Epic. 'Homer'. Hesiod

‘Epic’ is of course an invented concept, a Western imposition on the natural heterogeneity of long narrative forms from cultures around the world. Stemming ultimately from ancient Greek epos, which spans the field from ‘word’ to ‘tale’ in Homer, and the popular term epopoiia (‘verse composition’), ancient Greek epic has been described as a genre in some depth since Aristotle; once canonized, it became a literary tool of unquestioned usefulness and applicability worldwide, primarily on the cultural and ideological strength of its Greco-Roman origins.
Like all genre labels, ‘epic’ can help focus our vision, creating categories that facilitate comparison and contrast as well as filling in a background against which individual tales can be understood. In that sense it can function as an effective organizing principle, and generic identity can certainly serve as a tool for effective reading. But, as already adumbrated, neither ‘the epic’ nor any other genre is an archetype. The nation and individuals who produce ‘epics’ have no uniform code of generic requirements; indeed, even their internal systems of nomenclature for various kinds of verbal art prove radically divergent... and in applying this concept and label uncritically to long narrative forms from other cultures we run the risk of unintentionally colonizing their verbal art...

Relatively few epics are smaller in extent than the Homeric poems – Beowulf at 3 182 lines and the hundred-odd medieval French chansons de geste at about the same or lesser length are examples – but many are far longer. A more dependable characteristic of epic across cultures is the often-cited feature of ‘omnibus genre’, that is, the extent to which the epic absorbs or is in conversation with other poetic genres in the cultural repertoire. Critics have identified prayers, laments, proverbs, catalogues and inset stories within the Iliad and Odyssey...

The presence of formulas, such as ‘swift-footed Achilles’ or ‘wine-dark sea’, has often been cited as an indication of the Homeric poems’ debt to an ancient Greek oral tradition, as the recurrence of typical scenes like Arming the Hero or Feasting... When Andromache pleads with Hector in Iliad 6 to remain inside Troy with her and Astyanax, her use of traditional scene of Lament – customarily a vehicle for actually mourning the dead – suggests the inevitability of her husband’s demise. The Return story pattern of the Odyssey, mirrored in a host of Indo-European epic traditions, accounts for the order and sequence of the poem, for Penelope’s trademark intransigence, and for the closure of the poem after XXIII, 296...
Homeric epic has drawn definition from other stylistic features as well, very prominently from its prologues, catalogues and similes. The Iliad begins with an appeal to the Muse and a sketch of the mythic background to the action that follows, and the Odyssey starts similarly, with particular attention to Odysseus strivings and an exhortation to the Muse to ‘speak also to us’. Correspondingly, The Siri Epic begins with an extensive series of invocations, while South Slavic songs also make use of pripjevi, or prologues, to start up the narrative action.

National character – the epic as a charter of group identity, myth in the service of indigenous social history – is an aspect of many scholars’ concept of the genre. The Iliad glorifies the Achaean achievement in battle and the Odyssey memorializes the post-Troy return to one’s homeland with all the dangers and challenges such a journey and homecoming pose... The ‘epic ethos’ reaches far beyond its most immediate context, and well beyond where document-based history can go: the Kalevala has long fuelled the emergence of the Finns as an individual nation, as well as the discipline of folk-lore studies and the music of Sibelius.
National characters and group identity are often encoded in heroic actions, with a central focus on martial achievement, but there are other sorts of epic vehicles as well. The heroism in the Iliad – the acts of war and winning of kleos on the battlefield, irrespective of whether one lives or dies - is not entirely coincident with heroism in the Odyssey, which consists of winning survival, return and re-establishment of the social order.

John Miles Foley

***

...the straight truth is that we can say next to nothing for certain about the original circumstances of production of our two poems, neither about their audience nor their author nor their context of communication. For a start, they come from a time well before any kind of firm external historical record...
'Homer' never in any way declares who he is, where he comes from, or who he is making poetry for. Even if he did, we would have to treat the declaration with care - it need not be literally true - but he has covered his own tracks so completely that this question does not arise. More than in almost any other poetry, the craftsman suppresses his own presence, and effaces his own identity.

Achilles is uncompromising, overt in his feelings, unhesitatingly ready to die in order to make good his failings: Odysseus, the great survivor, is subtle, always ready to temporize, to disguise, and to lie...
The archetypal anitypes go far beyond the two heroes. The Iliad tells directly of only a few crucial days out of the whole Trojan War; and it is almost entirely set, claustrophobically almost, at Troy. At the same time, the poem extends understanding towards a wide range of characters, and to both sides in the war. While the Odyssey narrates only a small number of days directly - those leading up to Odysseus' return and revenge on Ithake - it covers, by means of flashbacks, a wide spread of places, including the varied story-worlds of Odysseus' adventures. And his adventures (and those of Menelaos) are spread over some ten years. Yet, for all its range of time and place, the Odyssey is centred on one man and his close associates in a way quite different from the multiplicity of the Iliad.
The Odyssey is fundamentally a crime-and-punishment story: the good and the likeable triumph, and the wicked are in the end brought low. It all moves towards reunion and the establishment of a stable and peaceful society, even though that is not fully acheved by the end of the poem (the eventuality is profesied). The Odyssey's overall direction is from suffering and disruption towards restoration and the united family. The Iliad, on the other hand, is not evidently a story of right and wrong; it tells of a world in which all suffer, and where the suffering is not apportioned by deserving. The finest people and the finest relationships - Achilles, Patroklos, Hektor, Andromache, Priam - are destroyed. The best gets wasted; anger and conflict rule human life. The prosperous and civilized city of Troy is to go up in flames; and by no means all of leading Achaians will get home - and even fewer will enjoy the fruits of victorious peace. Two quite different views of the human condition, then, and yet somehow a pair, like non-identical twins.

Oliver Taplin

***

The Theogony, in about 1 000 lines, covers the origin and the genealogies of some 300 gods (many in lists of course) and it all leads up towards the establishment of Zeus as supreme divine ruler. The shorter Works and Days is a kind of discursive collection of wise advice, especially about good husbandry; it tells what a man should do to fit into the natural and moral order of the world. Unlike any other early hexameter poetry, W&D is addressed to fellow contemporaries, mostly to Hesiod's layabout brother Perses, and partly to the local lords whom he accuses of corruption.
Although so different in tone and subject from Homer, Hesiod's poems are in the same hexameter metre, and in a pretty similar style and diction. There has been much dispute over which cane the first, but it may well be that the two poets were contemporaries, or at least their lives may have overlapped. Homer almost certainly came though, from the other side of the Aegean Sea, from the middle part of the Asia Minor coast known as Ionia, near its border with the more northern part known as Aiolis. Even so, it is not impossible that they both participated in the same poetic occasions sometimes. The ancient Greeks certainly liked to believe that they did, and stories about a great 'Contest' between them grew up early, probably within a few generations of their own day. This sets up a kind of contest within the whole nature of poetry: the story-teller of glamorous champions versus the font of homely wisdom…
It was surely Hesiod himself who established the Muses, traditionally from Mount Olympos far to the north, on his local mountain, Helikon. He even seems to have coined, in his Theogony, their canonical nine names…
Hesiod performed his poetry then (or made out that he preformed) at a big public occasion which attracted visitors and competitors. Competition can be good, he claims elsewhere (W&D 25-6). So a picture begins to take shape of poets who travel, and whose venues include big public occasions where they can compete to win attention, prestige, and reward.
In W&D Hesiod casts himself as a grim old bugger, tough, without illusions, worn down by hard labour, pessimistic (174-177). But this does not mean that Hesiod's audience listened to him in order to get depressed. What does his poetry offer them, then? Explicitly: vivid wisdom, mythical and religiouy lore, and glorification of the gods, above all of Zeus. But there is an important passage in the Theogony which brings out a further, key reason for audiences to give time to this special form of discourse, poetry. Hesiod is talking of the behaviour and blessings of a good basileus (lord), and emphasizing the importance to him of the poet: (97-103).

Oliver Taplin

***

John Miles Foley. Epic as a genre. In: Robert Fowler ed. The Cambridge Companion to Homer. Cambridge UP, 2004-2007.

Oliver Taplin. The spring of the Muses: Homer and related poetry. In: Oliver Taplin ed. Literature in the Greek World. Oxford UP, 2000-2001.

The Epic. Homer, "Odyssey"

Lecture from 25 of October, Thursday

I. The Theme of "Odyssey" ("What about" is the Poem). What Part of the Myth uses Homer

1. Moments of the myth (or legend) of the Trojan war
2. The theme of "Odyssey"


II. Plot and Composition of "Odyssey"

1. "Iliad"'s plot
2. "Odyssey"'s plot
3. Composition of the poem


III. Odysseus' Adventures


IV. The Heroes from Troja Return Home. The Common Plot of "Iliad" and "Odyssey"

The Epic. Homer, "Iliad"

Lecture from 18 of October, Thursday

I. Homer and the events of the Trojan war

1. Sources and data concerning the author of "Iliad" and "Odyssey"
2. Sources and date for the war the Trojan legend tells us about
a. Time of the Trojan war
b. Possible reasons for the war. Its range
c. Who were the Trojans


II. Epic Poetry

1. Formal characteristics of epic
2. Typical content of an epic poem
3. Trojan cycle


III. "Iliad"

1. Summary of the poem
2. Ways of retardation
3. Poetical language


Literature in English (available in the web):
Trojan War
http://ancient-anatolia.blogspot.com/2006/09/trojan-war.html
Trojan War (with illustrations)
http://greece.exteen.com/20070929/trojan-war
The Rise of the Greek Epic. by Gilbert Murray. Oxford, 1907
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=91351652#

Introduction to the Study of Ancient Greek Literature

I. About the work during the semester


II. List of the Lectures

A. Poetry
1. Homer. "Iliad"
2. Homer. "Odyssey"
3. Hesiod. "Theogony". "Works and Days"
4. Classical Lyric. Pindar
5. Hellenistic Lyric. The Poetry of Hellenism.
6. Tragedy
7. Comedy
8. New Comedy

B. Prose
9. History. Herodotus and Thycidides
10. Rhetoric. Demosthenes
11. The Philosophical Dialogue. Plato
12. The Novel


III. Reading List (in translation)


IV. The Ancient Greek Literature - a Survey


Literature in English (available in the web):
Classical and Hellenistic Greece
http://hleefish.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!1pTDlhMOIJB3vzh2cIwdysyQ!716.entry
A History of Ancient Greek Literature. by Gilbert Murray.
http://www.questia.com/library/book/a-history-of-ancient-greek-literature-by-gilbert-murray.jsp

Building a Masters Programme: Difficulties and Challenges

(continues from October, 28)

A year later the Department of Classics considered the creation of another Master’s – in Byzantine studies. At first glance it seemed, that the designers have drawn the moral from the experience of the specialty so far. Firstly, the project has been initiated by professors in two specialties – classical and modern Greek philology (the second was created in the beginning of the 90-ies, and is administratively ruled by the Department of Classics). Moreover, the programme had to be run with the cooperation of the Theological Faculty, which had restored its status of a faculty in the University in the beginning of the 90-ies. Previously it had been separated as an independent HEI, called “Spiritual academy” (sic!). Besides, since the very beginning the designers of the programme had invited for elaboration of the conception colleagues from a third faculty – the Philosophical one. Some authoritative retired professors-historians had agreed to participate as well.
The programme was supposed to include in comparatively equal proportions philological, linguistic, historical, theological, philosophical and practical linguistic disciplines. Thus the problem with the enrollment of the master-students seemed to be solved, because for the programme could opt bachelors in theology, classical and modern Greek philology, as well as historians and philosophers. In fact there were no limitations. The candidate could be a humanitarian or other and (s)he was expected merely to possess a diploma for a completed higher education. It was presumed that the number of the optional classes will exceed the number of the obligatory disciplines, and that the professors will be invited from the University and from other places as well. All that encouraged the designers of the programme (I was among them) to believe in the future of the project.
This programme not only didn’t start, but even did not reach a discussion at the Faculty council; what means that the team didn’t manage to formulate a proposal. The initiators of the programme from our Department could not reach an agreement with the partners of the Theological faculty on two kinds of questions.
1. Who will take the administrative and the financial responsibility for the project? Who is going to administer the students and to do the administrative services, connected with their enrollments, fees, exams, marks of the exams etc?
2. How to be solved the problem with the academic persons, who teach similar material (authors, themes)? No one was prepared for that, because there was no concurrence and competition in the previous system, as has been already mentioned. Every professor had his/her secured field in the frames of one’s community, and the different communities (separated even administratively) did not communicate at all. And not only that. The people in them did not know each other personally and often have not heard their names.

Maybe this system for research and education could reach perfection, if only it were possible in one whole state to exist one and only one specialist in each scholar, scientific or educational topic. A “specialist” means a person, who is authorized by the government to speak and write on this topic. I mention “by the government” on purpose. The truth is that till the present day the certificate for the doctoral, the associate professor’s and the professor’s title, is issued by a special institution, entirely independent from the universities, but dependent from the prime minister (because he appoints its president). The ideal situation - every one to know one’s own and no one to know the other’s - had not been achieved during the XX century not because of lack of political will. Simply there is not terrestrial force and reason, which could define and limit once and forever the topics for a scholar enquiry and for a discussion whatsoever. An ancient philosopher would say, that this is due to the eternal and insurmountable chaos in the sublunary part of the universe; or to the inseparability of the primordial ideas themselves. These facts are mentioned by Plato and Aristotle; but even earlier other Greek thinkers had pointed them out and were sorry about them.


3. The curriculum of the Master’s programme Ancient culture and literature

The next year, simultaneously with the of the reform of the curricula, which had to be fit to the European credit transfer system, the collegium of the classicists decided to propose to the faculty a new master’s programme, entitled “Ancient culture and literature”. This is precisely the programme, whose development I have decided to sketch for you today. In the beginning the conception was based on the following conclusions, derived on the already acquired experience.

(to be continued)

(the restaurant "By the Witches" - Shipka str., five minutes on foot from the University)

The Palace of the Knights of Rhodes

The paper* proposes to the readers some impressions from the architecture of the medieval Palace of the Knights of St. John, called also “Palace of the Grand Master”. The text is divided into four chapters, entitled:
1. About the Architecture
2. 2. The Palace of Rhodes
3. 3. The Second Message.
4. 4. The Restorers.
The initial suggestion of the paper is: the architecture of the medieval fortification buildings, together with its practical purposes, evokes some feelings (or emotional dispositions). It is supposed that these feelings could be contradictory.
On the one hand, the dweller or the newcomer (nowadays the visitor) could be struck by the unusual highness and thickness of the walls, the narrowness of the passages and the windows, the lack of some elementary (from the modern point of view) safety and comfort measures; therefore he/she could be pushed to negative sentiments like fear, anxiety, feeling of dependence or helplessness.
On the other hand these severe conditions could evoke in the dweller (here we are thinking firstly about the medieval knights as Christian soldiers) other dispositions – bravery, military discipline, readiness for self-sacrifice or even for martyrdom.
At the last chapter some speculations are proposed about the way this ambiguity of feelings in front of a architectural work could be put in the context of the fascist world-view (the Palace was thoroughly restored by the Italian government of the island at the beginning of the Second World War) and therefore how a modern ideology could use the characteristics of a traditional art for its own purposes.

*the paper is published in:
Mediaevalia Christiana, 1: Power - Image - Imagining. 2005, Iztok-Zapad Publishing House

(Thomas Cole, The Architect's Dream. 1840. Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio)
From Web Gallery of Art - http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/c/cole/architec.html

Herodotus and the Parts of the World

II. Egypt*

The paper deals with Herodotus' description of Egypt in the second book of the “History”. The Greek view of the Egypt’s civilization, and, more specifically, how the Greeks were impressed by Egypt and how they conceived the Egyptian impact to their own civilization is the main topic discussed. Next, suggestions are made Egypt as a productive object of western cultural imagination and as a symbol of the eastern civilization model with its positive and negative aspects.

The paper is divided into the following chapters:

1. The Description of Egypt and the Meaning of the Word “History”
2. Egypt and the Greeks
3. Plato and Egypt


*the paper is published in:
ORIENTALIA. A Journal for the East. 2005, 2. New Bulgarian University

(Charles Gleyre, Egyptian Temple, 1840. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, English - "Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre")