The Odyssey in Context: Myth, History, and TranslationMaster ClassIn-Person
Friday, May 29, 2026
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m
Location To Be Announced
In this master class, Emily Wilson—the great contemporary translator of Homer’s The Odyssey—will situate the epic poem in its historical and cultural worlds and in the earlier mythic and oral-poetic traditions that shaped it. We will track its narrative design, especially recurring “type-scenes” of hospitality and recognition, and explore some of its many themes, including homecoming and hospitality, persuasion and deceit, time and memory, gender and family, poverty and wealth, and violence and honor. We’ll also examine the challenges of retranslating ancient texts, placing Wilson’s choices alongside major contemporary translators to see how diction, rhythm, and ethics of representation alter the poem we think we know.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS, HISTORY, WORLD LITERATURE, CLASSICS
Emily Wilson
Emily Wilson is the department chair and professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, holding the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities. Wilson received her BA and MPhil from Oxford University and her PhD from Yale University. She has been named a fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. She has published three monographs and numerous essays about ancient literature and its later receptions, and verse translations of The Iliad, The Odyssey, and some plays of Euripides, Sophocles, and Seneca. She lives in Philadelphia.