The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation, Analogues, Criticism

Front Cover
Norton, 2001 - Literary Criticism - 229 pages
More than a thousand years before Homer or the Bible, Mesopotamian poets sang ofthe hero-king Gilgamesh, who sought to crown his superhuman exploits byfinding eternal life. This Norton Critical Edition presentstranslations by Benjamin R. Foster, Douglas Frayne, and Gary Beckman ofthe entire Gilgamesh narrative tradition, with some texts now inEnglish for the first time. In addition to the eleven tablets of thegreat Akkadian epic, written around 1700 B.C.E., the book includesseven Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, written before 2000 B.C.E., aswell as the later Hittite version and other related sources, among thema Babylonian parody of the epic.

"Criticism" provides interpretive essays by William Moran, ThorkildJacobsen, and Rivkah Harris and concludes with a modern poetic responseto the Gilgamesh epic by Hillary Major.

A Glossary of Proper Names and a Selected Bibliography are alsoincluded.

About the author (2001)

Benjamin R. Foster is Professor of Assyriology at Yale University, where he has taught since 1975. His books include Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, From Distant Days: Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia, Sargonic Tablets from Telloh in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, and Administration and Use of Institutional Land in Sargonic Sumer, and Umma in the Sargonic Period.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation, Analogues, Criticism
Volume 0 of Norton critical edition
AuthorGilgamesh
EditorsBenjamin Read Foster, Douglas Frayne, Gary M. Beckman
Translated byBenjamin Read Foster, Douglas Frayne, Gary M. Beckman
Editionillustrated
PublisherNorton, 2001
ISBN0393975169, 9780393975161
Length229 pages
Subjects › 

Literary Criticism / Ancient & Classical
  
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