved girls’ unjust killing. She refers to them as girls, not creatures, and frames this scene as a crime, not a punishment, which is specifically inflicted by men in power over women.
A focus on the female experience in The Odyssey also is something which Wilson aimed to draw out. There are independent female characters like Circe the sorceress (popularised recently by Madeline Miller’s Circe) and Calypso the goddess of the sea; as well as Athena, goddess of war and wisdom, who has significant power over Odysseus’ journey home. Wilson remarked that ‘The Odyssey traces deep male fears about female power’ (Wilson). Typically, the dangerous female character has supernatural qualities, and Wilson’s interest in male anxiety brings a much more intersectional view of The Odyssey as a text that is aware of gender power dynamics.
Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005) is a gift of Homeric storytelling, transforming The Odyssey by retelling it through the perspective of the ill-fated young girls. The novella’s title uses the name of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, to emphasise the female perspective. Atwood’s narrators are a Greek chorus, a typical narrative technique within Ancient Greek plays, and choosing the twelve murdered servant girls as the chorus restores their voices as well as reinforcing the sense of inescapable fate as women trapped in a patriarchal world. Penelope can be defined in many terms, a long suffering wife, a clever but manipulative woman, or an entrapped wife trying to fend off male suitors. Her decision to weave a web before declaring a new husband symbolises her shrewdness, as she undoes her weaving every night to keep her suitors at bay. Wilson lists Atwood’s The Penelopiad among the greatest classical reimaginings by women, which subvert and even resist classic translations. The Penelopiad has been performed onstage in several productions and contributes to the ever-growing genre of Ancient Greek retellings which shed light on the female experience. Wilson’s translations are thus part of a contemporary shift in classical studies to expand the world of the epic poems to consider marginalised figures and interrogate gender roles.
Much can be learnt from the women who have taken on the challenge of translating The Iliad and The Odyssey. From Dacier’s pioneering work shedding a light on the limits of female education, to Wilson’s modernising translation and the retellings in contemporary fiction, the female translator’s voice has surmounted obstacles surrounding these classics. The role of a female translator can bring to life the nuances of warfare and de-centre the story from a purely phallocentric world and have much to contribute to the ever-diversifying world of classicism. Dacier's defence of her place in the classics world made her a trailblazer, and as classical studies have become more inclusive, female translators like Alexander and Wilson have followed in her stead. The very existence of a translation by a woman, my study has shown, presents a milestone in translation, indicating the gender disparity in the classics. Female translators have thus been breaking down the barriers to Homer’s texts for hundreds of years.
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