Prometheus Bound

by Aeschylus, Joel Agee (Translator), Joel Agee (Introduction)

Overview

One of the greatest of the classical Greek dramas, based on the Greek legend of the Titan demi-god who, against the will of Zeus, stole fire from the gods for the benefit of man. His terrible punishment by Zeus, and his continuing defiance of Zeus in the face of that punishment, remain universal symbols of man's vulnerability in any struggle with the gods. Reprinted from a standard translation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590178607
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	03/24/2015
Series:	NYRB Classics Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Aeschylus (525 bc–456 bc), the first of ancient Greece’s major dramatists, is considered the father of Greek tragedy. He is said to have been the author of as many as ninety plays, of which seven survive.

Joel Agee is a writer and translator. He has received several prizes, including the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin in 2008 and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for his translation of Heinrich von Kleist’s verse play Penthesilea. He is the author of two memoirs—Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany and, more recently, In the House of My Fear. His translation of Prometheus Bound was produced at the Getty Villa in 2013. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Table of Contents

Prometheus Bound.

What People are Saying About This

Seth L. Schein

“This is the best Prometheus Bound in English. Deborah Roberts’ translation is accurate, readable, and true to the original in idiom, imagery, and the combination of a high style with occasional colloquialism. The informative notes and perceptive Introduction will help readers to experience the play with heightened pleasure and understanding. ”
—Seth L. Schein, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis

Rachel Hadas

”This is an outstandingly useful edition of Prometheus Bound. The translation is both faithful and graceful, and the introduction to this difficult play is a model of clarity, intelligence, and a profound familiarity with the workings of Greek myth, Greek literature, and literature in general. ”
—Rachel Hadas, Department of English, Rutgers University

Editorial Reviews

Prometheus’s rebellion is the rebellion of life against inertia, of mercy and love against tyranny, of humanity against cruelty and arbitrary violence.” —Thomas Merton

“Joel Agee has found exciting ways to vivify the speeches with apparently scrupulous fidelity to sound. In this English, the poetry slashes like modern verse and the direct address boasts a blunt immediacy that exhorts us to consider our own issues with the State, with individualism and obedience, with the larger consequences of war and despoilment. It blows away the dated rhetoric of such predecessors as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Lowell.” —Myron Meisel, The Hollywood Reporter

From the Publisher