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Classical Translations of the Classics: The Dynamics of Literary Tradition in Retranslating Epic Poetry

Richard H. Armstrong

in Translation and the Classic: Identity as Change in the History of Culture

This chapter discusses the retranslation of Greek epic poetry and argues for its importance in understanding how literary traditions shape the translation scenario. First, it treats the epic ... More

This chapter discusses the retranslation of Greek epic poetry and argues for its importance in understanding how literary traditions shape the translation scenario. First, it treats the epic adaptations and translational practices of Roman authors, with particular focus on Ennius and Virgil. It also treats lesser-known translations of Greek epic from Roman times, and outlines the continuing history of Latin translation during the Renaissance, which was very influential for the burgeoning literatures of Western Europe. Then it details how this Latin tradition still informs the ‘classic’ English translations of George Chapman, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and William Cowper, who still read their Greek under the strong influence not only of Latin literary values, but also of Latin translational practices. While the Latin tradition was highly influential in shaping European retranslation of Greek epic, that tradition itself effectively produced no translation on a par with Chapman's Homer or Dryden's Virgil.Less

The Idea of Epic in the Nineteenth Century

Richard Jenkyns

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

This chapter is concerned with a paradox. It has been said that the 18th and 19th centuries were a barren period for epic poetry, yet the age was closely engaged with the epic idea. Several ... More

This chapter is concerned with a paradox. It has been said that the 18th and 19th centuries were a barren period for epic poetry, yet the age was closely engaged with the epic idea. Several significant poets of 19th-century England discuss the epic genre in their verse, not allusively or intertextually but directly and explicitly: Byron, Tennyson, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning all do this. Arnold discussed epic in his prose, and his Sohrab and Rustum is so saturated in Homer that the essays On the Modern Element in Literature and On Translating Homer almost seem to be continuing by other means a debate which the poem initiates. Keats in his own person, Clough in the person of Dipsychus, and Pater's fictional poet Flavian all declare a contrast between themselves and Homer. If the 19th century is not an age of great epic, it is at least a great age for observing epic's interactions.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

The Inauguration of the ‘Argonautic Moment’

Tim Stover

in Epic and Empire in Vespasianic Rome: A New Reading of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica

This chapter examines the significance of Jupiter's prophecy, demonstrating its importance for Valerius' poetics of rehabilitation. Jupiter's proclamation of the Fates, which engages directly with ... More

This chapter examines the significance of Jupiter's prophecy, demonstrating its importance for Valerius' poetics of rehabilitation. Jupiter's proclamation of the Fates, which engages directly with Lucan, announces the inauguration of a new world order characterized by refoundation in the wake of political collapse. The ideology discernible in Jupiter's declaration of the new imperial dispensation finds a thematic counterpart in Valerius' depiction of Vespasian's regime. The establishment of the Flavian dynasty, like the establishment of Jupiter's cosmic regime, is marked by an impulse to expand outward into new realms, a theme that reroutes epic away from the collapsing world of Lucan's Bellum Civile. Lucan depicts a dying world in which there is no hope for the future; Valerius depicts the birth of a new world, one that not only offers hope for the future, but that also has an ameliorative impact on the accomplishment of heroic deeds and the epic poetry that heralds them.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

Three Centuries, Three Americas: Epical Fellowships and Hemispheric Imperatives

Charles A. Perrone

in Brazil, Lyric, and the Americas

When the classical epic model became no longer feasible, new forms of epiclike poetry were brought about that may be associated with the hemisphere's evolving realities. The meaning of the three ... More

When the classical epic model became no longer feasible, new forms of epiclike poetry were brought about that may be associated with the hemisphere's evolving realities. The meaning of the three Americas goes beyond the geographical meaning and can be perceived through linguistic and cultural elements, or through ethnicity, race, or origins within an organizing frame that is varied across different areas. These ways of identifying the three Americas—Central, North, and South— is evident in various verses, especially in unconventional Brazilian works that further on hemispheric views that arose during the late romantic age, the twentieth century's avant-garde years, and the beginning of the twenty-first century. In this chapter, it is first important to identify how the genre and the New World's variations are manifested and how epic poetry is defined.Less

Greco‐Persian Features: Theological Inquiry, Codification, and Historiography

Thomas L. Brodie

in Genesis as Dialogue: A Literary, Historical, and Theological Commentary

Greco‐Persian culture encouraged theological inquiry, codification of law, and a transition from epic poetry to prose historiography. Wide‐ranging pioneering histories were written by Hecataeus, ... More

Greco‐Persian culture encouraged theological inquiry, codification of law, and a transition from epic poetry to prose historiography. Wide‐ranging pioneering histories were written by Hecataeus, Herodotus, and Hellanicus. The Primary History as a whole – the entire wide‐ranging prose history – fits well into the Persian Empire.Less

Mapping Ethnography

Joseph E. Skinner

in The Invention of Greek Ethnography: From Homer to Herodotus

This chapter demonstrates the relatively high levels of interest in and engagement with a wide variety of foreign or mythical peoples in the years prior to the Persian Wars. It then goes on to ... More

This chapter demonstrates the relatively high levels of interest in and engagement with a wide variety of foreign or mythical peoples in the years prior to the Persian Wars. It then goes on to examine the interlocking systems of knowledge and understanding through which they found order and expression. Mapping out this “ethnography before ethnography” entails consideration of individual categories such as epic poetry and list songs, epithets, and stereotyping. However, it also stresses their essential connectivity within an overarching imaginaire, unhampered by epistemic distinctions that privilege rational and objective prose—“fact” over fiction.Less

Agnes Bulmer, Felicia Hemans, and Poetry as Theology

Andrew O. Winckles

in Eighteenth-Century Women's Writing and the Methodist Media Revolution: 'Consider the Lord as Ever Present Reader'

This chapter examines how women used theological poetry to enter into public space during the 1820’s and 30’s through its consideration of the works of Agnes Bulmer and Felicia Hemans. In particular, ... More

This chapter examines how women used theological poetry to enter into public space during the 1820’s and 30’s through its consideration of the works of Agnes Bulmer and Felicia Hemans. In particular, the chapter focuses on changing definitions of Christian womanhood in Methodism and how Bulmer negotiated them as a poet, scholar, wife, and faithful Methodist. It then turns to Bulmer’s epic poem, Messiah’s Kingdom, to explore how she develops her epic theology—accessing a tradition of women acting as prophets and priests to forward a unique systematic theology that places sense experience, of both the natural and spiritual worlds, at the center of evangelical hermeneutics. Finally, the chapter turn to Hemans’ religious poetry, and particularly the Songs and Hymns of Life, to witness how Hemans at the end of her life uses poetry to advocate for a public religious role for women. In essence she “takes a text” in the Methodist sense and licenses poetic preaching in a world that was rapidly revolving away from these types of roles for women.Less

Concrete USA: Building Ronald Johnson’s ARK

Rebecca Kosick

in Material Poetics in Hemispheric America: Words and Objects 1950-2010

Chapter 4 argues that Ronald Johnson’s ARK, written over a period of twenty years from the 1970s to the 1990s, represents a future of concrete poetry. This chapter shows how ARK carried the practice ... More

Chapter 4 argues that Ronald Johnson’s ARK, written over a period of twenty years from the 1970s to the 1990s, represents a future of concrete poetry. This chapter shows how ARK carried the practice of concrete poetry into North America at the end of the twentieth century, and it examines the changes the practice undergoes as a result. ARK, a 300-page long poem, also incorporates modern and postmodern experiments with the epic form (such as Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems). This chapter interrogates ARK’s approach to poetic time. ARK rejects history, as well the instantaneous time of earlier, more dogmatic versions of concrete poetry, where a small poem can be apprehended in what feels like an instant. Rather than linearity or instantaneity, this chapter argues that ARK constructs a circular time, which is itself interrupted by many circular eddies that wind the reader back through concrete poetry even as the book continues to move ‘forward’. This, in turn, leads towards a theory of the linguistic object which, in contradiction to many theories that take the object as already itself and finished, shows the object in-process, an ark-itecture in the making.Less

Composition and improvisation

John A. Sloboda

in The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music

This chapter applies a ‘mental representation’ approach to understanding composition, and reviews four sources of evidence about the compositional process: sketches and notebooks; composers' own ... More

This chapter applies a ‘mental representation’ approach to understanding composition, and reviews four sources of evidence about the compositional process: sketches and notebooks; composers' own accounts of their compositional processes; live observation of composition — sometimes with ongoing commentary (verbal protocols) from the composer; and observation of improvisatory behaviour. Comparisons are made to observations of the improvizations of the reciters of epic poetry. The chapter ends with an extended analysis of a self-observed compositional session.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

Introduction

Anthony Welch

in The Renaissance Epic and the Oral Past

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore two tightly interwoven aspects of the Renaissance epic tradition: its changing relationship with antiquity and its complex ... More

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore two tightly interwoven aspects of the Renaissance epic tradition: its changing relationship with antiquity and its complex attitudes toward oral performance. This book seeks to show that a key transition in literate Europe's perception of oral culture took place in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: an emerging view of orality not simply as a fact of daily social life but as the lost and mysterious preserve of human societies far remote in space and time. It also shows how epic poets from Tasso to Milton constructed models of the past that are characterized by song and oral performance, and how, in turn, those models forced them to reassess their own art and vocation.Less

The Oldest Song: Ronsard and Spenser

Anthony Welch

in The Renaissance Epic and the Oral Past

This chapter explores two dynastic epics that take up national origin myths: Pierre de Ronsard's Franciade (1572) and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (1590, 1596). Ronsard's unfinished epic embarks on ... More

This chapter explores two dynastic epics that take up national origin myths: Pierre de Ronsard's Franciade (1572) and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (1590, 1596). Ronsard's unfinished epic embarks on a restless search for ever-older historical models to undergird its fiction, a quest that finally leads to the Orphic Hymns. Spenser's epic draws instead on the poet's encounters with the Irish bardic tradition, which force him to confront the primitive oral origins of both British chronicle history and the European epic tradition: a confrontation expressed in The Faerie Queene through fictions of primordial strife and Hesiodic theomachy.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

Gentili, the Poets, and the Laws of War

Christopher N. Warren

in The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire

This chapter illuminates a different sense in which Gentili's work was influenced by humanist sensibilities. Differentiating between legal humanism (the mos Gallicus) on one hand and rhetorical ... More

This chapter illuminates a different sense in which Gentili's work was influenced by humanist sensibilities. Differentiating between legal humanism (the mos Gallicus) on one hand and rhetorical humanism on the other, it argues that Gentili did not subscribe to the rigid historical approach to legal sources as practised by the French humanist proponents of the mos Gallicus. Nor is the core significance of humanism in Gentili's writings directly related to his substantive stance on questions of the law of war, such as the issue of the legitimacy of pre-emptive warfare. It relates instead to the importance of the studia humanitatis and of the participation in the revival of classical learning, especially literature and poetry. Exploring the relationship in Gentili's writings between poets, especially Vergil, and the substance of his laws of war, the chapter acknowledges that poetry could not strictly serve as a source of law, yet emphasizes the importance of Vergil and other poets for Gentili's laws of war. In showing that poetry for Gentili went far beyond mere ornament, the chapter significantly enlarges standard international law-oriented understandings of Gentili's use of textual sources.Less

The ‘Liberation’ of the City and Plague Poetry

Samuel K. Cohn

in Cultures of Plague: Medical thinking at the end of the Renaissance

The chapter reveals other new forms of plague writing spurred on by the peninsula‐wide threat of 1575–8: works of thanksgiving and liberation detailed celebrations cities offered for their heavenly ... More

The chapter reveals other new forms of plague writing spurred on by the peninsula‐wide threat of 1575–8: works of thanksgiving and liberation detailed celebrations cities offered for their heavenly and secular deliverance from plague, and published plague poetry exploded in number. It parted with plague verse of the past going back to Lucretius. In place of lugubrious corpse‐strewn horrors, the plague poetry of 1575–8 sung the praises of local heroes from heads of health boards to bell‐ringers, celebrating their epic deeds that buttressed communities against imminent destruction and ultimately defeated the ‘hydra‐headed’ plague.Less

Interchapter The Lutanist and the Nightingale

Anthony Welch

in The Renaissance Epic and the Oral Past

This brief interchapter surveys the interaction of the epic and pastoral traditions in the poetry of Giambattista Marino, Girard de Saint-Amant, and others. It shows how models of an oral past became ... More

This brief interchapter surveys the interaction of the epic and pastoral traditions in the poetry of Giambattista Marino, Girard de Saint-Amant, and others. It shows how models of an oral past became involved in contrasts between nature and technology.Less