Monday, December 8, 2008
10th Grade Homework: The Characteristics of Epic
In the comments section of this post, I have put the rest of the notes about epic poetry. You must be familiar with all of this information when you take the final. I ESPECIALLY recommend that you memorize the information about the homeric/epic simile.
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Epic: a long narrative poem that is written in elevated style which presents characters and action of heroic proportions.
Characteristics of Epic Poetry:
It begins in the middle of the action (in medias res)- The Iliad begins in the 10th year of the war. It does not begin with the judgment of Paris or Paris taking Helen away from Sparta.
An Epic’s themes are universal—the present, the past, and the future will still have these same situations. Any person who reads this story can understand or identify with at least one character. The Iliad has themes of war, the theme of how destructive anger can be, injustice, pride, death and grief, and the conflict that a man feels when he must choose between putting his life in danger or protecting his family, etc.
The hero of the epic is the ideal man in that culture: The hero of the story embodies the national, cultural or religious ideals and performs great deeds requiring superhuman courage often with supernatural aid (with the help of the gods)
In the Iliad, the ideal man is strong in battle and also intelligent—he is an eloquent speaker. He has to prove his worth in action and in word. The ideal man is also an individual—he does not usually fight for corporate glory—he fights for his OWN PERSONAL glory or his own personal motives. The ideal man also must respect the gods and be favored by them.
Supernatural/Divine intervention: gods are characters within the story and events and people are often affected by divine intervention. Characters also perform supernatural deeds— men can fight in battle and temporarily be given superhuman strength by a god. This temporary moment of superhuman strength is called an aristeia.
The epic is written as a poem, so it has several poetic devices: A Greek epic is written in dactylic hexameter. That means there are six feet of dactyls, which are one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables.
REPETITION:
In Homer’s Iliad, there are three main kinds of repetition. They are called:
STOCK EPITHETS: “Swift footed Achilleus,” “Gray Eyed Athene,” “Zeus of the Aegis”, “Clever Odysseus,” “Strong-greaved Achaians”
STOCK PHRASES: a phrase that is repeated throughout the epic:
Then in answer…. Spoke….
i.e. “Then in answer the goddess grey-eyed Athene spoke to him” (page 64-1.206)
“Then in answer again spoke Achilleus of the swift feet” (page 65, 1.215)
“Then in answer again spoke powerful Agamemnon” (66, line 285)
In battle scenes, when a warrior dies, a stock phrase used to express this is “He fell thunderously, and his armor clattered upon him”
STOCK SCENES: this is a scene or event in the action that occurs throughout the story—one of the most prominent stock scenes within the Iliad are scenes where a hecatomb is offered up to a god, as in the long description of the sacrifice that is made to Apollo in Chryse.
All of this repetition is called FORMULAIC LANGUAGE
Homeric/Epic Simile: an extended and elaborate simile
Book Six, page 166, lines 504-514: But Paris in turn did not linger long in his high house, but when he had put on his glorious armour with bronze elaborate he ran in the confidence of his quick feet through the city. As when some stalled horse who has been corn-fed at the manger breaking free of his rope gallops over the plain in thunder to his accustomed bathing place in a sweet-running river and in the pride of his strength holds high his head, and the mane floats over his shoulders; sure of his glorious strength, the quick knees carry him to the loved places and the pasture of horses; so from uttermost Pergamos came Paris, the son Priam…
Book 11, page 245: While Odysseus was pondering these things in his heart and his spirit the ranks of the armoured Trojans came on against him, and penned him in their midst, but made thereby a wound in their ranks, as when closing about a wild boar the hounds and the lusty young men rush him, and he comes out of his lair in the deep of a thicket grinding to an edge the white fangs in the crook of the jawbones, and these sweep in all about him, and the vaunt of his teeth uprises as they await him, terrible though he is, without wavering; so closing on Odysseus beloved of Zeus the Trojans rushed him.
One of the most common epic simile patterns is the comparison of a warrior to an animal in some sort of violent situation. Homer compares these men to animals in order to convey how the war has reduced these men to something that is less human, less civilized, and very savage. They are compared to animals because they have become like animals.
Book 4, lines 130-131: A simile describing Athene in battle, brushing an arrow away from her says “She brushed it away from his (Menelaos’) skin as lightly as when a mother brushes a fly away from her child who is lying in sweet sleep.”
This epic simile, along with the other epic similes including details about daily life or agricultural life are Homer’s way of reminding his readers that war is not a normal state— he wants to remind his readers that gods shouldn’t be swatting arrows away from warriors… instead, mothers should be swatting flies away from their sleeping children. The only dangers men should face are lions ravaging their flocks—not men ravaging them, their wives, or their sons.
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