Secondary epics include works such as Virgil’s Aeneidand Paradise Lost. Secondary epics are written by poets from cultures with strong literary traditions that value primary epics. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, they were intended for oral delivery until they were formally recorded.(9) Because these narratives are composed within a community over time, they are told by a seemingly anonymous author who wants their audience to accept the values of their hero, which are the values of the community’s culture. Primary epics, such as the Homeric epics, The Song of Roland, and Beowulf, are produced in cultures that value military heroism. Photo Credit: National Galleries of Scotland, CC BY-NC-ND William Bell Scott’s painting Una and the Lion, which decpicts the personification of Truth from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (16). Because of its rejection of military ethos, a common convention of epic poems, John Milton’s Paradise Lostis often considered one of the latest traditional epics.(5) Social and Rhetorical Functionsīecause traditional epics are composed over time from within a community, they demonstrate the cultural values of their communities, using characters central to the community’s narrative history.(6) From an outside perspective, epics can define a community’s social and political values and identities (7) as well as formalize a culture’s mythological traditions.(8)Ģ0th-century literary critics have created a model of primary and secondary epics, based on the use of martial ethos in epic poetry. While still holding some classical literary traditions, later epics begin to distance themselves from the epics of ancient times. Epics from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (1320) to Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590) borrowed from the traditions of ancient poets, shifting the genre for a new audience in a new world using the conventions that were regaining popularity at the time.(4) The renewed interest in antiquity normalized Greek and Latin literary traditions, which stabilized the relevance and conventions of the genre through the following centuries. Homeric epics were composed in dactylic hexameter, which set a precedent for later Greek and Latin oral poetry.(3)Ĭlassical literary traditions remained popular in Europe with the influence of the Renaissance. Before they were formally recorded, they were composed and performed orally in front of an audience, which bards would accommodate by adapting and extending the stories. The two well-known epics tell the stories of events during and after Trojan War. The Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey were first composed in Archaic Greece (circa 700-480 BC). These features continue to appear in storytelling throughout history and in modern literature, film, and video games.(2) The early poem is regarded for introducing many of the characteristic elements of epic as a genre. The narrative is written in Sumerian cuneiform on stone tablets that date to circa 2000 BC. The Epic of Gilgamesh, based on the king of Uruk, is recognized as the world’s first epic poem, and perhaps the oldest written story. The eleventh tablet of The Epic of Gilgamesh, which tells the story of a flood.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |