Dictator
Published on 25. October 2018
176 pages
978-1-78410-619-5 (ISBN)
Description
Dictator recreates Gilgamesh using the 1,500-word vocabulary of Globish, put together by Jean-Paul Nerriere. Globish is a business language, appropriate to translate cuneiform which emerged from the need to record business transactions. Nerriere considered it the world dialect of the third millenium; likewise Akkadian, the language of Gilgamesh, was the lingua franca of communications in the Near East. This link between script, language and business is there in the substance of the poem. An underpinning theme involving trade, here trade in hard wood and access to forests for building materials, links the poem to recent wars in and around Iraq, where the contemporary commodity is oil. This in turn links the poem to related issues such as migration and the refugee crisis. Working with refugees in Palermo in 2017, Terry was involved with putting on a puppet version of Gilgamesh where the children related viscerally to the story, particularly the boat scenes.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Carcanet Press Ltd
File size
0,29 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-78410-619-5 (9781784106195)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Philip Terry was born in Belfast, and is a poet, translator, and a writer of fiction.He has translated the work of Georges Perec, Michele Metail and Raymond Queneau, and is the author of the novel tapestry, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. His poetry and experimental translations include Oulipoems, Dante's Inferno, and Dictator, a version of the Epic of Gilgamesh in Globish. The Penguin Book of Oulipo, which he edited, was published in Penguin Modern Classics in 2020, and Carcanet published his edition of Jean-Luc Champerret's The Lascaux Notebooks, the first ever anthology of Ice Age poetry, in April 2022.
Content
- Front Cover
- About the Author
- Title Page
- Acknowledgments
- Copyright
- Contents
- Half Title
- Stone I Cut i
- Stone I Cut ii
- Stone I Cut iii
- Stone I Cut iv
- Stone I Cut v
- Stone I Cut vi
- Stone II Cut i [Damaged by fire]
- Stone II Cut ii
- Stone II Cut iii [Beginning damaged]
- Stone II Cut iv [End damaged by building work]
- Stone II Cut v [End missing]
- Stone II Cut vi [Damaged]
- Stone III Cut i
- Stone III Cut ii [End damaged]
- Stone III Cut iii [Bomb damage]
- Stone III Cut iv [Beginning damaged]
- Stone III Cut v [Damaged by fire]
- Stone III Cut vi [Part damaged by fire]
- Stone IV Cut I [Part flood damaged]
- Stone IV Cut ii [Completely missing or damaged]
- Stone IV Cut iii [Completely missing or damaged]
- Stone IV Cut iv [Completely missing or damaged]
- Stone IV Cut v [Part bomb damaged]
- Stone IV Cut vi [Part damaged by fire]
- Stone V Cut i [Part damaged by fire]
- Stone V Cut ii [Part bomb damaged]
- Stone V Cut iii [Beginning damaged]
- Stone V Cut iv [End damaged]
- Stone V Cut v [Damaged by fire]
- Stone V Cut vi [Damaged by fire]
- Stone VI Cut i
- Stone VI Cut ii [Beginning damaged]
- Stone VI Cut iii
- Stone VI Cut iv
- Stone VI Cut v
- Stone VI Cut vi
- Stone VII Cut i
- Stone VII Cut ii
- Stone VII Cut iii
- Stone VII Cut iv
- Stone VII Cut v [Badly flood damaged]
- Stone VII Cut vi
- Stone VIII Cut i
- Stone VIII Cut ii
- Stone VIII Cut iii [End damaged]
- Stone VIII Cut iv [Bomb damaged]
- Stone VIII Cut v [Bomb damaged]
- Stone VIII Cut vi [Completely missing or damaged]
- Stone IX Cut i [End damaged]
- Stone IX Cut ii [End damaged by building work]
- Stone IX Cut iii [Beginning and end missing]
- Stone IX Cut iv
- Stone IX Cut v
- Stone IX Cut vi [Damaged by flood]
- Stone X Cut i
- Stone X Cut ii
- Stone X Cut iii
- Stone X Cut iv [End damaged]
- Stone X Cut v
- Stone X Cut vi [Beginning damaged]
- Stone XI Cut I
- Stone XI Cut ii
- Stone XI Cut iii
- Stone XI Cut iv
- Stone XI Cut v
- Stone XI Cut vi
- Stone XII Cut i
- Stone XII Cut ii
- Stone XII Cut iii
- Stone XII Cut iv
- Stone XII Cut v [Fire damage]
- Stone XII Cut vi
- Key
- Afterword
