Search

The article discusses James Porter's book "Homer: The Very Idea," which explores the enigmatic figure of Homer and his epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Porter delves into the mystery surrounding Homer's identity, the enduring impact of his works on European culture, and the unresolved questions about the historical reality of the Trojan War. The book examines the literary, cultural, and historical significance of Homer's epics, highlighting the complexities and contradictions within the texts. Porter's analysis offers a fresh perspective on Homer's legacy and the enduring allure of his mythical narratives. [Extracted from the article]

Italy’s finest poet at the twilight of the Renaissance, Torquato Tasso (1544–95), has long been cast as the lionized icon of lonely genius, absorbed into a Romantic fantasy of torturous exile and withheld community. The figure of “mad Tasso,” however, misses key points in the historical poet’s dynamically social literary career, in which Tasso’s immersion in poetic communities prompted novel reflections about history, place, time, and belonging. Rome uniquely served as a catalyst for Tasso’s reflections on these very themes. A new kind of patria to which to direct the encomiastic voice of his late literary production, Rome became the subject of much of Tasso’s writings in the final three years of his life. With an eye toward the city’s classical heritage, Tasso composed a series of lyric, dialogic, epistolary, and epic experiments designed to immortalize the image of “Roma celeste” (celestial Rome) and the urban renovation projects that redefined its cityscape. This essay analyzes the forms of accoglienza Rome extended towards Tasso, outlined in the twinned lights of literary hospitality and readerly patronage, particularly as they evoke the poet’s collaborations with the Aldobrandini family and its Vatican literary academy.

The article "The Homer We Always Knew: Reflections on an Open Secret" argues that the Trojan War was likely an invention of Homer, influenced by legends of his time. Homer's epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are seen as commemorations of the struggle for survival of his city under siege. The article questions the historical accuracy of the Trojan War, suggesting that it may have been a metaphorical representation of real events, such as the destruction of Smyrna. The text explores the cultural and literary significance of Homer's works, proposing that they were designed for a reading public and influenced by the decline of oral storytelling traditions. [Extracted from the article]

The document "Observationes Silianae" by Neil W. Bernstein, published in Mnemosyne in 2024, analyzes specific passages from Silius Italicus' Punica. The text delves into the interpretation of Punica 4.179-180, 8.121, and 12.130, discussing issues related to language, metrical anomalies, and proposed emendations. Bernstein's analysis provides insights into the nuances of classical Latin poetry and the challenges of textual interpretation in ancient epic literature. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses two musical settings, one by Croce and the other by Rovetta, focusing on their structure and historical context. It also mentions a study by Roseen Giles on Monteverdi's music, exploring the concept of the marvellous in his madrigals. The study delves into the relationship between music and text, highlighting the importance of sensory transformation and the manipulation of time in creating a sense of wonder in Monteverdi's compositions. [Extracted from the article]

This article aims to bring together literary criticism of the Iliadand the Odyssey with linguistic research into iconicity. Scholars from ancient times onwards have pointed to instances in the Homeric epics where the sound or rhythm of the verse seems to be adapted to its content. These observations have been mostly ad hoc, however: the question how likely it is that such perceived correlations between form and meaning are merely due to chance has not been adequately answered. The present contribution seeks to improve on this state of affairs by introducing a quantitative method for investigating iconicity in the Homeric epics, a method grounded in cross-linguistic research. In particular, I will investigate whether verses containing keywords related to concepts such as quickness and sharpness contain more dactyls, more high tones, more high-frequency vowels, more unvoiced plosives, and more velars as opposed to labials, than verses containing keywords related to concepts such as inactivity and softness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insofar as lyric has been conceptualized as the subjective genre of poetry—invested in inner processes and states of feeling and thought in distinction to epic's investment in external action—critical interest has revolved around the lyric I and especially questions of apostrophe and address. The implications of this investment range from Marxist critiques of lyric and bourgeois individuality to theoretical debates about the relation between the historical and lyric subject. What would it mean, however, to consider the presence of a lyric it ? In this essay I consider how it can disclose a diverse set of lyric conventions—conventions that begin at the intersection of grammar and rhetoric but come to bear on larger philosophical and literary questions. Rather than defining it , poets often withhold its meaning, mining the hyperflexibility of the pronoun, its ability to be referential or dummy, context-dependent or not. Poets do this to make affective claims on their reader. At the same time, it can track a process in which lyric speakers attempt to get outside themselves to grasp their own subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the International Arthurian Society is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article looks at the encyclopedic Liber Floridus (Lambert de St Omer, c. 1121) and the Oxford Chanson de Roland (c. 1100) and how these coeval texts illustrate contemporary ideas about history, an emerging sense of nationalism, the Crusades, and the treatment of human emotions, especially anger and the complex effects it has on the psyche. I argue that in the Liber floridus' analysis there is a source for contemporary emotion theory, and that in the Oxford Chanson de Roland we see something of its practical application. To read the Liber floridus is to encounter doctrinally, politically, stylistically, and psychologically the cultural mind-set that produced the Chanson de Roland and its apocalyptic, divisive, crusading outlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In “Ākhar-e Shāhnāmeh” by Mehdi Akhavān Sāles (1929-1990), one of the foremost representatives of “New Poetry” in Iran, a fictive orality is staged: The poem becomes decipherable only to a reader attuned to the tradition of epic storytelling. This paper examines the relationship between language, perception, self, time, and world created through the fiction of storytelling. Drawing on theories of perception, narrative time, and epic performance, our discussion touches upon the nature of “I” and “we”, the shifting narrative grounds and identities enacted by the narration, the imbrication of past and present in the figure of the storyteller, and the memory spaces that are created both in and through the text. The imaginary speech act of the storyteller casts the reader as audience, while at the same time, the epic past is overlayed by a tumble-down present. Language itself becomes incommensurable with what it describes. Rather than a nostalgic invocation of a lost age of epic heroes, as has often been claimed, ĀKHAR-E SHĀHNĀMEH emerges as the profoundly modern diagnosis of a split consciousness that affects the individual in a society that can no longer return to epic naïveté.

Copyright of XVIIe Siècle is the property of Presses Universitaires de France and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on the systemic career blocking experienced by disabled scholars in academia, using a methodology termed PanEthnography to weave together the lived experiences of its disabled, neurodivergent authors. It critically examines how systemic barriers and discriminatory practices impede their career progression, drawing on personal narratives and artistic elements inspired by ancient myths and Epic Poetry to reveal and challenge these injustices.

This paper studies the female gaze at the intersection of space, genre and gender in three Hellenistic poets who have explored the female viewpoint in their works, namely Apollonius of Rhodes, Theocritus and Herodas. The female gaze covers all the stages of desire from erotic fantasy to sexual fulfillment, and is contingent on both aesthetic factors and the sociocultural background of gender roles. It reflects the power dynamics between male and female and also becomes a means of subverting male authority by the gazing female. In Hellenistic poetry, the various degrees of female liberation through the control of the gaze vary depending on the spaces occupied by women. I argue that women, initially confined in the oikos according to the conventions of epic poetry, are represented as being gradually liberated in natural and urban spaces, the emblematic spaces of the neoteric genres of the bucolic idyll and the mime; this shift in gender dynamics is conveyed through the illustration of the female gaze in distinct genres of poetry and their respective symbolic spaces, namely the house, the natural landscape, and the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Filosofía UIS is the property of Universidad Industrial de Santander and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

When Keats told friends he had 'given up' his epic project, 'Hyperion', in September 1819, he expressed dissatisfaction with its artful 'Miltonic inversions'. While sailing to Italy in the autumn of 1820 and in the months before he died, however, Keats told Joseph Severn about an epic he wanted to write—on Sabrina, the river goddess in Milton's Comus. This essay offers the first critical investigation of Keats's projected poem. I pursue Keats's unwritten epic, using Severn's accounts, a selection of Keats's letters and poems, and the source text to reveal what may have interested him about Milton's rendering of Sabrina's story and what it can tell us. Far from putting Milton behind him, Keats continued to draw inspiration from his poetry, returning to a work he had previously dismissed and finding fresh pleasure in a masque that Milton had composed in his mid-twenties, long before Paradise Lost. I suggest that in Sabrina, the tutelary spirit of the Severn, Keats found a figure of transformation, survival, and healing—a young goddess whose liminal existence on the Welsh border and whose partially told story appealed to his imagination and his belief in poetry's enduring power to transcend mortal limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societies have relied on different cultural mechanisms to cultivate appropriate and timely models of heroic masculinity, which have included oral tradition, art, epic poetry, and theatre. In contemporary times, cinema has become one of the primary venues to disseminate masculine archetypes throughout a society’s collective conscious. In certain cases, heroic masculinity can be manifested when characters embrace their valor, courage, and physical prowess for the greater good while eschewing the potentially toxic elements of their personalities and powers. In Ryan Coogler’s 2018 film Black Panther, the dichotomy of toxic masculinity and heroic masculinity plays out through a series of ritual combats. Black Panther applies traditional and historically relevant motifs to show how its superhero addresses the question of toxic versus heroic masculinity; and, in the end the film condemns toxic masculinity by portraying a hero who embodies strength, wisdom, and inclusiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Christa Wolf's Sommerstück (1989) through the lens of modernist utopian thinking and genre-theory. The novel challenges the common-sense definition of utopia as an imagined paradisiacal state and the idyll as an idealized vision of communal harmony, complicating the question of dwelling within a utopian idyll at the specific historical conjuncture that preceded the Mauerfall. Interrogating the function of fantasy and the structure of mirage in idealized moments of crystallization with reference to Jameson's opposition of idyll to utopia, the article contends that utopian impulses in Sommerstück aim to replace the harsh reality of East Germany through the idealization of the quotidian. Although lampooned by Hegel in the Aesthetics as lacking development and the many-sidedness of human interests evinced in epic poetry, the idyll is nonetheless positioned as the prosaic ground for romance and on a continuum with hybrid forms of epic. The article charts the temporal structure of development and progression inherent in the formalism of the genre in terms of the temporal structure of utopian striving. I first identify the temporal structure of idyll and utopia as outlined in the narrative. Of paramount importance is how the narrative, despite being rooted in a specific historical context, attempts to create a utopian vision of social relations as at once timeless and evolving. The shifting relationship between utopian ideals and a changing political reality becomes a focal point for thinking the inseparability of the idyllic from the utopian. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, anti-utopian elements of the negative ideal – the remnants of the old society of control and surveillance – were rendered more prominent to the observers of the divide. From a certain vantage point, then, one could say that the phenomenon of utopia is one of perspectival and spectatorial distance; it intersects with the idyllic mirage of a harmonious collocation in a state of innocence where different societal ideals and classes merge into indistinction. The article deepens the analysis of utopia by considering it within broader frameworks of genre-theory and German idealist thinking, suggesting that the quest for a perfect society may involve control, assimilation, and power struggles – dystopian themes highlighted by the novel when reread in light of catastrophe and a critical reevaluation of the meaning of dwelling at 'the end of history.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With remarkable force, "decolonization" re-entered the academic agenda some ten years ago. Having been an ambivalent historical experience undergirding postcolonial studies in its emergence in the 1980s, "decolonization" today is wielded as a concept and a rallying call. One of its rhetorical purposes is to set up an opposition between morally objectionable and morally progressive ways of constructing and sharing knowledge, yet the content of the term is often vague. In this context, world literature has much to contribute, both methodologically and critically. If, on the one hand, there is a decolonizing potential in the very ambition to make the world's literary cultures visible, the critical dimension of world literature scholarship makes us aware of its colonial genealogy. Taking Mazisi Kunene's epic poem from South Africa, Emperor Shaka the Great, as its key example, this article discusses how the dual potential of world literature might contribute to a "decolonized" mode of literary reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of early mythography have stressed the dependent relationship between the so-called logographers and epic archaic poetry. Better knowledge of archaic and classical mythography in recent years has provided more accurate details of the context of the production and purposes of the fragmentary works by Hecataeus, Acusilaus, Pherecydes and Hellanicus. Each of them has his own agenda and programme, which have to be explained within their context and not, from a purely historic-literary perspective, as an appendix, a continuation or an exegesis of the epic tradition. This article argues that conditions of preservation, and means of transmission, of fragmentary mythographers have shaped the way we approach them. In other words, the process of reception of epic poetry through the exegetic and grammarian tradition distorts our view and leads the modern reader to see mythography as being dependent on Homer or Hesiod. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article titled "The Epic Mirror: Poetry, Conflict Ethics and Political Community in Colonial Peru" analyzes three important texts of Peruvian colonial poetry and traces a genealogy of their ethical and political ideas. The first chapter contextualizes the city of Lima in the late 16th century and establishes concepts such as political community, just war, republic, and empire. The second chapter analyzes the dialogue between La Araucana and Machiavelli's political treatises, focusing on the ideas of republic, real power, and just war. The third chapter focuses on Pedro de Oña's poem Arauco domado, exploring the mechanisms of power in early modernity and the representation of the Araucanian political community. The text analyzes two colonial epic poems: "El Arauco domado" and "Armas antárticas". In the case of the first one, the centrality of the viceroy's authority in relation to monarchical power is highlighted. The analysis also establishes parallels between the Araucanian celebrations and the rebellious communal festivities of Quito. As for "Armas antárticas", the heterogeneity and fragmentation of the plot are emphasized, as well as the limited attention to indigenous communities. The book offers a political interpretation of both poems, highlighting the importance of community in the defense of power. [Extracted from the article]

The main problem of the article is an attempt to describe the role of Greek archaic epic in the works of Clement of Alexandria. The problem part of the article includes interpretations of selected and representative borrowings from Homer's poems in the work Paedagogus. The Homeric epic and Homer's role as a teacher of ancient Hellad provide an important context for consideration. The philological analyses reveal the complex Christian-classical structure of Clement's work and emphasise the important role of Homer in the construction of the aesthetics of the famous handbook of moral theology. The article also shows that Clement's literary output still offers new interpretative possibilities in aspects of the structure of his works and their aesthetics, genology and communicative function. The polyphony of quotations, allusions and borrowings adds credibility to the Clement's claims and theses, presenting them in a complex discourse that serves aesthetic, erudite, moral and evangelistic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Othering, as the basic political economy of identity cons truction, has been operative in human societies since ancient times, but it has been conceptually inves tigated only in recent times. Employing contrapuntal reading, the decons tructive s trategy adapted by Edward Said from classic Wes tern music, the present paper deals with the issue of identity politics in "Odysseus's Tale of Trials" from Homer's Odyssey to unravel the ideological subtext of this canonical romantic epic and give voice to the figures mons terized and suppressed by the hero and the narrative voice. It is argued that The Odyssey has significantly contributed to the cons truction of Wes tern subjectivity, giving a sense of national or cultural identity to both ancient Greek people and modern Wes tern man via setting them in opposition to their others. However, upon a contrapuntal reading, Odysseus is no different from the so-called savage, barbarous, villainous others he confronts in his ques t and the identity cons tructed for both parties is merely a matter of convention and discursive power. Thus, the findings of this s tudy challenge the commonsensical identity politics at work in Wes tern culture, in the hope of paving the way for further critical readings of such classical texts and reevaluating their translations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is a comparative analysis of selected aspects of the singular styles of the historical epics Sárka by Jaroslav Vrchlický (1853-1912) and Ctirad Julius Zeyer (1841-1901); classical authors of Czech literature from the so-called Lumira generation of the second half of the 19th century. The juxtaposition of thema- tically similar texts allowed for a more pronounced identification of the characteristic features of the singular styles of both poets, possibly the specificity of their historical and mythic epic poetry, ideally the stylistic dominance of the authorial styles of Jaroslav Vrchlický and Julius Zeyer in mutual comparison. In order to achieve the set objectives, the methods of comparative and mathematical stylistics were used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how John Milton portrays Christianity in his epic poem "Paradise Lost" and the role and significance of Jesus Christ in the narrative. Milton has been rebuked for having God the Father in his own defense in the poem. The author asserts that Milton thinks it obvious that corrupting a potentially higher power is more wicked than a mere exercise of overwhelming physical force.

The article examines how John Milton's works, particularly his epic poem "Paradise Lost," contribute to the concept of heteropoesis, the creation of alternative or imaginative worlds. It explores how Milton's poem constructs and presents the universe of Eden, Hell, and Heaven, along with their inhabitants. It discusses how Milton's depiction of these dimensions serves his broader theological and philosophical purposes.

The article focuses on the reception and interpretation of John Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost" by the Quaker Thomas Ellwood. It explores how Ellwood interpreted and applied Milton's portrayal of the Sons of Belial within the theological and political contexts of his time. It describes the course of life of Ellwood between his initial encounter with Milton and his infamous comment on "Paradise Found" in 1665.

How has water shaped the history of a region that is bordered by ocean, brimming with ephemeral rivers, and yet prone to drought? This article explores water histories in Southern Africa over the past two hundred years. Using oral traditions, epic poetry, archival sources, and secondary anthropological and archaeological literature, I examine how Africans and Europeans related to, claimed, and used different bodies of water. In the first section I discuss how water was central to isiNguni conceptions of social and political life. In the second section I discuss how European empires used water to enclose and dispossess African land and to build hydropolitical colonial orders over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I conclude by reflecting on afterlives of these water histories in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the poetic vocabulary of Valerius Flaccus is investigated by means of a quantitative analysis based on the concordances to Vergil, Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus. The collected statistics confirm the statement of Manu Leumann that the language of high hexametric poetry is unified and consolidated by the 1st century CE. Furthermore, it emerges that, with regard to vocabulary, Valerius Flaccus is the most selective of all the epic poets of this period. A closer look at usages that are only rarely attested in the Argonauticacasts doubt on the hypothesis that many of these words were coined by Valerius Flaccus. Instead, many words can already be found in the works of his predecessors. Hence, the widespread theory of 'ad hoc inventions' made by Valerius and borrowed by the subsequent poets has to be rejected. It is argued that these rarities are part of the language of Latin poetry, that they were adopted by Valerius and sometimes by his contemporaries from earlier poetry that has not survived, and that Valerius' vocabulary should not be regarded as evidence of the poet's inventiveness but rather interpreted as reflecting the conventional language of Latin hexameter poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses ancient Greek epic poetry, tragedy, and lyrics to describe how the Greeks treated the Pelasgians in the Archaic and Classical periods and provides a glimpse into the role assigned to them by the Hellenic authors. The evolution of the ancient Greeks’ ideas about the Pelasgians in the Archaic and Classical periods is traced. The place of the ethnonym of the Pelasgians in ancient Greek culture is outlined. The references to the Pelasgians in epic literature are examined. The image of the Pelasgians in tragedy and lyrics is reconstructed. The method of comparative analysis was employed: a thorough review of epic poetry, tragedy, and lyrics allowed for a comparison of the specifics of how the Pelasgians were portrayed. Hypotheses are proposed for the differences in the portrayal of the Pelasgians. Homer’s influence on subsequent works is not evident. The study’s findings provide new perspectives on historiography and resolve the longstanding disputes surrounding the study of the Pelasgians.

Dante Alighieri was well educated in literature, rhetoric, philosophy and theology. His long reading list could not lack the works of the classical authors, especially the Ovid’s one. The wellknown Florentine demonstrated his extensive knowledge many times in his works, particularly in The Banquet. This work was conceived as his summa philosophiae but from his fifteen planned treatises he wrote only four. Among many works quoted by Dante in his treatises there was also the Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The aim of this paper is the analysis of the quotations and mentions on the Ovid’s poetic work from The Banquet and to define their functions in the Dante’s work.

Russian Cultural Imperialism and its Subversion: Ivan Volkov’s “Mazepa” and Alexander Pushkin’s “Poltava” The essay will compare Pushkin’s “Poltava” (1828) and Ivan Volkov’s “Mazepa” (2014), a counterargument to Pushkin’s text. Volkov’s poem not only demonstrates the topicality of Pushkin’s classic but also reveals the latter’s hidden layers of meaning. Both poems renew the tradition of the verse epic. However, they turn the foundation story, typical for the epic, towards tragedy, focusing on the fall of Ukraine rather than the success of Russia’s imperial gesture. Volkov reverses the dominant perspectives and advances the Ukrainian point of view, while Pushkin displays a double-voiced strategy that disrupts the ostensible political message. The heroic panegyric also becomes fragile: in both poems, neither Mazepa nor Peter are ‘masters’ of history. Furthermore, in both texts, the status and function of the omniscient poet as epic narrator is challenged and transformed. Pushkin, in particular, uses his narrator as a mask; yet, in so doing, he also invites the reader to regard the ‘author,’ ‘Pushkin,’ with greater scrutiny and makes him a device that structures the work as a whole. Finally, in both poems, Ukraine’s lost fight for independence in a past age reflects a lack of freedom within the Russian state. Pushkin’s and Volkov’s poems are thus not so much texts about history as they are agents of history. Where they expose that history as constructed, they appeal to a critical position that would interrogate the driving narratives and political forces of the present.

Copyright of Atalanta: Revista de las Letras Barrocas is the property of Atalanta Revista de las Letras Barrocas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Atalanta: Revista de las Letras Barrocas is the property of Atalanta Revista de las Letras Barrocas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article discusses Joseph Ritson's interpretation of the meter used in the poem "Piers Plowman." Ritson believed that the poem was written in a Gothic alliterative meter of 9 and 11 syllables, based on Thomas Percy's essay on alliterative verse. However, this interpretation is now considered incorrect, as the poem is actually composed in an accentual meter that does not count syllables in a straightforward way. Despite this, Ritson's scansions of the poem represent an early attempt to understand its metrical system. Percy's essay, although influential, also had its limitations in providing a comprehensive understanding of alliterative verse. [Extracted from the article]

Chapter 1 of the book "Northern Narratives of J. R. R. Tolkien's Legendarium" by R. Z. Gallant is presented. It explores Germanic heroic narrative in J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction. It discusses the controversial historic use of the term 'Germanic' which historian Patrick Armory identified from a historiographer's viewpoint. It also examines the problem with the term in the Germanic heroic literature of the Heroic Age.