Epic poetry

This book aims to provide the reader of Homer with the traditional knowledge and fluency in Homeric poetry which an original ancient audience would have brought to a performance of this type of narrative. To that end, Adrian Kelly presents the text of Iliad VIII next to an apparatus referring to the traditional units being employed, and gives a brief description of their semantic impact. He describes the referential curve of the narrative in a continuous commentary, tabulates all the traditional units in a separate lexicon of Homeric structure, and examines critical decisions concerning the text in a discussion which employs the referential method as a critical criterion. Two appendices deal with speech introduction formulae, and with the traditional function of Here and Athene in early Greek epic poetry.

Tsagalis, C., Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2008.01.25
Heath, M., Greece & Rome 55 (2008) 111–12
Clackson, J., Times Literary Supplement October 17 (2008) 33
Strauss Clay, J., Religious Studies Review 34 (2008) 289
Huxley, G. L., Hermathena 184 (2008) 93–5
Cook, E., Classical Review 59 (2009) 14–16
de Jong, I., Mnemosyne 62 (2009) 478–80
Blanc, A., Revue des études grecques 122 (2009) 237–9

Les Slaves de l'Est (Biélorusses, Russes et Ukrainiens) possèdent une très riche tradition de chants épiques et religieux qui bien souvent renvoient à un fond très archaïque, un fond mythologique qui n'a de chrétien que l'apparence. Ces chants épiques russes (les bylines) et ukrainiens (les dumy), ces formules et incantations biélorusses, ne mentionnent évidemment pas d'antiques divinités slaves, mais ils font appels à des conceptions et des récits qui peuvent remonter à des temps bien antérieurs à la christianisation, et qui de ce fait peuvent être comparés à d'autres mythologies européennes. Textes traduits du russe, du biélorusse et de l'ukrainien.

2e édition.
Extraits: introduction, premier chant, bibliographie et table des matières

The vision of Derek Walcott piñatas his writing. He sees colonial politics for what it is. He is not over Art by western might. As a writer and as a cultural agent Derek Walcott stands on his own feet. He trans fuses the spirit of Caribbean culture in his lecture. The Caribbean culture is like scent it dissolves into atmosphere gives us the smell and gives us pleasure. It is something to be felt. Caribbean people live with the rhythm of nature. They are in tune with life. This is the message of his Nobel lecture. In this research paper his vision , thought content, will be analysed in the light of his Nobel lecture at Stockholm in1992. In 1992 Derek Walcott delivered the Nobel lecture The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory. The Nobel lecture of Derek Walcott is very dear to Indians as it begins in a very typical manner with the story of The Ramayana. He refers how Ramleela have been performed in Trinidad. He talks about the magic of performing art and the magic of eternal epics. "Felicity is a village in Trinidad on the edge of the Caroni plain, the wide central plain that still grows sugar and to which indentured come cutters were brought after emancipation, so the small population of felicity is east Indians, and on the afternoon that I resisted it with friends from America all the faces along its road were Indian, which as I hope to show was a moving, beautiful thing, because this Saturday afternoon, Ramleela, the epic dramatization of the Hindu epic The Ramayan, was going to be performed, and the costumed actors from the village were assembling on a field strong with different coloured flags, like a new gas station, and beautiful Indian boys is red and black were aiming arrows haphazardly into the afternoon light. Low blue mountains on the horizon, bright grass, clouds that would gather colour before the light went-felicity! What a gentle Anglo-Saxon name for an epical memory". Derek Walcott says that he had not seen The Ramayan earlier. He describes the beauty of the open theatre the strong presence of Diaspora's. He also describes how culture like water always finds a way to flow and live. He says that he did not know much about Rama Kali Shiva or Vishnu. But the names were familiar in Trinidad. The Indians fervently played the epic. The actor's did not consider themselves to be actors. When the Ramleela was on they were real Ram, Sita, Laxman or Ravan. Walcott calls this the moment of self conviction. These actors were extra ordinary because they were not actors but believers. They completely believe in the text. The text validated their existence. He says that the epic is played not because people want to preserve it; neither because of a militant jail to preserve culture but just because they believe in had it and they lived it.

Though Odysseus’ tales to Eumaios and Aninoos in Odyssey 14.199–359 and 17.417–44, respectively, are presented as fictional tales within Homer’s larger myth, some elements have striking analogs in Late Bronze–Early Iron Age reality.

This article examines these portions of the hero’s false ainoi within their fictive context for the purpose of identifying and evaluating those elements. Particular focus is given to Odysseus’ declaration that he led nine successful maritime raids prior to the Trojan War; to his twice–described ill–fated assault on Egypt; and to his claim not only to have been spared in the wake of that Egyptian raid, but to have spent a subsequent seven years in the land of the pharaohs, during which he gathered great wealth.

Through a comparative examination of literary and archaeological evidence from the Late Bronze–Early Iron transition in the Eastern Mediterranean, it is shown that these aspects of Odysseus’ stories are not only reflective of the historical reality surrounding the time in which the epic is set, but that Odysseus’ fictive experience is remarkably similar to that of one specific member of the ‘Sea Peoples’ groups best known from 19th and 20th dynasty Egyptian records: the ‘Sherden of the Sea.’

The palimpsest manuscript Sin. ar. NF 66 is one of the treasures of the Monastery of Saint Catherine located in the Sinai Peninsula. Nowadays it consists of a few fragmentary parchment sheets, but originally it was a larger codex of ca. 300 folia. Some of these leaves have been purloined from the Sinai and are now kept in Cambridge, Leipzig, and Saint Petersburg, while others have been lost. The codex contained the Lives of Palestinian monastic Saints in Arabic translation and was copied at the Monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem in the first quarter of the 10th century. It was later brought, under unknown circumstances, to the Sinai. All preserved folia are palimpsests, with scriptiones inferiores in Greek and Christian Palestinian Aramaic. This article focuses on one of the Greek erased texts – a previously unknown classical text in hexameters of mythological content – and offers its editio princeps. Based on an analysis of codicological and palaeographical features, combined with that of linguistic and stylistic elements, it will be suggested that the Sinai hexameters might originate from the Hieroi Logoi in 24 Rhapsodies, i.e. the longest lost Orphic poem we know of.

CU Boulder - FREN1200
Offered FA2014, FA2015, FA2016
Course Description: The popularity of George RR Martin's fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire and its Emmy-winning HBO adaptation Game of Thrones shows us that major themes from medieval stories still resonate with audiences a thousand years after their composition. This course will examine major epic and romance texts of the Middle Ages such as Beowulf, The Song of Roland, and The Death of King Arthur. We will aim to understand the rich literary tradition that has led to our modern interest in dragons, knights, heroes and magic. We will also look at how representations of medieval culture in contemporary series such as Game of Thrones influence our conceptions (and misconceptions) of the Middle Ages. Much like Sansa, we will find that the stories do not necessarily reflect the reality.

While there can be a blessing in reading any part of God’s Word, the promise in Revelation 1:3 motivated me all the more toward this study project, “Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.” (NIV).  This "Revelation Haiku Project" is the summarization of a study of the New Testament book of Revelation by writing one haiku per chapter using the 5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable Japanese poetic pattern in English.

These poems, composed in Somali and in English, provide a poetic reflection of the recently emerged debate on the theme of Caddaan Studies which means "White Studies". The criticism and counter-criticism contained in the debate dug so deep into life nerve of Somali Studies that over a thousand people participated. The poems, under the title "Inaugurating Caddaan Studies" were composed with a critical observation of the debate.

The Italian edition of the work by Eleazar M. Meletinsky on the historical poetics of the novella – recently edited and translated by M. Bonafin and L. Sestri ‒ gives us the opportunity to revise the theoretical model by which the Russian scholar explained the origins of this narrative genre in Europe and Asia from various folkloric forms, i.e. myth, fairy and realistic tale, anecdote: in particular the analysis is carried out through the comparison with the similar reflections on novel and epic available in other Meletinsky’s books and with the theory of the “converging streams” developed by A.N. Veselovsky. Some corrections to the model of historical poetics are proposed, in order to conciliate typology and contingent elements, poetics and philology.

Cet article propose de voir à quoi correspond, dans l’Antiquité, la catégorie d’ « épopée didactique » (ou « poésie didactique »), couramment utilisée par les savants modernes pour rendre compte d’œuvres comme les Travaux et les jours, le De rerum natura ou encore les Géorgiques, en opposition avec la catégorie d’« épopée narrative » (ou parfois simplement d’« épopée »), qui comprendrait les poèmes d’Homère, l’Énéide, etc. Une enquête anthropologique et pragmatique montre que la catégorie de « poésie didactique » n’existait pas chez les Anciens. Dans un deuxième temps, on essaie de voir à quel moment on commence à parler de « poésie didactique ».

Fruto de um esforço coletivo que envolveu uma série de pesquisadores de diferentes países, como Brasil, Portugal e Estados Unidos, este livro apresenta algumas reflexões sobre o interessante e fecundo campo de estudos das tradições épicas. Como são feitas, por exemplo, a seleção e a escolha de manuscritos, as edições e os processos de tradução, a crítica e a recepção destes documentos? Qual contexto histórico os envolve? De que maneira eles têm sido abordados na literatura, no cinema e na historiografia? Estas são algumas das inquietações que o leitor encontrará em cada capítulo. Desta forma, Grandes Epopeias da Antiguidade e do Medievo é, ao mesmo tempo, tanto uma opção de leitura introdutória aos estudos dos épicos para cursos de graduação em História, Letras (modernas e clássicas), Cinema, Literatura, Filosofia e áreas afins, quanto um auxílio ao leitor já experiente e acostumado ao tema, que também encontrará material para sua pesquisa, desde algumas críticas e possibilidades interpretativas até reflexões sobre a temática das fronteiras, das identidades, dos nacionalismos e outros topoi que se entrecruzam com o campo das epopeias.

Melville’s centennial poem Clarel is the American epic about geography, the land, and SPACE. The poem is 18,000 lines, composed almost entirely in iambic tetrameter, most of it in rhyme. It is about a young theological student named Clarel taking a pilgrimage in the Holy Land. While Clarel debates major philosophical and religious questions with a coterie of eclectic companions, he traverses a sacred landscape and explores sites saturated with the fundamental myths upon which much of Western civilization is based. Comprised in large part of dialogic treatises that gain significance from the holy sites in which
they occur, the plot of the poem may seem flimsy. But Clarel is not about what happens as much as it is about the landscape. Published in a highly limited run, the poem was barely reviewed. Neither Emerson nor Whitman mentioned Clarel. Nor did Stevens. Olson dismissed it as “that rosary of doubt” (Olson 89) where “Christ had contracted [Melville’s] vision” (86). According to him, Clarel, one of the longest poems in American literature, atrophies Melville’s imagination with its astringent religious undertones. Nevertheless, as the poem that traverses the ground of America’s literary imagination, Clarel is the kind of poem these writers seek.

This paper offers an introduction to 'multiforms' as associated systems of verbal elements that develop in the memory of an individual and are used in text production. It examines these in the highly conservative kalevalaic mythological poetry of Finns and Karelians, where such multiforms become are sufficiently conservative in social circulation that they can become referentially meaningful. This paper looks briefly at general variation in production, variation by dialect, variation by situation and also the meaningful application of kalevalaic epic multiforms in exceptional contexts to produce new meanings

This paper presents some of the same information in the Finnish language "Multiformit kalevalamittaisessa epiikassa" (2010), but it presents a more general introduction to the poetic system and does not open formal typologies of multiforms in this poetic system.

Julius Caesar, one of the protagonists of Lucan’s Pharsalia, disappears from the scene for a long time after the Battle of Pharsalus. He reappears at the end of Book 9, when he pays a visit to the ruined city of Troy. The function and the source of this historically unsupported scene are both worth examining. Earlier research disclosed as the literary source of the Troy scene the episode in Aeneid Book 8, when Evander shows Aeneas the future site of Rome. While fully accepting that, I would like to present another possible source that might have as much effect on the constructing of Lucan’s Troy as the Evander–scene: the katabasis in Book 6 of the Aeneid. Definite parallelisms can be identified between the two scenes on both motivic and textual levels. Furthermore, the connection between these three scenes can be proved on the level of content, since by examining them together the real purpose of the Troy scene can be decoded: Lucan predicts Rome’s destruction in this episode.

An oral epic is fundamentally a tale about the fantastic deeds of a person or persons endowed with something more than human might and operating in something larger than the normal human context and it is of significance in portraying some stage of the cultural or political development of a people. (Okpewho 1979, 34)

RESUMEN
La obediencia del héroe en el Cantar de mio Cid es una decisión táctica, no estratégica, a partir de la cual se desarrolla un proceso de persuasión de la voluntad regia que contrarrestará el efectuado por los malos mestureros gracias al predominio de las obras sobre las palabras.

RÉSUMÉ
L’obéissance du héros dans la Chanson de mon Cid est une décision tactique, non stratégique. À partir de celle-ci se développe un processus de persuasion du roi que doit compenser les agissements des courtisans détracteurs, en raison de la primauté des actions sur les mots.

Rather than being a somewhat inept literary work, as it is sometimes thought to be, 'La Chanson de Willame' is rather a cohesive expression of the same strong orally-based epic tradition that produced 'La Chanson de Roland' and other chansons de geste. Its mixture of the sublime and the obscene is suggestive of a relation to a lively popular tradition. Its apparent narrative anomalies disappear when the poem is considered in that light.

This paper discusses the depiction of ambushes in chronicles of the High Middle Ages. Identifying ambushes in this period is particularly difficult, as the Latin term 'insidia' could also be used more generically to refer to stratagems, snares and cunning ploys. This paper combines evidence from contemporary chronicles, Patristic and medieval theological writing and Anglo-Norman epic verse to examine the variety of situations in which ambushes were used by medieval combatants and the different lessons that historians drew from tales of warriors ambushed (or ambushing) unawares.

SAŽETAK: Proučavanje narodne igre sveobuhvatan je istraživački zahvat koji, da bi dao najbolje rezultate, mora uključivati kako istraživanje aktuelnog stanja date tradicije na terenu, tako i interpretaciju prethodno naslojenih tragova iskaza i običaja ranijih generacija. U pokušaju dešifrovanja slojeva dalje istorije i njihovog učešća u kreiranju ukupnog korpusa etnokoreološkog znanja o igri od velike pomoći su i usmene (u jednom trenutku zapisane) poetske forme. Ovaj rad prati terminološku, kontekstualnu i semantičku pojavnost pojma narodne igre kroz analizu većeg broja usmenih srpskih narodnih poetskih formi u kojima se tradicionalna igra pojavljuje kao važan trag – svedočanstvo o nekadašnjem obrednom i neobrednom igračkom životu u tradicionalnoj praksi srpskog naroda na širim južnoslovenskim prostorima, istovremeno skrećući pažnju na specifičnosti date građe u kontekstu mogućnosti njenog proučavanja i korišćenja u istraživačke svrhe.

KLJUČNE REČI: usmeno narodno poetsko stvaralaštvo kao izvor podataka, narodna igra.