LIT midterm

what is a epic?

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, often detailing the heroic deeds and adventures of legendary figures or historical events, characterized by grand themes and elevated style.

-focuses on deeds of heroand often incorporates elements of the supernatural(cosmos).

-style of speech is often formal and elevated, using grand language and literary devices such as metaphor and simile.

examples: homer’s Illiad, gilgamesh, Moses, Virgil’s Aeneid,

allegory

Story with a surface story and a sub-textual layer with an underlying meaning. (two layers of meaning).

-often used to reach out to new people in a culture/religion

-religious or moral instruction

-structure principle

-avoid censorship (political allegory)

-examples: fables, political, parables

Fable

all cultures write fables. They give a moral lesson or explanation of how the world works (sometimes both).

-often anthropomorphized (The Tourtise and Hare)

• typcally short and easy to understand

• -often demostrate stock character types lke a fox as a trickster.

Parable

Word from bible, short alegorical stories told by jesus in the bible. “this is just the origin→ but shows up somwhere else”

root: greek work analogy

-blown up analogy or extended analogy

• more serious and meant to be understiod, require interpretation

• ex: prodigal son, fight fir understanding and requires an active audience.

Figurative language

When we talk about figurative language we are thinking about the quality of language that goes beyond the literal thing that is being told of or represented.

◦ Figurative language represents something by making a connection between something claimed to be literally true, and something else that illustrates it; this connection is called a metaphor.

◦ We use specialized terminology to label different kinds of figurative language.

simile

makes comparison using “like” or “as”

Metaphor

makes a comparison, NOT using “like” or “as”.

With a metaphor, the writer might ask us to imagine a connection between one thing that is real in the story he tells, and one that is no less real, but is not literally present in that world. So, for example, if I say that the hurricane tossed the boat around like socks in the washing machine, I am comparing one real thing that did happen, to another thing that my audience can better imagine or picture.

Allegory

Allegory, a type of metaphor in which a story, character, or place communicates a message about events in the real world.

Metonymy

refers to something through an attribute that is commonly associated with it. (e.g “The White House” or “The land”(reference to people of who live there))

Synecdoche

refers to something through one of its parts. (e.g. “All hands on deck”)

Personification/Prosopopoeia

treats an inanimate thing as if it were living

Apostrophe,

addresses a thing, abstraction, or a person who is absent

-An apostrophe is a figure of speech in whicha speaker or writer directly addresses an absent person, a dead person, an inanimate object, or an abstract idea as if it were present and capable of understanding

Allusion

mention of a well known person, place, or thing.

Oxymoron

, a paradox or contradiction. (e.g. “passive aggressive”)

Hyperbole

an exaggeration

Typology

One very elaborated subset of allegorical thinking in the early Christian and Medieval Church.

• Typology asserts a relationship between the New and Old Testaments. Figures in the Old Testament are taken to be types, or symbols, or allegories for future characters and events in the New Testament.

Virgils Aeneid-overview

Background: The plot of the Aeneid takes up from the end of Homer’s Iliad and retraces the end of the Trojan War. Virgil chooses to make a minor Trojan hero, Aeneas, his main character

◦ Plot: The epic is made up of two main parts. First: the travels of Aeneas to reach Rome, including his adventures that mirror those of the Odyssey (e.g. he also meets Circe and the Cyclops) as well as his relationship with Dido, Queen of Carthage. Second: his battle with Turnus in order to found Rome. This part has a long city-siege and therefore mirrors the Iliad.

◦ Divine elements: Aeneas is also a half-divine hero. He is said to be the son of Venus (Aphrodite).

◦ Roman elements: This is a myth about the founding of a nation. Some of the locations (e.g. Actium) are locations of significance for contemporary Romans and give glory to Caesar Augustus (Octavian), who was the Emperor at the time Virgil wrote and a fan of his work. As a national text, it helps to support Roman values, one of these is pietas, which is a Latin wordthat includes duty, public virtue, and piety.

Virgils Aeneid- orgins of text

Virgil wrote the Aeneid in imitation of Homer. He did not get to finish the epic, so we only have the first 12 books.

The poem is often styled as a literary epic. It was first written with pen on paper—this is distinct from Homer, where the composition was oral.

◦ Nevertheless, Virgil imitates many of the elements and features of the oral or traditional epic in order to preserve the feeling of the epic genre.

epic simile

very long similes that run to several lines in length, where the poet makes a protracted connection to some other serious events or famous story in order to add weight and seriousness to the poem.

Homeric epithets

repeated phrases to describe particular characters, e.g. “white-armed Hera”.

Homers Iliad- plot overview

Background: The plot of the Iliad takes place during the Trojan War, fought between a Greek coalition and the city-state of Troy. The war is caused when the Trojan prince Paris settles a dispute over the beauty of three goddesses and is rewarded with the love of Helen, the wife of the king of Sparta, Menelaus. He flees with her back to Troy.

◦ Plot: The story picks up 10 years into the siege of Troy, and focuses on a specific conflict within the Greek army. Agamemnon takes the slave girl Briseis from Achilles, which offends him, and the rest of the plot are the tragic consequences of that action: Achilles refuses to fight, Patroclus his friend fights and dies in his place, Achilles seeks revenge for Patroclus by killing and disrespecting the man who killed him, Hector.

◦ Divine elements: As in other epics, the gods care about the outcome of this conflict. In this case, the gods pick sides—for instance Aphrodite supports the Trojans and Paris, even saving him, while Hera sides with the Greeks. Other Gods are petitioned by the mortals and flip-flop between sides

Homers Iliad- orgins of text

-The Iliad typically attributed to Homer, but it emerges from an oral culture of Greek bards that thrived in a pre-literate society

-We do not know the exact details of when the poem was written down, but it was likely after the story endured oral transmission over many years.

◦ The poem is too long to be a single oral performance.

◦ The war it discusses is a mythical conflict that antedates the world in which the poem was produced; the poem’s audience would have viewed these heroes as people from the past, fighting with outdated bronze weapons.

◦ Audiences of the poem likely already knew the key plot and players; spoilers are not a problem with this text.

Homers Iliad- feutures of the text

Oral composition and transmission of the text have a strong influence on its form including the following elements:

◦ Repetition: of individual phrases, whole lines of poetry, and passages – This aids with memorization and aural comprehension for audiences.

◦ Homeric epithets: repeated phrases to describe particular characters, e.g. “white-armed Hera” – This allows the poet to improvise as he performs, since he can sub in an epithet phrase to fit the particular line that he is speaking. As a result, characters typically have several names and epithets that are used in different contexts.

◦ Meter: The original poem is written in a particular meter used frequently in ancient Greek poetry called dactylic hexameter. Our translation renders this into iambic pentameter, which is the common English meter for serious poems.

◦ Invocation of Muses: Since this poetry is performed, it is typical to see the poet beginning by asking for inspiration or assistance in his performance.

◦ Catalogues: Lists of people, places or things involved in the plot. These are important if the text is viewed as history, as well as for teaching the geographical locations and relationships of different parts of Greece. Later, literary epics copy this.

◦ Epic simile: Very long similes that run to several lines in length, where the poet makes a protracted connection to some other serious events or famous story in order to add weight and seriousness to the poem.

What makes an epic TRADITIONAL?

1.) Traditional epics are oral, which means they were originally composed without the aid of writing.

◦ In order to survive, they had to be memorized and passed down by traditional storytellers—often these storytellers had a specific name and social role in their culture, e.g. the bards of Ireland.

2.) ◦ Oral composition leaves tell-tale marks on a literary text—these are the marks of memorization and can include things like repeated phrases, rhymes, plot events in sets of three, traditional comparisons and images.

what make a tradition epic, ‘epic’?

• Traditional epics don’t come from one person, and although they tell the story of a hero, they are always also the story of a people.

◦ When we look into them, we typically see many of the following elements:

◦ Focus on the deeds of a great hero in battle.

◦ Tell a tale of significance: the outcome of the hero’s struggle will matter to a great many people—we might see the survival or destruction of a community, the founding of a city, or even the saving of the world.

◦ They involve the whole cosmos: gods, monsters, or the supernatural appear as characters or forces in the plot.

◦ The style of speech is formal, different from the everyday.

What is the Lyric?

We use the term “lyric” to distinguish a mode of poetic writing.

The lyric is one of three main poetic modes identified by the Greek philosopher Aristotle—you have already read and analyzed another: the epic. The last one is the dramatic.

feutures of the lyric

Look for the following features to identify examples of the lyric mode in action:

◦ Usually short

◦ Expresses emotion or subjective experience (emphasis on the personal)

◦ Usually in the first person and the present tense

◦ Often from the perspective of a clearly defined speaker, often the speaker-as-poet but sometimes a separate persona

◦ Often make striking use of literary elements such as metaphor, personification, alliteration.