Search Results

The One and the Many: Constructing the Plot

JANE E. EVERSON

in The Italian Romance Epic in the Age of Humanism: The Matter of Italy and the World of Rome

Plot structure has most consistently been used as the touchstone for determining whether or not a poem could be classified as epic. It was the question of plot structure and subject matter that most ... More

Plot structure has most consistently been used as the touchstone for determining whether or not a poem could be classified as epic. It was the question of plot structure and subject matter that most exercised the critics of the genre in Italy from the mid-16th century, and it is intimately linked to questions of imitation and authorial intention. This chapter discusses the views of critics Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio and Giambattista Pigna. It then examines the extent to which the poems meet the criteria of Giraldi and Pigna, and how far their success in doing so derives from a conscious sense of the structure and subject matter of classical poems. It considers the poems in terms of formal structure, narrative disposition, choice of subject matter, and type of plot, discussing the extent to which in each of these areas the poems can be seen as legitimate descendants of the epic and how far instead they are exponents of a new genre.Less

Medieval Epic and Romance in Yiddish

Jean Baumgarten

Jerold C. Frakes (ed.)

in Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature

This chapter examines the medieval epic and romance in Yiddish. The larger corpus of epic texts assumes a great significance in the history of Old Yiddish literature. These Yiddish epics go beyond ... More

This chapter examines the medieval epic and romance in Yiddish. The larger corpus of epic texts assumes a great significance in the history of Old Yiddish literature. These Yiddish epics go beyond the simple didactic purposes of a number of the texts published up to that point, especially the translations of the Bible, for they are themselves authentic and original literary compositions. The authors of these stories, some of which are of great artistic value, demonstrate a great mastery of the form of German epic, as well as a scrupulous respect for the Hebrew sources. These epic poems, especially the Shmuel-bukh and Melokhim-bukh, mark the actual moment of birth, as it were, of a vernacular Jewish literature that had attained the level of other medieval European literatures.Less

Hannibal

Ben Tipping

in Exemplary Epic: Silius Italicus' Punica

This chapter explores the character Hannibal in Silius' Punica. It argues that it is Hannibal's compelling, meta-poetic, absent-presence in Scipio's triumphal parade that asserts his power over ... More

This chapter explores the character Hannibal in Silius' Punica. It argues that it is Hannibal's compelling, meta-poetic, absent-presence in Scipio's triumphal parade that asserts his power over Silius' epic. If the play of textual temporality, and of aperture and closure, in the Liternum episode serves to re-emphasize that the Punica is a tale told by a Roman victor, it also illustrates not only the openness of the poem to a Punic point of view, but, more broadly, Silius' limited power, as Roman epicist, over openings and closings. His poetic celebration of Roman victory, or victories, cannot altogether control its portrayal of Rome's greatest enemy, nor the problematic lapse between Roman past and present, nor, indeed, how, or how much of, the Punica will be read.Less

Epilogue

Bruno Currie

in Epic Interactions: Perspectives on Homer, Virgil, and the Epic Tradition Presented to Jasper Griffin by Former Pupils

The range of epic poetry treated in this book is vast and the constructions placed on ‘interaction’ almost equally broad. This Epilogue explores points of convergence and divergence between the ... More

The range of epic poetry treated in this book is vast and the constructions placed on ‘interaction’ almost equally broad. This Epilogue explores points of convergence and divergence between the chapters and attempts an overall narrative. At the same time further perspectives, and further problems, will emerge.Less

Scipio Africanus Maior

Ben Tipping

in Exemplary Epic: Silius Italicus' Punica

This chapter explores the character Scipio in Silius' Punica. The Punica ends with a triumph, and triumph is strongly closural. Yet by echoing Lucan's De bello civili, Silius points to the way in ... More

This chapter explores the character Scipio in Silius' Punica. The Punica ends with a triumph, and triumph is strongly closural. Yet by echoing Lucan's De bello civili, Silius points to the way in which the figure of Africanus is himself unclosed, the stuff of epic representation and its reception. There is a further Lucanian dimension to the undermined closure of the Punica. With the final, apostrophizing couplet of the poem, the narrator places himself among the citizens who watch Scipio's triumph. Participation in his own narrative here places him at a particular point in history, as if certain events, including, of course, Scipio's political downfall, were part of a future still to come.Less

Petrarch and Boccaccio: Starting Points, Turning Points, and Blind Alleys

JANE E. EVERSON

in The Italian Romance Epic in the Age of Humanism: The Matter of Italy and the World of Rome

Petrarch and Boccaccio shared an initial aim in the composition of the Africa and the Teseida. Independently, but contemporaneously, both were moved by the inspiration, the need to affirm Italy's ... More

Petrarch and Boccaccio shared an initial aim in the composition of the Africa and the Teseida. Independently, but contemporaneously, both were moved by the inspiration, the need to affirm Italy's classical heritage as far as literature was concerned, by writing an epic poem. Both shared in the literary traditions analysed above and aimed to set the epic on a new course. This chapter shows that both the Africa and the Teseida constitute starting points of the epic in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries; on the one hand the neo-Latin poem aiming to emulate and surpass its classical models in every detail; on the other the vernacular poem, syncretist in its themes, modern in its language, but equally striving to reflect the classical inspiration of the times. But the ensuing results were, from a literary point of view, very different and make very different responses to the classical culture imitated.Less

Prolegomena

M. L. West

in The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics

This chapter discusses the following: the definition of the Epic Cycle; Proclus' Chrestomatheias Eklogai and Apollodorus' Bibliotheke; the formation of the Cycle; the validity of the attested ... More

This chapter discusses the following: the definition of the Epic Cycle; Proclus' Chrestomatheias Eklogai and Apollodorus' Bibliotheke; the formation of the Cycle; the validity of the attested ascriptions to particular poets; the reflexes of the Cycle in archaic and classical art and literature; and the fortunes of the Cycle in the early Hellenistic and early Roman period.Less

Upending

Ben Tipping

in Exemplary Epic: Silius Italicus' Punica

This chapter summarizes the arguments presented in the book. The book began with the assertion that the Punica should be the Roman epic. In so doing, it provided an instance of a text taken to ... More

This chapter summarizes the arguments presented in the book. The book began with the assertion that the Punica should be the Roman epic. In so doing, it provided an instance of a text taken to exemplify a literary tradition. In the ensuing exploration of patterns of paradigmatic heroism, it identified instances of example as theme in literature. The central contentions have been that heroization of exemplary Romans by reference to Herculean heroism or Punic otherness operates less straightforwardly in the Punica than might at first appear, and that even those Roman heroes whose example seems unquestionably protreptic in Silius' poem are, on examination, significantly flawed. Such a reading of the Punica is more sensitive to complex intertextuality and correspondingly complex levels of signification than one according to which Silius as epicist simply labours to rehabilitate Rome by reference to exemplary heroes of the past.Less

Exordium

Ben Tipping

in Exemplary Epic: Silius Italicus' Punica

Silius Italicus' Punica should be the example of Roman epic, glorifying hard-won victory over an external enemy at the height of the republic, between the legendary beginnings that Virgil traces in ... More

Silius Italicus' Punica should be the example of Roman epic, glorifying hard-won victory over an external enemy at the height of the republic, between the legendary beginnings that Virgil traces in the Aeneid and the decline into civil war that Lucan laments in the De bello civili. Yet even now, as ongoing antipathy to positivist aesthetics facilitates re-evaluation of potential subject matter for monographs, classicists are less familiar with the Punica itself than with the sort of faint praise or outright condemnation that has, since antiquity, characterized literary-critical response to Silius' poem. This chapter shows how Silius' epic merits close attention both per se and for its rich interrelationships with other works, especially its main generic paradigms, Virgil's Aeneid and Lucan's De bello civili.Less

Mars and Venus—Love and War

JANE E. EVERSON

in The Italian Romance Epic in the Age of Humanism: The Matter of Italy and the World of Rome

This chapter focuses on the themes of love and war in epic poetry. It argues that these principal themes of the romance epic of the early Renaissance are virtually preset. The question facing poets ... More

This chapter focuses on the themes of love and war in epic poetry. It argues that these principal themes of the romance epic of the early Renaissance are virtually preset. The question facing poets is not what themes to choose, but how to characterize them, how to balance them and link them together, in what style and register to express them, since the solutions to these questions will dictate the extent to which the poem can be seen as reflecting classical epic traditions. The most obvious course for the vernacular poet to follow would have been to privilege warfare at the expense of love, reducing the theme of love to a secondary role and emphasizing the coherence of the theme of war, by creating a major campaign as the backbone of the narrative structure. This is the pattern adopted by Tasso, but it is not the one adopted by any of the poets surveyed in the chapter, nor indeed by Ariosto.Less

The Figure of the Hero

JANE E. EVERSON

in The Italian Romance Epic in the Age of Humanism: The Matter of Italy and the World of Rome

The 16th-century debates on the narrative poem established two principal defining features, the treatment of which was held to characterize a poem as either a romance or an epic in the classical ... More

The 16th-century debates on the narrative poem established two principal defining features, the treatment of which was held to characterize a poem as either a romance or an epic in the classical mould: namely the hero and the plot. The position concerning definitions of a true (i.e. classical) epic was further complicated by the late 16th century by the dissimilarities that had to be admitted between the practice of Homer and that of Virgil. For the period under consideration, the influence of Homer was for well-known reasons less direct, but in examining these two essential defining features it will be useful to keep both models in mind. This chapter examines the extent to which the poems under discussion attempt to draw on the classical model of the hero and incorporate it into the poem as a means of elevating the genre and providing for a revival of classical epic but in the vernacular.Less

Harps in Babylon: Cowley, Davenant, Butler

Anthony Welch

in The Renaissance Epic and the Oral Past

This chapter examines a body of poems written by a single close-knit group of Englishmen in the wake of their king's overthrow and execution in 1649. The defeated royalists who wrote most of these ... More

This chapter examines a body of poems written by a single close-knit group of Englishmen in the wake of their king's overthrow and execution in 1649. The defeated royalists who wrote most of these poems sometimes compared their plight to the Babylonian captivity of the Israelites. The poetry of Abraham Cowley, William Davenant, and Samuel Butler shows how a range of royalist writers both embraced and shrank from that cultural authority. Their epic poems animadverted against the English Commonwealth, but also pondered the role of the artist in the polity.Less

Poets and Heroes in Petrarch’s Africa: Classical and Medieval Sources

Francesca Galligan

in Petrarch in Britain: Interpreters, Imitators, and Translators over 700 years

This chapter examines the classical and medieval sources of Petrarch in writing his epic poem Africa. It brings to the fore the role of Dante's epic in Petrarch's poem and suggests that the ... More

This chapter examines the classical and medieval sources of Petrarch in writing his epic poem Africa. It brings to the fore the role of Dante's epic in Petrarch's poem and suggests that the prominence of poet characters such as Ennius and Homer, and the link between poet and hero parallel the role of poet characters such as Virgil and Statius in the Divina Commedia. It also provides evidence that Africa was influenced by Virgil's work.Less

Perspective and Paradigm

Ben Tipping

in Exemplary Epic: Silius Italicus' Punica

This chapter argues that the Punica is a poem at war with itself. The past Silius portrays is at once an ideal that contrasts with subsequent decline, the source of that decline, and disconcertingly ... More

This chapter argues that the Punica is a poem at war with itself. The past Silius portrays is at once an ideal that contrasts with subsequent decline, the source of that decline, and disconcertingly parallel with the present. For Silius also, at times, and from a certain point of view, presents exemplary Roman conduct as intact across history: Romulus, Scipio, and Domitian (for instance) are all model Romans, and approximately modelled on one another. But that point of view is temporary and partial. If the typological parallels involved in such a triumvirate achieve a mutual heroization of past and present exemplars of Roman conduct, they also entail tensions that cannot be wholly suppressed. The affinity of the republican Scipio to fratricidal king and extravagantly autocratic emperor papers over ideological fissures that remain, or are all too easily rendered, visible. It also raises the possibility that the emergent hero of Silius' epic is precisely an example of and for the domination of the individual over Roman destiny.Less

Fabius Maximus Cunctator

Ben Tipping

in Exemplary Epic: Silius Italicus' Punica

This chapter explores the character Fabius in Silius' Punica. Fabius is a singular figure, whose unique representation of the Roman cause Silius most conspicuously brings to the fore in the Punica ... More

This chapter explores the character Fabius in Silius' Punica. Fabius is a singular figure, whose unique representation of the Roman cause Silius most conspicuously brings to the fore in the Punica through play on unus but also simply by making him, for a time a focus for its epic action. In that sense, he is a prototype for such future single rulers as Augustus. Fabius, despite (meta-)epic moments of proactivity and velocity, is pointedly a paradigm of cunctation.Less

Tasso's Silent Lyre

Anthony Welch

in The Renaissance Epic and the Oral Past

This chapter explores Torquato Tasso's crusader epic, Gerusalemme liberate (1581), and its famous agon with Ariosto's Orlando furioso. It argues that the Gerusalemme liberate struggles against the ... More

This chapter explores Torquato Tasso's crusader epic, Gerusalemme liberate (1581), and its famous agon with Ariosto's Orlando furioso. It argues that the Gerusalemme liberate struggles against the role of belated successor to Ariosto's “ancient” original, which not only established itself in some elite circles as a Virgilian literary monument but also enjoyed a wide-ranging oral afterlife that invited comparisons to ancient Greek sung poetry. Tasso's writings strain to link Ariosto's art to the corruptions of modern vocal music, corruptions whose origins Tasso traces back to post-Homeric musical innovators in the ancient Mediterranean. Determined to portray the Cinquecento romance epic as a false site of origin, the Liberata seeks its own authority in a more distant prehistory, one that seems, however, to recede at its approach.Less