Epic Character Research Articles

Philippe de Vigneulles dans la Prose des Loherains

Considering the Geste des Loherains that he undertakes to change from verse to prose, Philippe de Vigneulles does not try to keep a neutral attitude in his work. On the contrary, he takes possession of the epic material but, as much as he can, he endeavours to transpose its epic style in his prose. According to his own assertion, his enterprise is intended for God and the City of Metz, and he is in permanent complicity with the epic characters and the community of Metz. For the sake of the latter, he displays some pedagogy, which allows the modern reader to guess his tastes and intentions, and to appreciate his own approach to historiography.

Les phases du combat spirituel dans la Psychomachia de Prudence

The purpose of this article is to offer a new interpretation of the structure of Psychomachia by giving a new perspective to the successive fights with respect to the preface of the poem and its framework which includes a prologue and an epilogue. This succession of fights can be interpreted as a transposition of both the epic characters of the Furies from Virgil’s Aeneid, and two of Saint Paul’s ethical models as they are presented in Eph. I, 1-12 and Gal. V, 13-24. The blending of different viewpoints gives the poem an organic, perfectly arranged structure and accounts for its true meaning on the ethical plane, that it to say that the hellish and devilish monsters, which hide in the human soul, must be utterly defeated by an inner effort, linked to Christ’s Cross.

“By force or fraud / Weening to prosper”: Milton's Satanic and Messianic Modes of Heroism

“By force or fraud / Weening to prosper”: Milton's Satanic and Messianic Modes of Heroism

Tales of Epic Ancestry: Boiotian Collective Identity in the Late Archaic and Early Classical Periods. By Stephanie L. Larson

BOOK REVIEWS Tales of Epic Ancestry: Boiotian Collective Identity in the Late Archaic and Early Classical Periods. By STEPHANIE L. LARSON. Historia Einzelschriften Band 197. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Press, 2007. Pp. 238. Paper, $87.00. ISBN 978–3–515–09028–5. Stephanie Larson’s Tales of Epic Ancestry stands at the convergence of two productive strands in Classical scholarship. The first and more recent is a developing interest in ethnicity and identity more generally, behind which one may glimpse the influence of contemporary national and global politics, the so-called “linguistic turn” in modern historiography and, above all, J. Hall’s grounding of such study in a theoretically rigorous yet accessible framework. The second is continuing research on Boiotia, the best known member of H.-J. Gehrke’s “third Greece,” where there is a long tradition of historical , archaeological and epigraphic study. Larson (henceforth L.) argues a two-part thesis: First, that a distinct Boiotian ethnicity existed already in the Archaic era; second, that this ethnic group did not achieve political and military salience until the Boiotians defeated the Athenians at Koroneia in 447/6, following a decade-long period of submission to Athens after the battle of Oinophyta in 458/7. L. discusses methodology and defines key terms (the works of A.D. Smith and J. Hall loom large) in a brief introduction. Chapter 1 exposes a coherent Archaic account about Boiotos, eponymous ancestor of the Boiotians, who was regarded as the son of Poseidon and an Aiolid woman, and as the father or grandfather of a host of important figures in Boiotian cult and myth. Chapter 2 demonstrates that already in the Archaic period there was a uniform tradition about a Boiotian migration from southern Thessaly . By doing so, L. has already demonstrated that, by the criteria of Smith and Hall, the Boiotians were a bona fide ethnic group by this date. Subsequent chapters consider a plurality of indicia of Boiotian ethnicity, i.e., features that may accompany and support Boiotian ethnic identity but are not constitutive of such an identity. Chapter 3 engages with Boiotia’s rich numismatic heritage in the late Archaic and early Classical period. Drawing on T.H. Nielsen’s recent work on the so-called Arkadikon issues, L. argues that those exceptional early- to mid-5th -century coins (probably minted in Tanagra) bearing the legend ΒΟΙ or ΒΟΙΟ are more likely festival issues than true federal issues. Individual cities routinely minted coins in Boiotia in this period, and L. unpacks the implications of the use of common types: 66 BOOK REVIEWS The Boiotian cut-out shield simultaneously recalled the iconography of the better-established Aigina turtles, while creating an implicit association with Ajax, an Aiakid hero often depicted in contemporary scenes with such a shield. Chapter 4 less successfully explores the epic character of Boiotian dialect and suggests that Boiotian preservation of Archaizing and epicizing features connected Boiotians to their Homeric past. Dialect and coinage can both be seen as drawing on and mutually reinforcing Boiotian claims to shared descent and territory. In Chapter 5, L. demonstrates that the ethnics Boiotios and Boiotoi were used in the 6th and early 5th century in cultic contexts especially, and often associated with Athena (Ptoion, Delphi), and that in no case do the Boiotians seem to express themselves as a political or military koinon, but rather as a community of cult. Use of these ethnics by non-Boiotians does not contradict this image. Thus Pindar’s awareness that Boiotians were slandered by outsiders as “pigs” reveals that they were regarded as a cultural unit, not a political one. After the middle of the 5th century, however, a shift occurs and the ethnics begin to have a clear political referent (e.g. SEG 26.475, a riddling tablet from Olympia). Chapter 6 confronts the evidence that poses the steepest resistance to L.’s thesis, namely the passages of Herodotus and Thucydides that seem to indicate a more formal political organization of Boiotia at the time of the Persian Wars and earlier; L. dismisses such testimony as retrojection (often polemical) of late 5th -century conditions into an earlier context. Koroneia emerges as a turning point when Boiotia was united into...

El Cid y Diyenís: ¿héroes de novela o de epopeya?

The archaizing versions of the history of Digenis Acritas (from the MS of Trebizond) were the first to be edited, in 1875, and the first translation was made from the MS of Grottaferrata, in 1956. Both facts resulted in the poem being called a After Stilianos Alexiu published in 1985 his critical edition of the MS of El Escorial, the close relation of the text to a popular epic could for the first time be studied. The doubts concerning the epic character of the Digenis E have been similar to those which were set forth concerning the Poema de Mio Cid. The epic features of both poems are analyzed here as part of a longer research in which both the Cid and Digenis are considered heroes of an epic, not a novel.

The Jewish Writer in America

The Jewish Writer in America Eugene Goodheart (bio) The year 1953 was an extraordinary one in the history of American literature. With the publication of Saul Bellow's third novel, The Adventures of Augie March, American-Jewish writing entered and took center stage. His first two novels, Dangling Man and The Victim, had been critical successes; but Augie March was at once a critical success and a best seller, winning the National Book Award. "I am an American, Chicago born," the hero declares in the opening sentence of the novel. That he is Jewish is not mentioned, though there is no doubting Augie's identity as the novel unfolds. The focus on his Americanness and his birth in Chicago dispels any expectation that this may be another novel of a Jewish hero enclosed in a claustral shtetl psychology. The echo of Mark Twain's great novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the title suggests that Bellow sees himself in the great tradition of American writing. In considering William Einhorn, wealthy and crippled but politically powerful, one of Bellow's larger-than-life characters, Augie enters him on his "eminent list" of world-historical figures. He imagines one of Einhorn's disciples having to make an important decision and asking himself: "What would Caesar suffer in this case? What would Machiavelli advise or Ulysses do? What would Einhorn think?" Against the philistine democratic view that the human "race no longer has in any important degree the traits we honor in these fabulous names," Augie insists on his "right to praise Einhorn," an epic character of his time. At the end of the chapter devoted to this "superior man," Augie finds himself "not in the center of the labyrinth but on a wide boulevard." There are, of course, no boulevards in the shtetl. Isn't this the achievement of Bellow—to take the Jew off the side streets and put him on the boulevard of the imagination? The titles of his first two novels are a measure of the imaginative leap he made in writing Augie March. No longer dangling man or victim, Augie in his swagger displays a confidence in his place in American life that verges on bravado. "[I] go at things as [End Page 93] I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way, first to knock, first admitted, sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent." Even anti-Semitism fails to faze the youthful Augie, whose take on it is peculiarly American: "And sometimes we were chased, stoned, bitten, and beat up for Christ-killers. . . . But I never had any special grief from it, or brooded, being by and large too larky and boisterous to take it to heart, and looked at it as needing no more special explanation than the stone-and-bat wars of the street gangs or the swarming on a full evening of parish punks to rip up fences, screech and bawl at girls, and beat up strangers." How did Bellow manage the leap? Well, there is the matter of genius and temperament that goes beyond explanation. But genius and temperament alone do not guarantee recognition, let alone success. There is also the matter of the historical moment, the post–World War ii period. It is one of the most extraordinary facts of our democracy that the military may be in the social sense its most democratic institution. It is the place where men and women of different religious, racial, and ethnic backgrounds mix in a condition of equality, sometimes under fire, despite the hierarchical structure of the military. Moreover World War ii was a war against the most pernicious racism and anti-Semitism in history. During the postwar period America became increasingly hospitable, though not without resistance, to the claims of its minorities to full cultural, social, and political enfranchisement. The war served as a rite of passage for Jews as well as for other ethnic groups. Bellow was a pioneer in literature; Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and others would soon follow. According to an anthology of American-Jewish writing published in the 1960s, the "breakthrough" meant not that "the Jew has caught up with America...

Is Jesus my Superhero?

This paper considers an implicit trend in youth ministry to present Jesus as the archetypal superhero and asks if this is a valid and a helpful approach. The paper examines the relationship between the biblical category of hero and the contemporary notion of superhero and a broader appreciation of the use of myth for communicating Christian apologetics as seen in Lewis and Tolkien. The starting point for the paper is that an arguable starting point for the creation of Superman is in the epic character of Hercules and the biblical hero Samson. Through an examination of biblical and other Near East material the paper calls for a deeper and more nuanced appreciation of the relevance of modern western myth in the task of communicating theological narratives and concepts.

TENSÃO ESTÉTICA: DISSONÂNCIA ENTRE ELEMENTOS DA TRAGÉDIA E O CONTEÚDO ÉPICO NA OBRA "O PUNHO"

In this article, we begin from the premise that, in a literary work, the ideological aspects are found not only in the social-cultural aspects approached by the artist, but also in the aesthetic form given to the work. That is because ideological characters are weldedindissolubly to the material reality of the sign, that, in its turn, cannot be separated from the form that the whole acquires from the statement. In this way, the analytical procedure adopted here turns towards the thematic content, the verbal style and compositional construction as indissociable components among themselves, searching inaesthetic construction of the work O Punho (1980), by Bernardo Santareno, the elements that allow us to see the disagreement between the content of epic character, that is the basis of the thematic of the work, and the shifting line that occurs, in many moments along the fable, to the individual conflict of the main character.

Alfonso Reyes, traductor de la Ilíada: un poeta épico autónomo

In this study, we focus on the epic character of Reyes’ translation of the Iliad. Comparing his version with the original, we analyse how the translator represents formal epical elements, such as the metre, the formulas and repeated scenes. We find, on the one hand, that Reyes does not literally reproduce the epic elements of the Greek original, which results in a reduction of the epical character of his translation. On the other hand, he adopts the principles of epic composition and applies them independently from the original to his own work. This way, he reinforces the epic nature of his translation. Consequently, his faithfulness to the original surpasses the first literal layer and reaches the more fundamental level of the genre. We therefore argue that Reyes is not just a translator but turns into an autonomous epic poet. While translators usually remain truthful to a text by reproducing style elements literally, Reyes proves his loyalty to the Iliad precisely in the parts where he deviates from the original text by applying classic epic processes in a personal, creative and independent way.

Kathakali: Kottayam Plays (review)

KATHAKALI: KOTTAYAM PLAYS. International Video Edition (DVD). A Vedika Presentation. E-mail: . Web site: . Recording format: Beta. Complete set of four plays (9 DVDs): $400. Individual plays: $100 each. Plays: Baka Vadham (The killing of Baka); Kirmira Vadham (The killing of Kirmira); Kalyana Saugandhikam (The auspicious flower); Kalakeya Vadham (The killing of Kalakeya). Vedika, nonprofit group based in Thrissur, Kerala (southern India), which promotes Kerala's traditional arts through workshops, seminars, performances, publications, and video documentation, has released four major kathakali plays on set of nine DVDs. While the domestic edition was released in January 2003, an international edition will be released in early 2004--of which preliminary version is reviewed here. The plays were recorded before an invited audience in Thrissur, Kerala, in September 2002. Perhaps the greatest single contribution of the international edition, unique thus far among the available video and film documentations of kathakali, is the inclusion of scrolling narrative text and voice-over in English introducing each scene, as well as extensive English subtitles used during the actual performance. These valuable additions enable English-speaking viewers of kathakali as well as students and scholars to deepen their understanding and appreciation of how such highly performative genre expresses the poetic conceits and literary references that are rife in the form. I applaud these unobtrusive captions that can only serve to further our understanding of such rich and complex performance genre. Vedika has wisely chosen to document what are arguably the four most important plays in the entire kathakali repertoire: The Killing of Baka, The Killing of Kirmira, The Flower of Good Fortune, and The Killing of Kalakeya. These plays were composed sometime in the late seventeenth century by the famous Kerala king and man of arts and letters Kottayam Thampuran, and they remain the backbone of kathakali training and performance to this day. With the use of subtitles, English-speaking viewers can finally appreciate Thampuran's highly poetic and literary writing. The Kerala scholars behind Vedika, led by Mundoli V. Narayanan (professor of literature at Miyazaki International College, Japan), have also produced an extensive booklet that accompanies the international edition. The booklet is multi-purposed, but one of its primary intents is to introduce the reader to the playwright who was the first great kathakali reformer in the early days of its development. Kottayam Thampuran hailed from royal family and served as king of northern Kerala principality. From early on, Thampuran was exposed to literature and the arts. He made many important contributions to kathakali, introducing for the first time episodes from the Mahabharata. Until this point, all the plays were drawn from the Ramayana and revolved around the deeds of the gods. These earlier plays centered on single character displays and were very one-dimensional. Narayanan suggests that they were no more than a costume dance accompanied by music (pp. 7-8). Thampuran added depth and emotional complexity to his characters that was not there before and turned kathakali into total theatre that blended all the elements of acting, dance, vocal music, and instrumental music. In Thampuran's masterful hands, the epic characters evolved throughout the story rather than appearing as unchanging constants as they had prior to his work. Thampuran was also instrumental in giving his female characters multidimensionality of moods and states of minds. His plays offered new challenges to the actor in terms of further codifying facial expressions and expanding the musical and rhythmic possibilities and the emotional states that could be expressed. The booklet also provides general timeline of kathakali's early evolution from ramanattom, and contains primer on kathakali with an illustrated list of the mudras (hand gestures) and their various meanings and glossary of terms. …

Vasco da Gama as Narrator in "Os Lusíadas"

Vascoda Gamaas Narrator inOs Lusíadas THOMAS R. HART Frank Kermode observes that'Permanent modernity isconferred onchosen works by arguments and persuasionsthat cannot themselves remain modern'.1 Old books continueto be read becausetheyare read in new ways.The changing interpretations of theAeneidare perhapsthebest example.A similar revision ofreceived opinionistaking placeconcerning Os Lusíadasandforsimilar reasons. RichardHeinze,in1903,considered Aeneas'theidealRomanhero'and theAeneid'a sublime assertion ofthemight ofRomeandAugustus'.2 Most classicalscholars inthefirst halfofthetwentieth century accepted Heinze's assessment, as doesT. S. EliotinWhatisa Classic?(1945)and'Virgiland theChristian World'(1951).After WorldWarII,andsurely inpartbecause ofit,manyreadersbeganto see thepoemdifferently. Amongthemwere theAmerican classicists AdamParry, Wendell Clausen,andMichaelC. J. Putnam: Ina reaction against thetraditional view[. . .] thattheAeneid asserted thevaluesof order andcivilization bydepicting their eventual victory, they tended toholdthat the poempresented a pessimistic viewalongside thesurface glory ofAeneasandRome [...]. Thecostofimperialism, a costfelt byvictor as wellas victim, wastheessential message - theplotoftheAeneid is'a longhistory ofdefeat andloss',[. . .]andAeneas was an uncertain, sensitive, and quasi-existentialist hero,'profoundly melancholy, half-paralysed byfate'.3 ThomasM. Greene observes that'ofthetwogreat forces whichanimate it, imperialism andnationalism, thefirst islargely discredited inourday,and the second is beginning to be suspect.[. . .] One can scarcelyopen Camoens' volumewithoutquestioning those principles he takes most instinctively forgranted'.4 It is hardlysurprising thatmanyreadersnow find Os Lusíadaslessattractive thanCamoes'slyrics, wherethesepolitical issueshardlyappear,and thattheylook forthesame qualitiesin both. HelderMacedo,forexample,asserts that'Camões gavea newdimension to epicbymaking itan extension ofhislyric poetry, usinghimself as an epic character'.5 I would add thatCamões does so not justby making 1FormsofAttention (Chicago: University ofChicago Press,1985),p. 72. S. J.Harrison,'Some Views oftheAeneidin theTwentiethCentury, in OxfordReadingsin Virgil's'Aeneid',ed. by S. J. Harrison (Oxford& New York: Oxford University Press,1990), pp. 1-20 (p. 1). _ _ _ _..._. * Harrison,p. 5; thephrasesquoted are WendellClausen s. 4 Thomas M. Greene,The DescentfromHeaven: A StudyinEpic Continuity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,1963),p. 220. 3 Helder Macedo, Os Lusíadas: I he Ambiguous hpic or Luis de Camões , Journalof We Institute ofRomanceStudies,2 ( 1993),243-49 (p. 249). VASCO DA GAMAAS NARRATOR IN OS LUSÍADAS 17 himself a character inhispoem,butbyassigning Vascoda Gama a dual roleas protagonist andas narrator ofa considerable portion ofthepoem (CantoHI,stanza3,toCantoV,stanza89).InallowingGamatosharehis dutiesas narrator, Camões,ofcourse, follows theexampleofVirgil inthe Aeneidbutwiththeimportant difference thatmuchofGama's narrative presents eventsof whichhe himself has no first-hand knowledge,the history ofPortugal from itsearliest beginnings until hisvoyage. FrankPierceexpresses thedissatisfaction feltbymanymodern readers withwhattheysee as Gama's inadequacyas an epichero:'he meetsno Dido, he has no Ascaniusor Anchises, thatis,he is notseenas a son,a father or a lover.[. . .] The resultis thatVasco da Gama is [. . .] rather shadowy.'6Camoes's contemporaries did not share this view. They associatedepic withepideictic, the rhetoric of praise and blame,and expectedan epicheroto be perfect in every way,a modelforreadersto imitate. CraigKallendorf observes that'one ofthethings we do notfind' in sixteenth-century commentaries on the Aeneid 'is any significant willingness toseemoralfailing inAeneas'.7 Asprotagonist ofOs Lusíadas, Vascoda Gama isimpassive andunchanging, quiteunliketheprotagonist of a novelwhosecharacter is gradually transformed by experience. As narrator, however, heisfree toexpress hismostdeeply heldbeliefs: Quão fácil éao corpoa sepultura! Quaisquer ondasdomar, quaisquer outeiros Estranhos, assimesmo comoaosnossos, Receberão detodoo illustre osossos.(V.83.5) Camõesblursthedistinction between himself and hissurrogate narrator bymaking bothofthemsharethesamefeelings. Itis Gama,notCamões, whodeclares that Comestacondição pesadaedura Nascemos: o pesarteráfirmeza, Maso bemlogomudaa natureza, (V.80.6) repeating a favourite themein Camoes's lyrics, 'theOvidianconviction that nothing iswhatitseems - orifitis,itwillshortly turn intosomething else'.8Bothsharethesamemastery ofrhetoric. Whatever maybe said of thehistorical Vasco da Gama, theGama who servesas narrator in Os Lusíadashasas muchright as hiscreator tosaythathe,too,hasa 'mente às Musas dada'. Camões is fullyjustified in callinghim '[o] facundo capitão'(V.90.1). 6 Luís de Camões, Os Lustadas,ed. byFrankPierce(Oxford:Clarendon,1973),pp. xxiv-xxv. Allreferences inthetextareto thisedition. 7 CraigKallendorf, Virgil and theMythofVenice:Booksand ReadersintheItalianRenaissance (Oxford:Clarendon,1999),p. 77. StephenReckert,BeyondChrysanthemums: Perspectives on PoetryEast and West(Oxford: Clarendon,1993),p. 8. l8 THOMAS R. HART Camões and Vasco da Gama are not,of course,interchangeable as narrators. Venusand Bacchus,whoplaykeyrolesinCamoes'snarrative, havenoplaceinGama'sfortheobviousreasonthathehimself isunaware of them.Theirrepeatedinterventions in Camoes's accountof Gama's voyageinthefirst twocantosarenotmentioned whenGama tellshisown storyof the voyage to the Sheik of Malindi...

Time to Begin Anew: Dryden’s Georgics and Aeneis by Tanya Caldwell

63 5 Page 4. Many early biographies of Brown have him born at Shifnal. Benjamin Boyce, citing the parish register and Anthony Wood, prefers Newport: Tom Brown of Facetious Memory (Cambridge , Mass., 1939), p. 5. Either way, Brown was a Shropshireman. 6 Entitled ‘‘The General Lover,’’ and divorced from its epistolary context, the poem appears among Brown’s miscellaneous verse in vol. I of his Works (1707, p. 154), which suggests that it may have enjoyed wider currency, in printed or MS collections. 7 These and other attacks by Brown and Boyer are cited in Works, I:390, 393, 481; II: 288– 291. Formerly Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London BOOKS BRIEFLY NOTED* TANYA CALDWELL. Time to Begin Anew: Dryden’s Georgics and Aeneis. Lewisburg , PA: Bucknell, 2000. Pp. 263. $44. This is the first critical study to take a serious and sustained look at the two centerpieces of Dryden’s Virgil: theGeorgics and the Aeneis (1697). Ms. Caldwell rightly assumesthatDryden’sGeorgicvision was just as central and crucial to his literary imagination as was the epic story of Aeneas. She argues that both works betray the same underlying tension; in effect , Dryden is caught between two different worlds—the heroic past of Virgil and the unheroic present ofcontemporary England. How did Dryden mediate this conflict? Through ‘‘emphasis on the poet’s rather than history’s redeeming powers, uncertainty about the future or the importance of political and historical issues, and concern ultimately with the individual. These are the building blocks, too, of course of the Aeneis, where the obviousfailureoftheheroicismanifested in the poem’s emphasis on moral truth and individual survival and virtue over the cultivation of national history and a national hero.’’ *Unsigned reviews are by the editors. Ms. Caldwell elaborates this insight with great subtlety and ingenuity, enriching her readings by constant reference to the decade in which Dryden composed his Virgilian translations. Althoughmany commentators have pointed out Williamite and Jacobite allusions in Dryden’sVirgil , Ms. Caldwell uncovers a new trove of topical meaning. Discussing the relevant works (plays, poems, translations, essays) which Dryden wrote before and after the Glorious Revolution, her book is a well-informed and far-reaching treatment of thiswatershedperiodinDryden’s life and this transitional phase in English cultural history. Unlike previous translators of Virgil, Dryden was poised (however precariously ) to give a ‘‘novelistic’’ rendering of epic themes, epic struggles, and epic characters. He achieved this effect by modulating back and forth, often within the same passage or episode, between Virgilian grandeur and pathos and Drydenesque irony and mock-heroic satire. Departing from other commentators, Ms. Caldwell finds coherence and continuity in these tonal displacements and disparities . For her, Dryden is a Modernist, and his Virgil a sort of Hugh Selwyn Maub- 64 erley; in short, Dryden gave his contemporaries the kind of classic which ‘‘the age demanded.’’ No one has produced a more comprehensive and balanced assessment of Dryden’s Virgil than Ms. Caldwell. Taylor Corse Arizona State University RICHARD MORTON. John Dryden’s Aeneas : A Hero in Enlightenment Mode. Victoria: Victoria, 2000. Pp. 136. $15.50. In selective meticulous detail, this monograph demonstrates the important truth that Dryden’sAeneidembodies‘‘the different social assumptions and moral values of a different time and place.’’Virgil (Mr. Morton spells his name Vergil) ‘‘becomes a contemporary of the translator . Not only does he seem to allude to the Glorious Revolution and the key political squabbles of the time; more centrally and viscerally he is an Englishman, his habits of mind formed by Christianity, Toryism, Lockean philosophy, and Restoration sentimentality.’’ Mr. Morton comments shrewdly and judiciously on the many ways, large and small, in which Dryden manipulates the text of Virgil to presentanAeneas‘‘whoisarecognizably post-RenaissanceEuropeanhero—aman continuing his education, through occasional backslidings and embarrassments, to an ultimate epic status which is itself ambiguous.’’ In chapters on memory and identity (the wanderings of Aeneas), on social status (Aeneas and hisfellowTrojans),on romantic love (Aeneas and Dido), on the underworld (Aeneas and Anchises), on epic combat (Aeneas and Turnus), Mr. Morton shows how Dryden produces a robust and vigorous translation, which loses much of Virgil’s pathos, ambiguity, and subtlety: ‘‘If Vergil is suggestive, he will make the...

The Hybris of Odysseus

At the close of the Cyclops adventure Odysseus piously sacrifices to Zeus the ram that has carried him out of Polyphemus' cave. Yet the god spurns his offering and ponders instead the destruction of Odysseus' ships and their crews (ix 553–5):These lines need explaining, as they present two difficulties, one formal, the other thematic. How can Odysseus know what Zeus is pondering? As a first-person narrator Odysseus assumes temporarily the role of the epic poet, yet without being given the latter's omniscience. He retains therefore the restricted perspective of an epic character which precludes any precise knowledge of supernatural processes.

Sir Mortimer Wheeler

Sir Mortimer Wheeler towers over twentiethcentury archaeology like a colossus. One of the last of the great archaeological adventurers, Wheeler has left a mark on our discipline that shows no sign of diminishing even as immediate memories of his long life fade into history. A biography of this extraordinary, almost heroic, figure was inevitable, and sure enough it has appeared. Jacquetta Hawkes’s Mortimer Wheeler: adventurer in archaeology arrives just six years after his death; far too soon for a really dispassionate assessment. Hawkes has been careful to compile a life, not a hagiography. She has avoided the pitfalls of a cult book, such as those devoted to other well-known figures in recent years. Wheeler would never have approved of groupies nor of a cult, for he was only too aware of his own imperfections. Nevertheless, he emerges from Hawkes’s biography as rather larger than life. ‘Mortimer Wheeler will rise from these pages as a Hero figure’, Hawkes disarmingly admits at the beginning. She undertook the daunting task of sifting not only through piles of dusty notes and archaeological field notes, but through peoples’ opinions of the man that varied from unqualified hero-worship to virulent hatred. What is remarkable is that his detractors were also admirers of his energy and vitality. Hawkes is refreshingly honest about her own feelings for Wheeler. She had ‘a very great liking’ for him. She enjoyed, she tells us, ‘his company, his talk, his power to brighten the day.’ She had the disadvantage of never having worked with him, which she describes, probably accurately, as ‘a terrifying as well as immensely profitable’ experience. Her well written, enjoyable biography paints Wheeler as a form of epic character, one of the last people to belong in the heroic age of archaeology.

The Epic Character of the Divina Commedia and the Function of Dante's Three Guides

The Epic Character of the Divina Commedia and the Function of Dante's Three Guides

Milton's Epic Characters: Image and Idol. John M. Steadman , Milton

<i>Milton's Epic Characters: Image and Idol</i>. John M. Steadman , Milton

Approaches to 'Paradise Lost'; Milton Studies; Milton's Epic Characters: Image and Idol; Milton and the Miltonic Dryden

Journal Article Approaches to ‘Paradise Lost’; Milton Studies; Milton's Epic Characters: Image and Idol; Milton and the Miltonic Dryden Get access Approaches to ‘Paradise Lost’. Edited by C. A. Patrides. Arnold. 63s.Milton Studies, I. Edited by James D. Simmonds. Pittsburgh U.P. $8·95.Milton's Epic Characters: Image and Idol. By John M. Steadman. Oxford ( N. Carolina U.P.). 80s.Milton and the Miltonic Dryden. By Anne Davidson Ferry. Oxford ( Harvard U.P.). 47s. 6d. Geoffrey Bullough Geoffrey Bullough Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar English: Journal of the English Association, Volume 19, Issue 103, Spring 1970, Pages 24–26, https://doi.org/10.1093/english/19.103.24 Published: 01 March 1970

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access Approaches to Paradise Lost. Edited by C. A. Patrides. Pp. xii+264. London: Arnold, 1968. 63s. net. Milton's Epic Characters. By JOHN M. STEADMAN. Pp. xiv+344. Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1968. 80s. net. MICHAEL FIXLER MICHAEL FIXLER Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XXI, Issue 83, 1970, Pages 358–361, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XXI.83.358 Published: 01 July 1970

REVIEWS

John M. Steadman's Milton's Epic Characters: Image and IdolJohn Reesing (George Washington) has approached ‘a number of critical problems in A Mask, as he calls it, “Lycidas” and Paradise Lost, in his collection of previously unpublish‐ ed essays, Milton's Poetic Art

Medicine in Yugoslavia.

One of the brightest chapters in the history of medicine is the contribution made by the medical profession in Yugoslavia. Faced by shortages of personnel, supplies, and beds, and against superhuman obstacles, they have shown a devotion to duty, a technical competence, and a professional loyalty that symbolize the epic character of the ideal physician. As a result of the war, one of the primary problems facing the country and the medical profession was the great shortage of doctors—1,500 physicians were lost in the war, leaving only 6,000 to carry the burden of medical care for 16 million people. Half of the remaining doctors are 50 years of age or older. Many of them divided their time between military duties and civilian care. To the load they were already bearing was added the burden of illness and disability that resulted from the war. Furthermore, the rapid industrialization program was producing