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| Author: Plutarch
Creators: Arthur Hugh Clough, James Atlas, John Dryden
Publisher: Modern Library
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $11.16
You Save: $2.79 (20%)
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 57401
Media: Paperback
Edition: Modern Library Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 816
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0375756760
Dewey Decimal Number: 920.038
EAN: 9780375756764
Publication Date: April 10, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-6 of 6 | | « PREV | | |
 Dryden, Clough and Others April 30, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
First off, let me clarify that what follows is a review of a particular edition of Plutarch's Lives, the current (2001) edition from Modern Library Classics. It is not a review of the book itself and will not provide any information on the relevance of this wonderful classic or the many lives it includes or the ingenious structure of paralleling the lives of Greeks and Romans or the importance of this text to the history of biography. Several other reviews here do a fine job of that and I see no reason to cover the same ground. Moreover, I've noted rather a lot of confusion about this edition in reviews here on Amazon (see particularly the reviews associated with the hardbound Modern Library volumes). I am still researching the Dryden edition, but thought I might offer a few comments to provide clarity and a better understanding of this edition for those whose buying decisions are based on the nature and quality of a particular translation.
"The Dryden Translation" - this unusual phrasing (which appears on the cover) has become the traditional descriptor for this version of the Lives. In fact, Dryden is not, properly speaking, the translator of this book. In one article in Wikipedia he is described as an overseer for the edition and in another as editor-in-chief, but he is also described as having simply "lent" his name to the enterprise. I am still researching this, but I should not be surprised if Jacob Tonson, the publisher, was not more involved in editing than was Dryden. [Update: My research to date has been inconclusive on the full nature of Dryden's role in this undertaking, but none of the more detailed resources I have turned to suggest that Dryden actually participated in this book as a "translator." Very possibly, this is one of those many little facts of history that have gone unrecorded and for which we shall have to content ourselves with the conjecture of scholarly experts. What is most surprising, however, is how often Dryden is given as the translator of this volume in various less detailed references to the book. Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, has Dryden as the translator; Wikipedia, much to my surprise, does not -- what can I say? sometimes the amateurs outdo the professionals.]
Dryden's primary involvement in the project seems to have been his "Life of Plutarch" which is included in this edition only by way of a two short excerpts in Clough's Preface.
Arthur Hugh Clough's Preface and Revisions - Clough was a nineteenth century poet. Clough's preface was, for me, a major reason I became interested in the Modern Library edition. I found the preface quite intriguing. It is a solid piece of work from an individual who was neither a full time scholar, nor a particularly notable prose writer. In a couple of cases, the argument at the very beginning of the preface for example, he seems to drop his thoughts without fully completing them. But this is a minor problem in an otherwise well thought out and informative discussion of Plutarch and his book.
The text itself - One of the reviewers here on Amazon calls this Clough's "train wreck" assuming that the difficulties in the text must lie with Clough because, concludes the reviewer, Dryden is a much better prose writer. Few would doubt that Dryden was a better prose writer, but I strongly suspect that the translation in this case (not Dryden's as I have already pointed out) was aided by Clough's hand. I am having trouble getting a copy of the original (pre-Clough) "Dryden" translation, although I should very much like to do a comparison. Once Clough's version came out, publishers seem to have had no reason to go back to the original which provides at least some indication that Clough had resolved some of the problems with the text. As a result, the pure "Dryden" editions are older and more expensive.
I find the text quite readable. It is not a "modern" translation (I hate using the word "modern" here because I think of Clough as a modern, perhaps I should say it is not a twentieth or twenty-first century translation). This text is clearly more given to complex clausal structures than we would expect in a popular translation today. I think it more than has its merits. I'm not sure but that the complex clausal structures might not have their own virtue in a text like this. Certainly one of the interesting qualities in Plutarch is a kind of questioning of sources that the syntax of this edition brings out rather nicely. I say that, however, as a non-classicist with little or no Greek, so I cannot be sure whether it really does reflect the original.
Notes - My chief concern with the text would be that it lacks annotation or other textual apparatus beyond an index. This is particularly peculiar given that the cover states that it includes notes by Clough! I am trying to get my hands on an earlier edition of the Clough revision to see what it might contain in the way of notes. Nonetheless, I'm not quite sure what to make of the Modern Library advertising notes on the cover, but providing none. Until I know better what these notes might entail, I'm loath to make any judgment. [Update: I attempted to contact Random House about my concerns but, to my surprise, I could not get them to understand that I was not referring to the notes in the preface, but rather to notes for the text itself! I hate to be too hard on Random House over something like this, notheless, I still feel I should provide some warning to potential buyers. The language on the cover suggests that this book includes Clough's notes. It does not. I have, since I first wrote this, purchased a copy of an early edition with the Clough edits. In all honesty Clough's notes are few and far between, but there is enough of value in them that, in my opinion, at least, they should have been included. And, not to be too snarky, but Clough and Random House deserve editors who understand the difference between textual notes and notes to a preface.]
Introduction by James Atlas - I wish I could speak more highly of the Modern Library introduction, but I am afraid I felt it was lacking on many levels. It fails in anyway to clarify the nature of the translation. One would think that it would at least contain some mention of the relevance of this particular text (why reprint it now?), of the curious assignment of Dryden's name as translator to a book that he did not translate, and of the role that Clough played as a nineteenth century editor of a seventeenth century text.
Additionally, and perhaps most warranting concern, Atlas's introduction covers such similar ground to Clough's Preface (even using many of the same quotations) that it feels rather curiously redundant.
The cover - I cannot close without commenting on the cover. It looks like wallpaper for a nineteenth century classicist's study. And quite honestly, I like it.
I've given the book four stars because I see no reason to visit the sins of this particular edition upon the text as a whole, and the text has plenty of merits both as a translation and as a classic of literature.
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