Parker, Jan

About the author: Dr. Jan Parker is a Research Fellow of the Open University’s Humanities Higher Education Research Group and Senior member of the University of Cambridge Classics Faculty. She teaches tragedy and epic; her Chapman’s Homer is published by Wordsworth.

Dialogic Education and the Problematics of Translation in Homer and Greek Tragedy

2001 0-7734-7401-3
This book opens up a new way of reading classical literary texts, appropriate both to the needs and competencies of today’s university students and also, it is argued, to the classic texts themselves. The texts’ rich linguistic fabric is constructed out of the play of issues and character, of action and of evaluation; a play that is quickly lost in translation. The solution offered is not the traditional one of ever more intensive language teaching. Rather, the book argues for the provision of texts glossed with key words to enable students to create engaged, critical readings for themselves: to read through rather than in translation.