Emily Greenwood
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199575244
- eISBN:
- 9780191722189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199575244.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The starting point for this chapter is Antonio Benítez‐Rojo's concept of the ‘path of words’ to explain the repetition of motifs in travel writers who undertake the same journeys. This repetitive ...
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The starting point for this chapter is Antonio Benítez‐Rojo's concept of the ‘path of words’ to explain the repetition of motifs in travel writers who undertake the same journeys. This repetitive path of words is an important route for the introduction of classical motifs into modern Caribbean literature. The chapter studies the constant return to Greece in Patrick Leigh Fermor's The Traveller's Tree: A Journey through the Caribbean Islands (1950), and contrasts Fermor's neo‐Hellenic analogies with J. A. Froude's notorious Homeric analogy in The English in the West Indies, or The Bow of Ulysses (1887). One of the legacies of these travel accounts is that the Caribbean is represented as an accident of Greece, a curious ‘other’ Mediterranean. Since both Froude and Fermor's accounts appeal to Homer's Odyssey as a legitimizing text for their travel accounts, the second section explores Derek Walcott's fashioning of a New World Odyssey that writes back to Froude and Fermor, and shares tropes with other responses to The Odyssey in the Caribbean.Less
The starting point for this chapter is Antonio Benítez‐Rojo's concept of the ‘path of words’ to explain the repetition of motifs in travel writers who undertake the same journeys. This repetitive path of words is an important route for the introduction of classical motifs into modern Caribbean literature. The chapter studies the constant return to Greece in Patrick Leigh Fermor's The Traveller's Tree: A Journey through the Caribbean Islands (1950), and contrasts Fermor's neo‐Hellenic analogies with J. A. Froude's notorious Homeric analogy in The English in the West Indies, or The Bow of Ulysses (1887). One of the legacies of these travel accounts is that the Caribbean is represented as an accident of Greece, a curious ‘other’ Mediterranean. Since both Froude and Fermor's accounts appeal to Homer's Odyssey as a legitimizing text for their travel accounts, the second section explores Derek Walcott's fashioning of a New World Odyssey that writes back to Froude and Fermor, and shares tropes with other responses to The Odyssey in the Caribbean.
David Quint
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691161914
- eISBN:
- 9781400850488
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691161914.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter focuses on book 2 of Paradise Lost. In book 2, Milton continues the story of the demilitarization of the fallen angels and of his epic more generally when he bases all of its action ...
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This chapter focuses on book 2 of Paradise Lost. In book 2, Milton continues the story of the demilitarization of the fallen angels and of his epic more generally when he bases all of its action around the figure of Ulysses, the hero of eloquence and fraud, whose own epic comes in the aftermath of the Trojan War. The chapter demonstrates that the Odyssey, imitated and parodied in Satan's voyage through Chaos to God's newly created universe in the book's last section, is just one of the classical stories about the career of Ulysses that Milton evokes as models for its different episodes. The various parts of book 2 are held together by this pattern of allusion, as well as by the Odyssean figures of Scylla and Charybdis, the emblem of bad choices, or of loss of choice itself.Less
This chapter focuses on book 2 of Paradise Lost. In book 2, Milton continues the story of the demilitarization of the fallen angels and of his epic more generally when he bases all of its action around the figure of Ulysses, the hero of eloquence and fraud, whose own epic comes in the aftermath of the Trojan War. The chapter demonstrates that the Odyssey, imitated and parodied in Satan's voyage through Chaos to God's newly created universe in the book's last section, is just one of the classical stories about the career of Ulysses that Milton evokes as models for its different episodes. The various parts of book 2 are held together by this pattern of allusion, as well as by the Odyssean figures of Scylla and Charybdis, the emblem of bad choices, or of loss of choice itself.
A. F. Garvie
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780856686603
- eISBN:
- 9781800343207
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9780856686603.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Ajax, perhaps the earliest surviving tragedy of Sophocles, presents the downfall and disgrace of a great hero whose suicide leads to his rehabilitation through the enlightened magnanimity of one of ...
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Ajax, perhaps the earliest surviving tragedy of Sophocles, presents the downfall and disgrace of a great hero whose suicide leads to his rehabilitation through the enlightened magnanimity of one of his enemies. This edition attempts to show that Sophocles offers no easy answer to the question of why Ajax falls, and no simple solution to the problem of how we ought to live so as to avoid tragedy in our own lives. The introductory chapter focuses on Ajax, as one of the major characters in Homer's Iliadand the only hero in the story that never received direct help from a god. It looks into the Odyssey, which provides the earliest reference of Sophocles being concerned with Ajax. The next chapter provides the original text of Sophocles's play about Ajax. It talks about how the play began with the death of Achilles and Ajax's desire to be rewarded with his armor. It also mentions Ajax's shame and intention of suicide after killing Agamemnon and Menelaus when they gave Achilles's armor to Oddyseus. The chapter discusses the ending of the play in which Odysseus insisted that Ajax should be buried properly. The final chapter gives the commentary for the play. It talks about how Sophocles began his plays with dialogue in order to provide the audience with information about the story. It also mentions the introduction of Odysseus and reveal of Athena as the goddess in the beginning of the play. This chapter analyses the relationships among Ajax, Odysseus, and Athena. The book presents Greek text with facing-page English translation, introduction and extensive commentary.Less
Ajax, perhaps the earliest surviving tragedy of Sophocles, presents the downfall and disgrace of a great hero whose suicide leads to his rehabilitation through the enlightened magnanimity of one of his enemies. This edition attempts to show that Sophocles offers no easy answer to the question of why Ajax falls, and no simple solution to the problem of how we ought to live so as to avoid tragedy in our own lives. The introductory chapter focuses on Ajax, as one of the major characters in Homer's Iliadand the only hero in the story that never received direct help from a god. It looks into the Odyssey, which provides the earliest reference of Sophocles being concerned with Ajax. The next chapter provides the original text of Sophocles's play about Ajax. It talks about how the play began with the death of Achilles and Ajax's desire to be rewarded with his armor. It also mentions Ajax's shame and intention of suicide after killing Agamemnon and Menelaus when they gave Achilles's armor to Oddyseus. The chapter discusses the ending of the play in which Odysseus insisted that Ajax should be buried properly. The final chapter gives the commentary for the play. It talks about how Sophocles began his plays with dialogue in order to provide the audience with information about the story. It also mentions the introduction of Odysseus and reveal of Athena as the goddess in the beginning of the play. This chapter analyses the relationships among Ajax, Odysseus, and Athena. The book presents Greek text with facing-page English translation, introduction and extensive commentary.
Thomas L. Brodie
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195138368
- eISBN:
- 9780199834037
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195138368.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
Genesis is a literary unity, and is the foundation for the Pentateuch and for the entire Primary History (Genesis‐2 Kings). This unity is complex, like the human body with its many diverse parts. As ...
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Genesis is a literary unity, and is the foundation for the Pentateuch and for the entire Primary History (Genesis‐2 Kings). This unity is complex, like the human body with its many diverse parts. As with the body, no major part preexisted other parts; all came to birth simultaneously. Three features of Genesis are pivotal. (1) Genesis is encyclopedic, synthesizing literature, religion, the science of the time, and experience (2) Genesis is artistic literature. The many variations and apparent contradictions of the text reflect a unified artistic strategy. Above all, Genesis is like a series of two‐part paintings or diptychs – two accounts of creation, two of sin, two genealogies, and so on. Every piece fits, and the diverse parts set up a dialog. (3) Genesis illustrates intertextuality; its sources include extant documents, especially from Mesopotamia, from Judea (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel), and from western Asia (Homer's Odyssey). The documentary theory (JEDP) is unnecessary and misleading.Less
Genesis is a literary unity, and is the foundation for the Pentateuch and for the entire Primary History (Genesis‐2 Kings). This unity is complex, like the human body with its many diverse parts. As with the body, no major part preexisted other parts; all came to birth simultaneously. Three features of Genesis are pivotal. (1) Genesis is encyclopedic, synthesizing literature, religion, the science of the time, and experience (2) Genesis is artistic literature. The many variations and apparent contradictions of the text reflect a unified artistic strategy. Above all, Genesis is like a series of two‐part paintings or diptychs – two accounts of creation, two of sin, two genealogies, and so on. Every piece fits, and the diverse parts set up a dialog. (3) Genesis illustrates intertextuality; its sources include extant documents, especially from Mesopotamia, from Judea (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel), and from western Asia (Homer's Odyssey). The documentary theory (JEDP) is unnecessary and misleading.
Paul Davis
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199297832
- eISBN:
- 9780191711572
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297832.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter measures the impact of the customary equations of translating with trade and with kinship on Pope's version of the Iliad (1715-20) and the version of the Odyssey (1725-6), which he ...
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This chapter measures the impact of the customary equations of translating with trade and with kinship on Pope's version of the Iliad (1715-20) and the version of the Odyssey (1725-6), which he produced in collaboration with William Broome and Elijah Fenton. Pope is normally presented as an implacable opponent of mercantile values and practices but his father made his money through trade, and ‘commerce’. In a broadened sense of mutuality or interdependence, this work constituted for him a powerful ideal of poetic conduct, a corrective to the selfish pursuit of fame. The chapter argues that Homer's evocations of heroism — Achilles's relentless individualism and the embryonic sociality manifested by Hector and Odysseus — sharply focused Pope's interior debate about competition and co-operation. Translating the ‘Father of Poetry’, Pope probed the divide between himself and his ‘honest merchant’ father and began his lifelong effort to adjust the claims of greatness against those of goodness.Less
This chapter measures the impact of the customary equations of translating with trade and with kinship on Pope's version of the Iliad (1715-20) and the version of the Odyssey (1725-6), which he produced in collaboration with William Broome and Elijah Fenton. Pope is normally presented as an implacable opponent of mercantile values and practices but his father made his money through trade, and ‘commerce’. In a broadened sense of mutuality or interdependence, this work constituted for him a powerful ideal of poetic conduct, a corrective to the selfish pursuit of fame. The chapter argues that Homer's evocations of heroism — Achilles's relentless individualism and the embryonic sociality manifested by Hector and Odysseus — sharply focused Pope's interior debate about competition and co-operation. Translating the ‘Father of Poetry’, Pope probed the divide between himself and his ‘honest merchant’ father and began his lifelong effort to adjust the claims of greatness against those of goodness.
Bruce Rosenstock
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199545544
- eISBN:
- 9780191720598
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199545544.003.0010
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
There are two discussions of Aristotle that can be taken as bookends in the Derridean corpus: ‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’ (1972) and Politics of Friendship (1994). This ...
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There are two discussions of Aristotle that can be taken as bookends in the Derridean corpus: ‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’ (1972) and Politics of Friendship (1994). This article argues that Derrida's departure from and return to Aristotle follows the narrative logic of an Odyssean nostos whose Indo‐European, ‘white mythological’, provenance is precisely the solar myth of the dying and reborn sun and whose root nes‐* (‘return to light and life’) also lies behind the noun nous. Derrida resists the safe nostos of a philosophical nous that seeks only an unerring return voyage to its point of origin. Derrida's nostos, although it is charted between Occident (Greek) and Orient (Jew), embraces the errancy of a voyage with neither a fixed origin nor a final destination.Less
There are two discussions of Aristotle that can be taken as bookends in the Derridean corpus: ‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’ (1972) and Politics of Friendship (1994). This article argues that Derrida's departure from and return to Aristotle follows the narrative logic of an Odyssean nostos whose Indo‐European, ‘white mythological’, provenance is precisely the solar myth of the dying and reborn sun and whose root nes‐* (‘return to light and life’) also lies behind the noun nous. Derrida resists the safe nostos of a philosophical nous that seeks only an unerring return voyage to its point of origin. Derrida's nostos, although it is charted between Occident (Greek) and Orient (Jew), embraces the errancy of a voyage with neither a fixed origin nor a final destination.
Corinne Ondine Pache
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195339369
- eISBN:
- 9780199867134
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195339369.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Ancient Religions
It is a commonplace to say that the heroes of Homeric epic have close bonds with gods and goddesses. Yet the degree to which goddesses are preoccupied with heroes is striking, and this concern is ...
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It is a commonplace to say that the heroes of Homeric epic have close bonds with gods and goddesses. Yet the degree to which goddesses are preoccupied with heroes is striking, and this concern is consistently expressed in terms of erotic love. Chapter 4 focuses on the motif of the goddess in love in the Odyssey, a poem structured around a series of encounters between Odysseus and several goddesses. The poem offers three Odyssean versions of the goddess-in-love motif. Odysseus’s rejection of Calypso’s love and offer of immortality is unique: Odysseus is the only Greek hero who rejects a goddess’s advances and survives the experience, a choice and outcome that are central to his status of epic hero. The hero’s relationship with Athene includes nympholeptic aspects and comes close to the ideal marriage described by Odysseus to Nausicaa in Odyssey 6. Finally, the Ithacan sanctuary of the nymphs inspires reminiscences of the cultic and folklore versions of nympholepsy. Each Odyssean version thus highlights different features of the nympholeptic pattern, which in turn help define Odysseus’s distinct form of heroism.Less
It is a commonplace to say that the heroes of Homeric epic have close bonds with gods and goddesses. Yet the degree to which goddesses are preoccupied with heroes is striking, and this concern is consistently expressed in terms of erotic love. Chapter 4 focuses on the motif of the goddess in love in the Odyssey, a poem structured around a series of encounters between Odysseus and several goddesses. The poem offers three Odyssean versions of the goddess-in-love motif. Odysseus’s rejection of Calypso’s love and offer of immortality is unique: Odysseus is the only Greek hero who rejects a goddess’s advances and survives the experience, a choice and outcome that are central to his status of epic hero. The hero’s relationship with Athene includes nympholeptic aspects and comes close to the ideal marriage described by Odysseus to Nausicaa in Odyssey 6. Finally, the Ithacan sanctuary of the nymphs inspires reminiscences of the cultic and folklore versions of nympholepsy. Each Odyssean version thus highlights different features of the nympholeptic pattern, which in turn help define Odysseus’s distinct form of heroism.
Neil Rennie
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186274
- eISBN:
- 9780191674471
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186274.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 18th Century and Early American Literature
This book is an essay in the history of the literature of travel, real and imaginary, from classical times, via the early accounts of the New World, to the accounts of the South Sea Islands that lay ...
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This book is an essay in the history of the literature of travel, real and imaginary, from classical times, via the early accounts of the New World, to the accounts of the South Sea Islands that lay beyond. It follows continuities from the Odyssey to the 20th century and traces the interplay of fact and fiction in a literature with a notorious tendency to deviate from the truth. The late medieval travels of the imaginary Mandeville and the real Marco Polo are explored, and the writings of Columbus as he struggled to reconcile what ‘Mandeville’ and Polo had written with what he found in the West Indies. The philosophical consequences of the discovery of the New World are followed in the works of Montaigne and Bacon, and the factual travels of Dampier are placed in relation to the fictional travels of Crusoe and Gulliver. The various accounts of the scientific voyages of Cook and Bougainville are examined and their revelation of a Tahiti more mythic than scientific, erotic as well as exotic. The supposedly factual narrative that is Herman Melville's first novel is read in relation to other travellers' accounts of the South Seas, as are the factual and fictional writings of Loti, Stevenson, Malinowski, Mead, and the Hawaiian Visitors Bureau. This book is the first full account of the Western idea of the South Seas as it evolved from the lost paradises of biblical and classical literature to end in the false paradise found by the tourist.Less
This book is an essay in the history of the literature of travel, real and imaginary, from classical times, via the early accounts of the New World, to the accounts of the South Sea Islands that lay beyond. It follows continuities from the Odyssey to the 20th century and traces the interplay of fact and fiction in a literature with a notorious tendency to deviate from the truth. The late medieval travels of the imaginary Mandeville and the real Marco Polo are explored, and the writings of Columbus as he struggled to reconcile what ‘Mandeville’ and Polo had written with what he found in the West Indies. The philosophical consequences of the discovery of the New World are followed in the works of Montaigne and Bacon, and the factual travels of Dampier are placed in relation to the fictional travels of Crusoe and Gulliver. The various accounts of the scientific voyages of Cook and Bougainville are examined and their revelation of a Tahiti more mythic than scientific, erotic as well as exotic. The supposedly factual narrative that is Herman Melville's first novel is read in relation to other travellers' accounts of the South Seas, as are the factual and fictional writings of Loti, Stevenson, Malinowski, Mead, and the Hawaiian Visitors Bureau. This book is the first full account of the Western idea of the South Seas as it evolved from the lost paradises of biblical and classical literature to end in the false paradise found by the tourist.
Shawn Malley
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941190
- eISBN:
- 9781789629088
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941190.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The introductory chapter establishes relationships between archaeology as a trope within SF film and television and as a cultural site from which to investigate the medium’s critical engagement with ...
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The introductory chapter establishes relationships between archaeology as a trope within SF film and television and as a cultural site from which to investigate the medium’s critical engagement with post 9/11 geopolitics. Arguing that the imagination of the future is indelibly overrun by the past, scholars like Fredric Jameson, Gary Wolfe and Carl Freeman contend that SF is a historicist genre that exposes its master fantasy of progress to the kinds of real and symbolic assaults on Western global power represented by 9/11. The introduction contends that SF film and television offer resistant readings of the ways mediatized weapons of retaliation on the West circulate within popular culture as potent images of threat and fear that have leant Western governments extraordinary powers of surveillance and control over its citizens and the world in the name of freedom and security. The introduction historicises the cinematic and televisual response to 9/11 and its aftermath by looking back to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a film that speaks obliquely to the terrible events of the year it imagines, in which the cinematics of terror have been naturalized within the SF cinematic imagination.Less
The introductory chapter establishes relationships between archaeology as a trope within SF film and television and as a cultural site from which to investigate the medium’s critical engagement with post 9/11 geopolitics. Arguing that the imagination of the future is indelibly overrun by the past, scholars like Fredric Jameson, Gary Wolfe and Carl Freeman contend that SF is a historicist genre that exposes its master fantasy of progress to the kinds of real and symbolic assaults on Western global power represented by 9/11. The introduction contends that SF film and television offer resistant readings of the ways mediatized weapons of retaliation on the West circulate within popular culture as potent images of threat and fear that have leant Western governments extraordinary powers of surveillance and control over its citizens and the world in the name of freedom and security. The introduction historicises the cinematic and televisual response to 9/11 and its aftermath by looking back to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a film that speaks obliquely to the terrible events of the year it imagines, in which the cinematics of terror have been naturalized within the SF cinematic imagination.
Gae Callender
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199740116
- eISBN:
- 9780199933174
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199740116.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Archaeology: Classical, Asian and Middle Eastern History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter examines the immediate historical context of Tausret's life and situates her within that understanding as well as illuminating the queen's reign by facts gleaned from recent ...
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This chapter examines the immediate historical context of Tausret's life and situates her within that understanding as well as illuminating the queen's reign by facts gleaned from recent archaeological discoveries. Beginning with Tausret's unique literary-historic role as Egypt's pharaoh at the time of the Trojan War, her apparent appearance in Homer's Odyssey is sketched before the available details of her reign are considered. Both the uniqueness of the queen's reign and the similarities between Tausret and other female rulers are examined. The special position of Tausret as the last ruling descendent of Ramesses the Great is explored in detail, since this was a vital part of the queen's program of legitimation and an important aspect in understanding her monuments.Less
This chapter examines the immediate historical context of Tausret's life and situates her within that understanding as well as illuminating the queen's reign by facts gleaned from recent archaeological discoveries. Beginning with Tausret's unique literary-historic role as Egypt's pharaoh at the time of the Trojan War, her apparent appearance in Homer's Odyssey is sketched before the available details of her reign are considered. Both the uniqueness of the queen's reign and the similarities between Tausret and other female rulers are examined. The special position of Tausret as the last ruling descendent of Ramesses the Great is explored in detail, since this was a vital part of the queen's program of legitimation and an important aspect in understanding her monuments.
Terence Cave
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198151630
- eISBN:
- 9780191672781
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151630.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book is about the most neglected strand of Aristotelian poetics — anagnorisis, or recognition. It is a topic that has conventionally had a bad press: the recognition scene is regarded as an ...
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This book is about the most neglected strand of Aristotelian poetics — anagnorisis, or recognition. It is a topic that has conventionally had a bad press: the recognition scene is regarded as an implausible contrivance, a feeble way of resolving a plot the author can no longer control. But why do such scenes occur in every kind of drama and narrative fiction from the Odyssey and Oedipus to thrillers by Le Carré — and how is it they continue to surprise, amuse, and disturb? This book first traces the history of the term anagnorisis and explores the ways in which it continues to be a valuable focus for theoretical reflection. Then, in a series of chapters analysing examples of recognition plots from English, French, and German literature, including Shakespeare, James, Conrad, Racine, Corneille, and Goethe, the book demonstrates how recognition must be seen as a topic of the first importance, perhaps the most strictly literary of all topics in poetics.Less
This book is about the most neglected strand of Aristotelian poetics — anagnorisis, or recognition. It is a topic that has conventionally had a bad press: the recognition scene is regarded as an implausible contrivance, a feeble way of resolving a plot the author can no longer control. But why do such scenes occur in every kind of drama and narrative fiction from the Odyssey and Oedipus to thrillers by Le Carré — and how is it they continue to surprise, amuse, and disturb? This book first traces the history of the term anagnorisis and explores the ways in which it continues to be a valuable focus for theoretical reflection. Then, in a series of chapters analysing examples of recognition plots from English, French, and German literature, including Shakespeare, James, Conrad, Racine, Corneille, and Goethe, the book demonstrates how recognition must be seen as a topic of the first importance, perhaps the most strictly literary of all topics in poetics.
Stephen Halliwell
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199570560
- eISBN:
- 9780191738753
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199570560.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Starting from the song of Phemius in Odyssey 1, with the divergent reactions to it of the suitors, Penelope, and Telemachus, this chapter introduces some of the competing views of poetry which ...
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Starting from the song of Phemius in Odyssey 1, with the divergent reactions to it of the suitors, Penelope, and Telemachus, this chapter introduces some of the competing views of poetry which developed in ancient Greek culture. In particular, it formulates the book's organizing contrast between the values of ‘ecstasy’ (poetic experience as a transformative act of imaginative and emotional engagement) and ‘truth’ (whether descriptive or normative). In considering ideas of poetry's relationship to reality, the chapter also poses the complex question whether ancient Greeks had a concept of fiction. The themes of the book are illustrated through two preliminary case studies: the Muses' message to Hesiod in the Theogony, and the counterpoint between poetry and history in Thucydides. There is also a full synopsis of the remaining chapters.Less
Starting from the song of Phemius in Odyssey 1, with the divergent reactions to it of the suitors, Penelope, and Telemachus, this chapter introduces some of the competing views of poetry which developed in ancient Greek culture. In particular, it formulates the book's organizing contrast between the values of ‘ecstasy’ (poetic experience as a transformative act of imaginative and emotional engagement) and ‘truth’ (whether descriptive or normative). In considering ideas of poetry's relationship to reality, the chapter also poses the complex question whether ancient Greeks had a concept of fiction. The themes of the book are illustrated through two preliminary case studies: the Muses' message to Hesiod in the Theogony, and the counterpoint between poetry and history in Thucydides. There is also a full synopsis of the remaining chapters.
Elton T.E. Barker
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199542710
- eISBN:
- 9780191715365
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542710.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This section introduces the twin chapters on Homeric epic, the Iliad and Odyssey. Its methodological basis for comparison derives from J. Foley, who proposes using the idea of resonance—the process ...
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This section introduces the twin chapters on Homeric epic, the Iliad and Odyssey. Its methodological basis for comparison derives from J. Foley, who proposes using the idea of resonance—the process by which formulae evoke a wider epic tradition and, in turn, resonate through each and every particular instance—to explore inter-poetic rivalry. It identifies scenes of debate through a lexical study of the term ‘agora’ and its associated formulae, on the basis of which the assembly may be regarded as an arena in which the relationship between the leader and his people is examined, questioned and forged. While other studies have compiled lists of attributes of the assembly, however, this section draws attention to the performativity of the text-how debates work in context and develop over the course of the narrative—which may help to account for the often commented absence of a clear polis structure in either poem.Less
This section introduces the twin chapters on Homeric epic, the Iliad and Odyssey. Its methodological basis for comparison derives from J. Foley, who proposes using the idea of resonance—the process by which formulae evoke a wider epic tradition and, in turn, resonate through each and every particular instance—to explore inter-poetic rivalry. It identifies scenes of debate through a lexical study of the term ‘agora’ and its associated formulae, on the basis of which the assembly may be regarded as an arena in which the relationship between the leader and his people is examined, questioned and forged. While other studies have compiled lists of attributes of the assembly, however, this section draws attention to the performativity of the text-how debates work in context and develop over the course of the narrative—which may help to account for the often commented absence of a clear polis structure in either poem.
Elton T.E. Barker
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199542710
- eISBN:
- 9780191715365
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542710.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter examines representations of debate in the Odyssey, with the suggestion that its less prominent role has implications for the standard view of this poem as playfully dialogic. Reduced to ...
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This chapter examines representations of debate in the Odyssey, with the suggestion that its less prominent role has implications for the standard view of this poem as playfully dialogic. Reduced to only two events, debate comes across not only as marginal to its narrative dynamics but also as socially divisive: these two Ithacan assembly scenes split down partisan lines, with neither group, those with Odysseus and those against him (the suitors), interested in the institution. Indeed, while the suitors' language frequently evokes an Iliadic world of strife and open contest, the Odyssey shows much more interest in deceit than in debate. The clearest example of the suppression of dissenting voices finds its substantiation in Odysseus' own narration of events; but the divine meeting between Zeus and Athena that frames the epic in books 1 and 24 equally reveals, and revels in, the narrative's control over events and their interpretation.Less
This chapter examines representations of debate in the Odyssey, with the suggestion that its less prominent role has implications for the standard view of this poem as playfully dialogic. Reduced to only two events, debate comes across not only as marginal to its narrative dynamics but also as socially divisive: these two Ithacan assembly scenes split down partisan lines, with neither group, those with Odysseus and those against him (the suitors), interested in the institution. Indeed, while the suitors' language frequently evokes an Iliadic world of strife and open contest, the Odyssey shows much more interest in deceit than in debate. The clearest example of the suppression of dissenting voices finds its substantiation in Odysseus' own narration of events; but the divine meeting between Zeus and Athena that frames the epic in books 1 and 24 equally reveals, and revels in, the narrative's control over events and their interpretation.
Colin Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117940
- eISBN:
- 9780191671135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117940.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book relates the whole tradition of epic romance back to Homer's poems Iliad and Odyssey. The core notion of this book is that both poems present a structure of emotion that is extremely hard to ...
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This book relates the whole tradition of epic romance back to Homer's poems Iliad and Odyssey. The core notion of this book is that both poems present a structure of emotion that is extremely hard to grasp; that they are both —with differing emphases, certainly, and with different priorities of representation—concerned with the nature of sympathy, and its relation to complex social rituals such as guest-friendship and supplication. Homeric pity has a multiplicity of aspects; at one moment a character pities another because of some perceived analogy between his or her condition and that of the sufferer, while at another, pity arises from a sense that there is a contingent affinity between two characters, that the pitiers know that they could be like the pitied at some future time, or that both parties share their subjection to death.Less
This book relates the whole tradition of epic romance back to Homer's poems Iliad and Odyssey. The core notion of this book is that both poems present a structure of emotion that is extremely hard to grasp; that they are both —with differing emphases, certainly, and with different priorities of representation—concerned with the nature of sympathy, and its relation to complex social rituals such as guest-friendship and supplication. Homeric pity has a multiplicity of aspects; at one moment a character pities another because of some perceived analogy between his or her condition and that of the sufferer, while at another, pity arises from a sense that there is a contingent affinity between two characters, that the pitiers know that they could be like the pitied at some future time, or that both parties share their subjection to death.
Colin Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117940
- eISBN:
- 9780191671135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117940.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Homer is hard not to read as a unified and intelligible author. However, it is difficult to avoid feeling at the same time that the Homeric poems are, to some degree, falling apart. Similar phrases ...
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Homer is hard not to read as a unified and intelligible author. However, it is difficult to avoid feeling at the same time that the Homeric poems are, to some degree, falling apart. Similar phrases and epithets keep recurring in different places with slightly new emphases, and narrative elements in the poems seem often shadily to repeat one another. Achilles is often swift of foot; Hector is very often called ‘horse-taming’; encounters between warriors seem often to be governed by flexible but discernible laws. These features—that modern scholars would attribute to the oral composition of the poems—give the impression that the Iliad and the Odyssey stem from a unified vision, since many of the new turns of phrase that one encounters read like variant versions of idioms that one has already met, and several narrative episodes—say council scenes—seem like revisions of ones that have gone before.Less
Homer is hard not to read as a unified and intelligible author. However, it is difficult to avoid feeling at the same time that the Homeric poems are, to some degree, falling apart. Similar phrases and epithets keep recurring in different places with slightly new emphases, and narrative elements in the poems seem often shadily to repeat one another. Achilles is often swift of foot; Hector is very often called ‘horse-taming’; encounters between warriors seem often to be governed by flexible but discernible laws. These features—that modern scholars would attribute to the oral composition of the poems—give the impression that the Iliad and the Odyssey stem from a unified vision, since many of the new turns of phrase that one encounters read like variant versions of idioms that one has already met, and several narrative episodes—say council scenes—seem like revisions of ones that have gone before.
Colin Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117940
- eISBN:
- 9780191671135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117940.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
To move towards the shape of an earlier narrative will almost invariably lead to the deliberate suppression of little details or large-scale modifications that one knows to be one's own. It is not ...
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To move towards the shape of an earlier narrative will almost invariably lead to the deliberate suppression of little details or large-scale modifications that one knows to be one's own. It is not easy to suppress part of oneself: traces of the effort to do so will always remain. Virgil's response to Homer is of this self-suppressive kind. He repeatedly intensifies the affective force of episodes in the Homeric poems that do not advance the purpose of the main plot. In this, he is following a dynamic established by the Homeric poems themselves: digressions into the past, or away from the overall goal of the narrative, carry a much greater emotional weight in the Odyssey than they do in the Iliad.Less
To move towards the shape of an earlier narrative will almost invariably lead to the deliberate suppression of little details or large-scale modifications that one knows to be one's own. It is not easy to suppress part of oneself: traces of the effort to do so will always remain. Virgil's response to Homer is of this self-suppressive kind. He repeatedly intensifies the affective force of episodes in the Homeric poems that do not advance the purpose of the main plot. In this, he is following a dynamic established by the Homeric poems themselves: digressions into the past, or away from the overall goal of the narrative, carry a much greater emotional weight in the Odyssey than they do in the Iliad.
Kirsten Day
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474402460
- eISBN:
- 9781474422055
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474402460.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
In the American cultural imagination, the Wild West is a mythic-historical place where our nation’s values and ideologies were formed. The heroes of this dangerous world, most familiar to us through ...
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In the American cultural imagination, the Wild West is a mythic-historical place where our nation’s values and ideologies were formed. The heroes of this dangerous world, most familiar to us through film, are men of violence who fight the bad guys as they build the foundations of civilization out of wilderness, forging notions of justice, manhood, and honor in the process. In the Greco-Roman societies that are America’s cultural ancestors, epics provided similar narratives: like Western film, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid focus on the mythic-historical past and its warriors, men who helped shape the ideological frameworks of their respective civilizations. At the same time, the best works from both genres are far from simplistic, but instead, call the assumptions underlying society’s core beliefs and value systems into question even as they promote them. Cowboy Classics examines the connections between these seemingly disparate yet closely related genres by first establishing the broad generic parallels and then providing deeper analysis through case-studies of five critically acclaimed Golden Age Westerns: Howard Hawks’s Red River, Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon, George Stevens’s Shane, and John Ford’s The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In the end, this important comparison allows the American Western to serve as a lens through which to better understand the more remote works of antiquity, while identifying epic patterns in film provides the distance that allows us to see Westerns, in whose ideological undercurrents we are more directly implicated, in a more objective light.Less
In the American cultural imagination, the Wild West is a mythic-historical place where our nation’s values and ideologies were formed. The heroes of this dangerous world, most familiar to us through film, are men of violence who fight the bad guys as they build the foundations of civilization out of wilderness, forging notions of justice, manhood, and honor in the process. In the Greco-Roman societies that are America’s cultural ancestors, epics provided similar narratives: like Western film, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid focus on the mythic-historical past and its warriors, men who helped shape the ideological frameworks of their respective civilizations. At the same time, the best works from both genres are far from simplistic, but instead, call the assumptions underlying society’s core beliefs and value systems into question even as they promote them. Cowboy Classics examines the connections between these seemingly disparate yet closely related genres by first establishing the broad generic parallels and then providing deeper analysis through case-studies of five critically acclaimed Golden Age Westerns: Howard Hawks’s Red River, Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon, George Stevens’s Shane, and John Ford’s The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In the end, this important comparison allows the American Western to serve as a lens through which to better understand the more remote works of antiquity, while identifying epic patterns in film provides the distance that allows us to see Westerns, in whose ideological undercurrents we are more directly implicated, in a more objective light.
Ritchie Robertson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199571581
- eISBN:
- 9780191722356
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571581.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 18th-century Literature
Goethe's verse narrative of 1797 uses Homeric metre and similes to portray life in a German small town feeling the distant impact of the French Revolution. It follows Wieland in offering a positive ...
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Goethe's verse narrative of 1797 uses Homeric metre and similes to portray life in a German small town feeling the distant impact of the French Revolution. It follows Wieland in offering a positive moral model, but also treats its characters humorously; how and to what degree has been a subject for critical debate, and here a nuanced reading is suggested. The chapter also examines Goethe's relation to Homer, arguing that although he was fascinated by the Iliad, he was also repelled by its grim emphasis on warfare and suffering, and that he was much more attached to the Odyssey, on which his poem's presentation of domestic life is based. Attention is also given to J. H. Voss's domestic idylls in Homeric hexameters, which Goethe admired, and to the problem of interpreting Homeric language in eighteenth‐century English poetry, in order to illustrate the difficulties of knowing when Goethe is being jocular or serious.Less
Goethe's verse narrative of 1797 uses Homeric metre and similes to portray life in a German small town feeling the distant impact of the French Revolution. It follows Wieland in offering a positive moral model, but also treats its characters humorously; how and to what degree has been a subject for critical debate, and here a nuanced reading is suggested. The chapter also examines Goethe's relation to Homer, arguing that although he was fascinated by the Iliad, he was also repelled by its grim emphasis on warfare and suffering, and that he was much more attached to the Odyssey, on which his poem's presentation of domestic life is based. Attention is also given to J. H. Voss's domestic idylls in Homeric hexameters, which Goethe admired, and to the problem of interpreting Homeric language in eighteenth‐century English poetry, in order to illustrate the difficulties of knowing when Goethe is being jocular or serious.
P. V. Jones (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780856684692
- eISBN:
- 9781800342712
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9780856684692.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter covers the basic Homeric grammar for Homer's poems of the Odyssey. For nouns, it includes the first, second, and third declension, of which some lack contraction. It includes some ...
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This chapter covers the basic Homeric grammar for Homer's poems of the Odyssey. For nouns, it includes the first, second, and third declension, of which some lack contraction. It includes some pronouns that are considered common, while others remain unchanged in declension or are observed with Homeric alteration. The Homeric grammar on verbs have person endings, verb tenses, moods, infinitives, and contracted verbs. It also mentions suffixes that are used to create adverbs and prepositions in Attic Greek that were originally adverbs and have pure adverbial force in Homer. The adverbs are best taken as prefixes to the verb, while particles show that a remark is generalizing.Less
This chapter covers the basic Homeric grammar for Homer's poems of the Odyssey. For nouns, it includes the first, second, and third declension, of which some lack contraction. It includes some pronouns that are considered common, while others remain unchanged in declension or are observed with Homeric alteration. The Homeric grammar on verbs have person endings, verb tenses, moods, infinitives, and contracted verbs. It also mentions suffixes that are used to create adverbs and prepositions in Attic Greek that were originally adverbs and have pure adverbial force in Homer. The adverbs are best taken as prefixes to the verb, while particles show that a remark is generalizing.
