Robert Torrance

Robert M. Torrance is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at UC Davis.

Torrance received his B. A. from Harvard in Greek and English, his M. A. at UC Berkeley in Comparative Literature, and his Ph. D. at Harvard in Comparative Literature. After teaching at Harvard and at Brooklyn College of CUNY, he moved to UC Davis in 1976.

During his 25 years at Davis, he served several terms as both director and graduate adviser.

His book-length publications are translations of two plays of Sophocles, Philoctetes and The Women of Trachis; "The Comic Hero" (from Homer to Joyce and Mann); Ideal and Spleen: The Crisis of Transcendent Vision in Romantic, Symbolist, and Modern Poetry; The Spiritual Quest: Transcendence in Myth, Religion, and Science; and Encompassing Nature: A Sourcebook discussing varied historical experiences and concepts of nature in Western and non-Western cultures, with introductions, commentary and translations.

Bibliography

Sophocles The Women of Trachis and Philoctetes: a new verse translation (1966). Revised "Philoctetes" in Oscar Mandel, Philoctetes and the Fall of Troy (1981)

• The Comic Hero (1978)
• Ideal and Spleen: The Crisis of Transcendent Vision in Romantic, Symbolist, and Modern Poetry (1987)
• Encompassing Nature: A Sourcebook (1998)
• The Spiritual Quest: Transcendence in Myth, Religion, and Science (1994). Translations in modern Greek (2005) and Spanish (2006)
• Dante's Inferno, a New Translation in Terza Rima (X-libris, 2011)