Great Epic Research Articles

Penelope and the Pigs: Indic Perspectives on the "Odyssey"

In India it is a commonplace that the great epic, the Mahābhārata, is a dharma or legal text. It can also be demonstrated not only that there are explicit references to ritual in the epic narrative, but that the narrative sometimes covertly encodes ritual, allowing the audience to experience the narrative on several levels at once. I will suggest that it is possible to read the Odyssey both as a legal and a ritual text and that explicit reference to the rich legal, ritual, and epic materials of ancient India clarifies much that is murky in the Odyssey, given the Indo-European heritage that they both share. The paper focuses on three issues: (1) A legal point: the legal status of Penelope, particularly with regard to her remarriage. Should she remarry, and if so, who has the authority to arrange such a marriage? Both legal and epic materials in Sanskrit treat in detail the situation of a woman whose husband has gone abroad and disappeared. (2) A legal institution: the marital self-choice (svayamvara in Sanskrit) and its relevance to Penelope and the suitors. The self-choice is a common type of marriage for kings' daughters in Sanskrit, in which the princess "chooses" a husband from a group of assembled suitors. Often the "choice" is governed by an act of strength and skill, just as Penelope's marriage contest was. (3) A ritual: the consecration of the king (Rājasūya in Sanskrit) and its relevance to Odysseus' return. Odysseus' return to Ithaka can be read as a covert encoding of a royal consecration ritual similar to the Sanskrit Rājasūya. In particular, the theme of the bow, the importance accorded to Eumaios' pigs, and the narrative of the boar hunt all find their counterparts in the Sanskrit ritual.

‘Japan’ in an English Mirror

‘The rise of Japan is surely one of the great epics of modern world history’. Yet it is not easy to obtain an overview of the development of Japanese civilization. Since the 1960s there has been an explosion of research which has overturned many of the older orthodoxies. The Cambridge History of Japan provides us with an unique chance to take stock. Here I will consider the four volumes covering the period from the twelfth to the later twentieth century.

Chronicle Propaganda in Fourteenth-Century Scotland: Robert the Steward, John of Fordun and the 'Anonymous Chronicle'

The late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries were a period of notable literary activity in the Scottish kingdom. The second half of the fourteenth century saw the production of both John of Fordun's major chronicle, Chronica Gentis Scotorum, and John Barbour's great verse epic, The Bruce. These were followed in the first decades of the fifteenth century by Andrew Wyntoun's rhyming Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland. Then in the 1440s there was another substantial addition to the burgeoning chronicle tradition with the appearance of Walter Bower's Scotichronicon, a reworked, expanded and amended version of Fordun's earlier Chronica.

Adams the Pilot: The Life and Times of Captain William Adams, 1564-1620

Previous biographies of the so-called First Englishman in Japan - most notably P.G. Rogers and Richard Baker (The Needlewatchers) earlier this century - did not have access to the more recent research of scholars such as Derek Masarella, Anthony Farrington, Michael Cooper and Charles Boxer. This study offers an authoritative biography, as well as providing a valuable focus on the period - especially in terms of trade and political alliances, in both Europe and Japan. While it is clear that the romantic fiction surrounding Adams' story is unlikely to abate, it is hoped that at least some of the readers of the great epics - such as Clavell's Shogun - will find the truth just as strange, and more fascinating.

German epic poetry

Heroic poetry from the great epics of German literature. Includes Jungere Hildebrandslied, The Battle of Ravenna, Bitterolf and Dietlieb, and The Rose Garden (Version A).

Horace's Influence on Renaissance Epic

While Horace's Satires were widely read and influential on European literature from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century, the Odes and Epodes did not have a major impact until the early sixteenth century. Allusions to Horace, especially the Odes, occur in many major episodes in the great epics, including the Orlando Furioso, the Gerusalemme Liberata, and Paradise Lost. Yet scholars have virtually ignored Horace's influence on epic poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This paper will examine an area in which Horace's poetry provided a highly suggestive model, the complex relations between male and female, for all three poetsAriosto, Tasso, and Milton-faced the problem of incorporating the female into the epic, not only to satisfy the popular interest in love stories, spurred by chivalric romance, but also to meditate on the question of balance and unity in male and female relations. In the Orlando Furioso, published in its final form in 1532, Ariosto shows a considerable familiarity with the Odes, not surprisingly for a poet who had already written a collection of satires bearing the stamp of Horatian sermones.l As well as recalling the Satires frequently in the self-reflective openings of his cantos, the Italian poet employs echoes of numerous erotic invitations and exhortations in the Odes in the portrayal of both the poem's characters and its narrator. While incorporating a great diversity of females, including the martial heroine Marfisa, Ariosto portrays his female characters most often as either objects or agents of erotic passion. He dramatizes the problem of carnal desire perhaps most vividly through episodes involving the much desired princess Angelica and the seductress Alcina. To impress more fully his ironic view of these characters, the poet employs several significant allusions to Horace, among other classical sources. Although many recent critics of the poem tend to underplay the cynicism and even misogyny in the narrator's treatment of women,2 the poet most often calls attention to the failure to control desire and to find one's desire reciprocated.

Where did Schaeffer find the clay tablets of the Ugaritic Baal‐cycle?

Abstract A great variety of cuneiform texts have been found within the precincts of the high priest's building complex in ancient Ugarit. Some of the texts are letters, others are lexical texts and others again are ritual texts. The great epics of aqht and krt are best described as literary texts. Some of the texts, however, do not unambiguously belong to one group only: Some scholars would construe the Baal‐cycle as a ritual text or at least a text somehow connected with the cult performed in the temples; others would describe the Baal‐cycle as pure literature. Similarly the enigmatic text about Shachar and Shalim (abbreviated SS) apparently contains cultic and literary elements. Is this text then a cult‐text or a piece of literature? The aim of the article is to investigate if from the archaeological evidence we can add an argument to the on‐going debate about the Sitz im Leben of the Ugaritic Baal‐cycle: Were the clay tablets in the high priest's building distributed according to their content? The ans...

Punishment, Forgiveness, and Divine Justice

According to a long theological tradition that stretches back at least as far as St Augustine, God's justice and mercy are distinct, and in many ways quite different, character traits. In his great epic poem, Paradise Lost, for example, John Milton goes so far as to suggest a conflict, perhaps even a contradiction, in the very being of God; he thus describes Christ's offer of himself as an atonement this way:No sooner did thy dear and only SonPerceive thee purpos'd not to doom frail ManSo strictly, but much more to pity inclin'd,Hee to appease thy wrath, and end the strifeOf Mercy and Justice in thy face discern'dRegardless of the Bliss wherein hee satSecond to thee, offer'd himself to dieFor man's offence.

Temple forests in India's forest development

Historically the temple forests in India have served many spiritual and religious purposes. This paper stresses on the use of the underused repertoire of sacred acts to integrate the benefits of temple forests in rural development. The tree/plant species, planting design and the rituals related to their worship documented in the great epics, vedas and upanishads are of great value especially in the context of promoting forest development and the forest development led agricultural development. The Star, Planet and Zodiac forests contain a large number of native tree species ideally suited to tropical stress and drought. The promotion of temple forests would help developing forests in the upstream areas which can help create climax forests and aid in soil and moisture conservation to help improve the productivity of downstream agriculture. As the chief utilitarian value of these temple trees and plants is in terms of the native (ayurvedic) medicine, their propagation would not only develop the downsteam farming opportunities, but also promote the native medicine sector.

Homer's the Odyssey

second of the two great epic poems attributed to Homer, The Odyssey takes place after the Trojan War and tells the story of Odysseus' voyage home to Ithaca and his wife, Penelope. Odysseus' journey is a perilous one, for he encounters a wide array of heart-pounding adventures and precarious mythical creatures on his way. Supported by numerous full-length essays, this updated volume offers various critical approaches to exploring this enrapturing tale of magic and heroism.

Some Concepts in Reaction Dynamics (Nobel Lecture)

AbstractThe objective in this work has been one which I have shared with the two other 1986 Nobel lecturers, D. R. Herschbach and Y. T. Lee, as well as with a wide group of colleagues and co‐workers who have been responsible for bringing this field to its current state. That state is summarized in the title; we now have some concepts relevant to the motions of atoms and molecules in simple reactions, and some examples of the application of these concepts. We are, however, richer in vocabulary than in literature. The great epics of reaction dynamics remain to be written. I shall confine myself to some simple stories.For corrigendum see DOI:10.1002/anie.198712982

Some Concepts in Reaction Dynamics

The objective in this work has been one which I have shared with the two other 1986 Nobel lecturers in chemistry, D. R. Herschbach and Y. T. Lee, as well as with a wide group of colleagues and co-workers who have been responsible for bringing this field to its current state. That state is summarized in the title; we now have some concepts relevant to the motions of atoms and molecules in simple reactions, and some examples of the application of these concepts. We are, however, richer in vocabulary than in literature. The great epics of reaction dynamics remain to be written. I shall confine myself to some simple stories.

The Truth of the Thing: Nonfiction in Moby-Dick

One of the myths of our tribe is a story that gets told over again, each semester, in literature classes: how Genius came before the critics in 1851, and was jeered; how Moby-Dick went unsold, and Herman Melville fell into despair; how the greatest epic in American literature went unread and unappreciated until it was rediscovered nearly a century later, and then became the focus of a thriving cottage industry in literary scholarship. Like all significant myths, this one is a story freighted with meanings, complete with a tragic hero, and reflective of the values of the group by whom the tale is endlessly retold. Some of the tale is even true. Melville's own truths were enigmatic and subtle, Janus-faced, ambiguous, and overlaid with ironies. There were truths of the spirit he meant to demonstrate, and those were often effectively couched in fictions. But he needed to express other kinds of truths as well, descriptions and matters of actual experience, which needed to be told as nonfiction-what the rhetoric books today would term expository prose, in the referential mode. Moby-Dick, after all, is as much a book about whaling as a book about good and evil. From the very beginning, the fictional narrator of the book maintains stoutly that the material on whales is accurate, derived from reliable sources and his own experience. He takes every opportunity to establish his veracity, larding his descriptions with extensive allusions to authorities-some authentic, some dubious-in much the same manner as Melville himself apparently worked, digging through the works of Scoresby and Beale among others, choosing and changing his source materials as he wished, and sifting through the memories of the single, long-past whaling voyage that had already provided so much of his material. Thus, the readers of MobyDick are presented with onion-like, translucent layers of truths: real stuff about whaling, fictionalized and fancied-up, an extraordinary combination of romance and textbook, and all of it simultaneously a massive exercise in point-of-view, a tale told by a pedantic ex-schoolmaster who goes to sea to escape the dreary November of his soul and gets somewhat more adventure than he bargained for. Generations of publishers have persistently tried to simplify Moby-Dick into easy reading versions by scissoring out the sections on cetology and leaving only the story, a practice encouraged by students who find a 500-page whale chase disheartening. But there is also an attitude at work among scholars that is

Milton's "Chariot of Paternal Deitie" as a Reformation Conceit

Despite all attention that has been accorded of Paternal in book 6 of Paradise Lost, no one has sufficiently addressed Reformation underpinnings of Miltonic chariot.' Considering extent to which Milton both as poet and as polemicist was heir to spirit of Reformation, such an oversight is unfortunate. As Milton's crowning achievement, Paradise Lost is veritable embodiment of Reformation sensibility.2 Emerging at very midpoint of his great epic, Chariot of Paternal Deitie assumes both a narrative significance and a structural significance that distinguish it as an image of crucial importance to Paradise Lost. 3 As it rushes forth with whirlwind sound on the third sacred Morn of War in Heaven, chariot is described as Flashing thick flames, Wheel within Wheel undrawn, / It

The Great Epic of India as Religious Rhetoric: A Fresh Look at the Mahabharata

The Great Epic of India as Religious Rhetoric: A Fresh Look at the Mahabharata

'Not Less but More Heroic': The Epic Task and the Renaissance Hero

Great epics appear only at rare intervals in time and space: Homer's Greece, Vergil's Rome, Dante's Florence, Milton's England. So it is remarkable that there were so many worthy contenders during the Renaissance. And it is unremarkable that no great epic has appeared since the Renaissance. The critics and commentators who maintain that, as the Renaissance world-view faded, epic poetry died, the heroic vision was blurred, and the epic strain became tangled in the novel are pronouncing a premature epitaph, and their pronouncements derive from misconceptions of epic itself and of its contribution to our notion of the heroic. It would be simpler, more to the point, and more accurate to say that few writers have really tried to create great epics since Paradise Lost.1 The epic did not decline or die during the Renaissance. It did, however, change. Since the genre or tradition of epic is definable mainly by its inner vitality, its capacity for change, this is simply to say that the Renaissance epic poets by and large did what their predecessors had done. Milton was by no means the first to think that the tradition was really a challenge, a

Milton and the Decline of Epic in the Eighteenth Century

O F THE TRADITIONAL English poetic genres in which Milton excelled, at least three-the epic, the pastoral elegy, and the sonnet-go into serious if not terminal decline during the eighteenth century. It is tempting to see a causal relationship here. Although no critic, to my knowledge, has addressed the matter directly, general suggestions about Milton's influence for good or ill and the redirection of the impulse into mock-heroic forms or into the novel, for example, are common enough. The purpose of the present paper is to reconsider the ideas, implicit in these and other suggestions, of Milton's impact on eighteenth-century English epic writers, and in particular to test theoretical pronouncements against the careful observations of the literary historian. My broadest conclusion is a skeptical one: it is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to explain the relationship between the poems that Milton wrote and the poems that eighteenth-century writers did not write. But I think we can go some way toward describing the relationship, and can see that it is a complex one, involving a good deal more than the achievement of a single great poet. There are at least three theoretical ways to account for the relationship between Paradise Lost and the absence of great epic in the eighteenth century. One finds the answer in Milton's own intimidating achievement; the second in the character of the age; the third in the nature of the epic genre itself. The first theory is associated with the recent work of Harold Bloom and Walter Jackson Bate. It should be emphasized at the outset, however, that neither Bloom nor Bate in fact states that Milton intimidated the poets of the eighteenth century. Bloom's concern is largely with Romantic and post-Romantic poetry, and Bate has surprisingly little to say about Milton, though he says a good deal about the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, implicit in The Anxiety of Influence and The Burden of the Past are the notions that Milton's great epic so awed the writers of the following century that they instinctively shied away from emulating him, or that Milton's accomplishment seemed so definitive that there seemed to be nothing left for a would-be epic poet to do. Milton deterred the great or

Virgil and Medicine

SCHOLARS of all ages, including the current one, have agreed in ranking Publius Vergilius Maro first among Latin poets. Virgil (the misspelling is traditional in English) was born in the village of Andes, near Mantua, in 70 BC and died at Brundisium in 19 BC. He belonged to a privileged circle of literary men who enjoyed the favor of the emperor Augustus and the patronage of Maecenas. Horace, Propertius, and Catullus also won the friendship and protection of the emperor, but to Virgil alone fell the privilege and the challenge of writing a semimythical account of the origins and destinies of the Roman people. His Aeneid stands as the supreme achievement of Latin poetry and one of the great epics of all time. The connections of Virgil with medicine are slight—far more so than spurious ancient biographies would suggest. But on the occasion of the 2,000th anniversary (Sept 21, 1981)

The Poet in the Age of Prose

With Hegel's observations in his Lectures on Aesthetics, on the dif ference between the epic poetry of the ancients and the novel as the dominant literary form of the present, we are at the center of these meditations. The great epic poems of antiquity, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, for instance, or Virgil's Aeneid, reflect not only the minds of certain poets; they are, at the same time, as are all great literary works, recognizable as the product of an age; and the age of Homer, the age of epic poetry, Hegel characterizes as a fundamentally poetic state of the world, that is a world in which poetry is not merely written, but, as it were, lived. The active intervention and par ticipation of gods in the lives of mortals; groves and springs and hills as the habitats of nymphs and fauns; the poetic comprehension of what is, was at that time not a matter of the poetic imagination at work in the minds of a few chosen individuals, of artists whose successors, much later in history, more often than not lamented their separation from their contemporary sur roundings, but was natural, a matter of fact, of ways of thinking and feel ing shared by the whole community. It is not absurd to say that in such a world our distinctions between imagination and fact were of little impor tance, if not unknown. It is this that led the young Nietzsche to accuse the first great analytical rationalist of Greece, Socrates, the indefatigable questioner, of having destroyed mythology (or what now goes by that name), of having helped to bring about the end of tragedy, indeed, of Greek art. But back to Hegel: of .his own epoch he said that it was the age of prose, and in this respect it certainly is still ours. The age of prose: this meant for him that prose had become the ruling mode of perception. Understanding is prosaic understanding. Our science is, of course, written in prose, and this implies not merely a manner of writing, but a style of comprehension, and prose is our psychology, our economics, our sociology?all our efforts intel ligently to grasp the nature of the world. For Hegel all articulate religious beliefs of the past, Greek mythology, for instance, are part and parcel of a poetic understanding of the world although the purified religion of the future would be, he asserted, beyond any kind of truth that can manifest itself entirely in images, or in works of art. Still, with regard to the past and the present he distinguishes between two spheres of hurflan consciousness: Poetry and Prose. Yes, of course, he was

The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic

Growing from an oral tradition of ballads based on historic events in India, the Mahabharata was passed down and extended through the centuries, becoming the longest poem ever written. R. K. Narayan provides a superb rendition in an abbreviated and elegant retelling of this great epic.