Ancient Epic Poetry: Homer, Apollonius, Virgil with a Chapter on the Gilgamesh Poems PDF
Preview Ancient Epic Poetry: Homer, Apollonius, Virgil with a Chapter on the Gilgamesh Poems
ANCIENT EPIC POETRY C H A R L E S R O W A N BEYE ANCIENT EPIC POETRY ANCIENT EPIC POETRY Homer, Apollonius, Virgil With a Chapter on the Gilgamesh Poems CHARLES ROWAN BEYE Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc. Wauconda, Illinois USA Updated Cover Design & Additional Typography Adam Phillip Velez Cover Illustration John Flaxman "Ulysses Weeps at the Song of Demodocus" Ancient Epic Poetry: Homer, Apollonius, Virgil With a Chapter on the Gilgamesh Poems Charles Rowan Beye 2006 © Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc. 1000 Brown Street 60084 Wauconda, IL USA www.bolchazy.com Printed in the United States of America 2006 by United Graphics 13 978 0 86516 607-3 ISBN- : - - - 10 0 86516 607-2 ISBN- : - - Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beye, Charles Rowan. Ancient epic poetry : Homer, Apollonius, Virgil : with a chapter on the Gilgamesh poems / Charles Rowan Beye. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN-13: 978-0-86516-607-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-86516-607-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Epic poetry, Classical--History and criticism. 2. Aeneas (Legendary character) in literature. 3. Argonauts (Greek mythology) in literature. 4. Achilles (Greek mythology) in literature. 5. Odysseus (Greek mythology) in literature. 6. Homer—Criticism and interpretation. 7. Virgil. Aeneis. 8. Apollonius, Rhodius. Argonautica. 9. Trojan War-- Literature and the war. 10. Oral-formulaic analysis. 11. Rhetoric, Ancient. I. Tide. PA3022.E6B49 2005 809.1’32--dc22 2005032689 memory of Mary Powers Beye Contents Preface to the Second Edition ix 1 Oral Poetry 1 2 The Poet's World 43 3 Poetic Technique 74 4 The Iliad 113 5 The Odyssey 144 6 The Argonautica 187 7 The Aeneid 219 Further Reading 257 8 · Gilgamesh 279 Further Reading Revisited 303 Index 311 Preface to the Second Edition This is a reprint of the 1993 edition of Ancient Epic Poetry published by Cornell University Press. My publishers, Bolchazy-Carducci, have given me the opportunity to add a chapter on the Sumerian-Akkadian story known most commonly as "The Epic of Gilgamesh." The logistics of reprinting have dictated that it be placed at the end after the other chapters. This seems to violate the chronological arrangement of the discussion of the other four epic poems, since the Gilgamesh story dates to the third millenium b.c.e. and the surviving texts of the story to the second. Readers, therefore, may wish to start with the Gilgamesh chapter. But its isolation makes sense from another perspective; it has not yet been assimilated into a history of western literature. While its obvious similarities to the Iliad and Odys sey make a connection of influence and continuity seem likely, even if not provable, its brevity (3,000 lines to the Iliad's 16,000), its minimalist style, in contrast to the Homeric elaboration of character, among other things, inhibit the critic. Ten years ago I brought it into my discussion of Homeric epic ever so briefly (see pp. 34-36). More recently when I wrote the fictional Odysseus: a Life (Hyperion 2004), I used an idea I had once heard from Albert Bates Lord as speculation, namely that details of the stories Odysseus tells the Phaiacians which curiously parallel bits of the Gilgamesh story (cf. p. 36) were the narrator's way of emphasizing
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