Homeric Epics Research Articles

The New Penelopean Poetics: A Feminist Reassessment of the Victimization of Women in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ‘‘The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver’’ and ‘‘An Ancient Gesture’’

The Greeks have a certain authority, for they are the source of the Western traditions of poetry, philosophy, and science. The figure of Penelope in the Homeric epic can be seen as a symbol not only for woman’s trials in general but also for the trials of the woman artist in a man’s world. This study explores the penelopean myth as ideological tool of patriarchal system and it argues that gender stereotypes set in Greek myths have been recreated later by the modern American poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Encouraged by the feminist movement, Millay revised and rewrote the penelopean myth highlighting the gender stereotyping as an important feature in her poems, ‘‘The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver,’’ and ‘‘An Ancient Gesture.’’

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF NELEID ANTHROPONYMY IV: THE HEROIC NAME NESTOR AS A PERSONAL NAME AMONG THE HELLENES

This paper explores the heroic Greek name Nestor (Νέστωρ) and its distribution as a personal name in the Hellenic world.The name Nestor, as a personal name, is almost equally common in the Ionian areas of the Hellenic World (Attica, the islands in the Cyclades, Ionia in Asia Minor), as it is in the predominantly Doric areas (Peloponnese, the islands of Rhodes and Kos), but also in Epirus, Macedonia and in the Hellenic settlements beyond the mainland Greece. It is indisputable that this distribution of the name must have been influenced by the fact that Nestor was one of the most notable heroes of ancient Hellenic epics with a significant role in the two most important Homeric epics. As in the case of some other Neleid names, the heroic name Nestor could have seemed attractive and desirable for naming male children, in particular from the point of view of Nestor's glorious offspring with whom several aristocratic families from different parts of the Greek world wanted to be identified. Additionally, in the subsequent periods (Hellenistic and Roman), the names taken from the mythological repertoire were very popular among the educated members of the local elites. They perceived Nestor as a model of a wise teacher and counselor. It seems that the name Nestor might have sound to contemporaries primarily as a good name for a wise and educated Hellene. In this way, the reasons for giving the name Nestor to newborn Hellenic children gradually moved from the sphere of politics to the sphere of culture, as had been the case with some other heroic names, but also with some which were not associated with heroes.The anthroponym Nestor at the time often occurred in combination with other heroic names.

Christopher Logue and the Iliad

Christopher Logue and the Iliad* CHARLES ROWAN BEYE Icame to the Greek text of the Iliad when I was in my late teens after an outing with Plato’s Apology and Homer’s Odyssey. I never looked back: ancient Greek literature became my undergraduate major, Homeric epic my graduate specialty, a narrative technique of the poet of the Iliad my dissertation topic. I had the singular pleasure of introducing students to the ancient Greek language for almost every one of the forty-two years that I taught. And in almost every one of those forty-two years I also taught them either an introduction to Homeric Greek using the Iliad as my text, or a course in Homeric epic in English translation, sometimes both when enthusiasm for classical antiquity reached a dramatic peak in the sixties. In the English language course, I used to fret over my choice of the translation of the text of the Iliad. Because I could read the poem in the Greek of Homer I was acutely sensitive to the intricate structure of the phraseology which formed the basis of the Homeric language. Nobody talked like Homer; the text of the Iliad and Odyssey is sui generis, a language created over centuries by professional singers of tales who composed, collaborated, transmitted over time and place, all manner of stories. Like hip-hop which nobody speaks, only far more intricate. Out of that there came down to us the Iliad and the Odyssey. This simple bald statement, like equally unequivocal statements about the nature of God, can set off the equivalent of religious wars among professional Homerists. So we shall *Christopher Logue, War Music: An Account of Homer’s Iliad, Christopher Reid, ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. 352 pages. arion 24.1 spring/summer 2016 leave it. The point is that the language in which the Homeric texts are written, and probably originally sung, is a thing of intricate, exquisite, complex beauty, well worth the effort to learn, and laughably unlike anything to be found in the so called “translations” of Homer. That there are thousands of them—and more being turned out every day when the readership is dramatically, if not fatally, declining—is testament to what is instinct in anyone who becomes intimate with the Homeric language: dammit, I can turn this into something that will bring across the ancient Greek. It doesn’t happen, didn’t happen to Richmond Lattimore who so very carefully retained the repeated epithets, the repeated phraseology; he was the translator du jour of the 1950s, albeit for many readers the great classroom snooze. Robert Fitzgerald, the favorite of English professors in those days—his more cautious, his more “poetic,” effort certainly was not action-packed; and although things got better with Robert Fagles—nowadays the almost authorized text, if only because Bernard Knox’s introduction to it is like the Homeric seal of approval—reading page after page of those interminable battles is not pleasant. Recently, I introduced a small group of senior citizens to the Iliad in a refreshingly honest course where the students were not examined and had the option of reading the poem or a brief precis—nothing concentrates one’s attention like realizing your days are numbered. After a few weeks, one gentleman brought up the tedium of reading the Fagles translation in toto, pointing out that page after page produced such boredom as to be unendurable. “All too true,” I said, adding with the freedom and candor of someone retired from his job; “I just don’t think translations work.” Which brings me to Christopher Logue’s account of the Iliad. And behind him the miracle of his being prompted, quite unwillingly, into the whole enterprise. BBC producer D. S. Carne-Ross has gained his fifteen minutes of fame for convincing Logue to make an English language script for a BBC broadcast of Homer’s telling of the great scene when Achilles fights with the river god, Scamander. Logue’s hesitachristopher logue and the ILIAD 166 tion was because he read no Greek. The genius moment was when Carne-Ross said he would tell him the story line for line, word...

Fénelon’s Subversive Uses of Aeneid 6

Francois Fenelon's The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses (1699) is novel that the general audience has forgotten today. Yet it was not only the most popular literary work of the eighteenth century, but also an important point of reference in the political, pedagogical and theological discussions of pre-revolutionary France and beyond. Montesquieu described it as divine work that brings Homer to life, and Rousseau thought that Fenelon's book alone was sufficient for the education of his fictional student Emile. (1) As it happens, The Adventures of Telemachus was written for the education of another--real--student, the Duc de Bourgogne, grandson of Louis XIV, to whom Fenelon had been appointed tutor in 1689. In his effort to engage this young mind, the author decided to avoid pedantic instruction; instead he created a fabulous in the form of heroic poem, like those of Homer and of Virgil, into which he incorporated the major lessons suitable for prince who, by virtue of his birth, was destined to reign (letter to Father LeTellier, in Riley, Francois de Fenelon xviii; Marechaux 59-74). Yet, despite the novel's mythological pretensions, its thematic preoccupations and strong correspondence to current sociopolitical situations suggest that it has more specific concerns. These concerns, although traceable throughout the novel, nowhere manifest themselves more pointedly than in Book 14, which describes Telemachus's trip to the realm of the dead. To the best of my knowledge, no scholar has discussed systematically the affinities between the discourse that shapes Fenelon's underworld and the legitimate complaints one could bring up against the policies of Louis XIV. It is my aim in this paper to concentrate on this episode and examine the ways in which the author, fortified by his Quietist convictions, uses Homeric cast of characters and the revered setting of Virgil's underworld to produce critique of the regime (foreign policy, economy, domestic affairs), critique that had implications both for the author personally and the subsequent intellectual developments in France. I contend that the pronouncements of the various characters, whether in Tartarus or in the Elysian Fields, far from being innocuous generalized truths, address the present with an immediacy and force that would have not been possible otherwise in the authoritarian environment of the court of Louis XIV. Fenelon speaks of narration following in the footsteps of the two great poets, and indeed the original title alone, Suite du quatrieme livre de l'Odyssee d'Homere, ou Les Aventures de Telemaque, fils d'Ulysse (Sequel to the Fourth Book of Homer's Odyssey or the Adventures of Telemachus, son of Ulysses), suggests that the novel capitalizes on the enduring popularity of Homer's epic and exploits narrative window in its storyline (Books 5-15). In the opening of the Odyssey, Telemachus is shown living among the suitors, and, at the instigation of the goddess Athena, he visits Pylos and Sparta in the hope of receiving news about his father. But in Book 5 he disappears from the narrative, reappearing ten Books later to be reunited with Odysseus. During his long absence, Homer focuses on the wily king of Ithaca, while of Telemachus we know only that he is guest in Sparta, until spurred on by Athena to return home. Fenelon uses this blank period to insert his own story by creating hero who, contrary to Homer's inactive Telemachus, displays unusual initiative and roams the Mediterranean in search of his father. It is his wanderings, encounters with extraordinary men, contact with wide range of political realities and, above all, the wise counsel of his companion, Mentor (eventually shown to be the goddess Minerva), that produce maturation and sense of purpose in the young hero, qualities which Fenelon wishes to instill in his royal student as well. While in southern Italy, Telemachus, convinced by repeated dreams that his father is dead, decides to meet him by descending into the underworld through cavern in Acheruntia (Book 14). …

Klasik Dönem Yunan ve Roma Yazınında Penelope: Homeros'tan Ovidius'a Penelope betimi ve Heroides 1

Penelope had been described by Homer as a chaste wife of Ulysses, who waited for her husband for twenty years with patience and who, while waiting, put off her suitors by trickeries. This figure of Penelope which came from Homeric epic, was first transferred to the Archaic Hellen poem and then to the Latin poem, and the name of Penelope had been served as an exemplum of chastity and loyalty throughout centuries. It can be seen that this tradition was also followed by the Latin elegiac poets of the first century AD; but Ovid, by choosing Penelope as the first writer of his Heroides, gave priority to her feelings and exhibited the fears and anxieties which were existed in this abandoned woman’s inner world. In this study it will be analyzed first how Penelope was portrayed in the Archaic Hellen poem which emerged from Homer, and then in the Latin poem. In accordance with this analysis, the concordance and the difference of Ovid’s Penelope as a letter writer of Heroides with the traditional narrative will be discussed. At the end of the study, the letter (Heroides 1) which is the subject of this discussion will be analyzed in respect to its plot.

The Genealogy of the Muses: An Internal Reconstruction of Archaic Greek Metapoetics

This article puts forward a novel approach to the history of poetic forms in Archaic Greece. By investigating the evolution of the “diegetic frames” involving the figure of the Muse(s), it seeks to trace mutual influences between different genres (Homeric epic, catalogue poetry, the Homeric Hymns, early choral lyric) and, in the case of the Iliad and Hesiod’s Theogony , to identify distinct strata in the composition of one text. This genealogical analysis of the invocation of the Muses demonstrates that choral lyric had a significant impact on the evolving forms of hexameter poetry.

Women & War in Antiquity by Jacqueline Fabre-Serris and Alison Keith

BOOK REVIEWS Women & War in Antiquity. Edited by Jacqueline Fabre-Serris and Alison Keith. Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress,2015.Pp.ix+341.Hardcover,$55.00. ISBN 978-1-4214-1762-2. his much-needed volume is the result of the 2009 symposium that launched the European Network on Gender Studies in Antiquity (EuGeStA).Itssixteenessays(allwrittenortranslatedintoEnglish)open the doors to an aspect of ancient warfare that has received too little attention thus far, that of women’s role in war, both as historical actors and as a lens through which war was imagined. Both Greek and Roman topics are addressed, ranging from the Homeric epics to Claudian’s Late Antique epic-panegyrics, from tragedy to elegy, from Carian queens to Roman Imperial women. Theessaysaredividedintotwoparts,onefocusedonliterarycriticism,theother with a historical approach. That said, the greatest strength of the volume is the fruitful dialogue between historians and literary critics that blurs the apparent structural and disciplinary divide. Another strength is the editors’ forthrightness about what kinds of claims the extant ancient sources allow us to make.Written or produced by men and for men, the vast majority of our literary, historical, and materialsourcescanbeoflittlehelpinreconstructingthefemaleexperienceofwar in antiquity; instead, they “simultaneously bear witness to male views of female identityandtoemotionsandconductthattheythemselvesregardascharacteristic of the female sex” (4). Rather than summarizing each contribution, I highlight here several essays that exemplify the range and originality of the volume’s contents. To begin the collection, Philippe Rousseau challenges the traditional interpretation of Hector’s famous words to Andromache (Il. 6.490–3), commanding her to return to her weaving and leave the conduct of war to men, as a maxim about normative gender roles. He reads these lines together with two passages in the Odyssey that closely repeat them, when Telemachus addresses his mother at Od. 1.356–9 and again at Od. 21.350–3, and argues for an intentional intertextual relationship between the three passages, with the Odyssey quoting the Iliad, and the latter Odyssey passage referring to the former. Based on his analysis of all three passages, Rousseau proposes that the famous Iliadic passage is no gnomic statement, but rather that Hector is referring to the specific battle that forced his brief withdrawal inside the T BOOK REVIEWS 381 walls of Troy. Therefore, by overgeneralizing Hector’s words, we may have been misrepresenting the Homeric attitude towards women and war. Yet not all women were shut out of battle. Judith Hallett tackles the representation of warrior women in Rome, in an essay that synthesizes ancient historical narratives, Roman elegy, and sling-bullet inscriptions from the Perusine WartodeconstructtheportraitofFulvia,theinfamouslyoverbearingwifeofMark Antony (among others). Hallett deftly uses these diverse sources to argue that Plutarch’s characterization of Fulvia as a woman who wished “to rule a ruler and command a commander” (Plut. Ant. 10.3) was born out of elegiac notions of the domina, who combined feminine sensuality with masculine power. Or, perhaps, Fulvia herself helped give birth to the domina-figure: Hallett ends the essay by emphasizing the importance “of exploring the intersections between historical reality and literary fiction, of recognizing that even historical Roman women are ‘written’, and of considering if ‘written women’ may also be historical” (262–3). The collective actions of women in Greek warfare are the focus of the essays writtenbyStellaGeorgoudiandPascalPayen,whichtheeditorswiselyjuxtaposed to draw attention to their conflicting theoretical frameworks. Georgoudi takes as her premise that women were involved in Greek civic life in a number of ways, whereas Payen maintains that women are absent from Greek war and reflections thereupon precisely because they were not citizens and were thus excluded from civic life. According to Payen, if barbarian women and the female relatives of tyrants are excepted, Greek women only engage in warfare as defensive warriors who act collectively; a famous foreign queen like Tomyris or Artemisia thus represents an inversion of male, civic order. Georgoudi, on the other hand, dismisses the idea of “inversion” or “anomaly” as an explanation of women’s role in Greek war. By examining accounts of women’s collective actions in war, she instead proposes that we should talk about women’s “participation,” “collaboration,” and “cooperation” with the men of their communities. WomenandWarinAntiquityisaremarkablecollectionofhistoricalandliterary research, one that has much to interest the generalist, yet is...

Crowdsourcing Penelope: Margaret Atwood, the Coen Brothers, Richard Linklater

Beginning with Margaret Atwood's novella The Penelopiad and its staging in regional and experimental theaters in Canada, the U.K., and around the world, this essay traces a long history of network mediation for the Odyssey, beginning with the performative decisions made by itinerant rhapsodes, who variously selected, arranged, and circulated the Homeric epics in ancient Greece, and extending well into the twenty-first century, in the self-conscious invocations of the Odyssey by filmmakers such as the Coen Brothers and Richard Linklater. Crowdsourcing, the unruly and never-ending input from masses of people, is the morphological ground of the epic, an art form energized by its downward percolations. Penelope, that infinitely patient and longsuffering wife, becomes a variety of things as a result, much changed since Homer's times. In the hands of Atwood, she shares the stage with her twelve maids.

Pt

The aim of this study is to show the presence of classical epic, Homer's Iliad, in the chronicle of Machado de Assis, analyzing the intertextual dialogue between Machado de Assis and the epic poem by Homer, considering the concept of intertextuality developed by Julia Kristeva from philosophical conceptions of Bakhtin. In the chronicle of March 18, 1894 for the newspaper Gazeta de Notícias on sunday column "A Semana", Machado de Assis crosses Homer's epic to his chronicle, rewrites the epic text for the daily issues of his weekly column. To Tiphaine Samoyault, writing is rewriting, "stand on the existing foundations and contribute to a continued creation" (2008, p. 77) one of the principles of intertextuality. It was observed that from the reading and assimilation of the classic poem, Machado de Assis can approach so far genres, bringing the verses to his prose, leaving it closer to poetry. In this sense, we can see the richness of Machado de Assis chronicles, often left on the sidelines in favor of his short stories and romances. In addition, the dialogue, to rewrite the epic in his chronicle, Machado seems to contribute to this "continuous creation", reviving the memory of literature and emphasizing the permanence of classical work.

Truth, Lies, and Freshman Composition: Using Herodotus to Teach Academic Writing

Both in his models of organization and theme, borrowed from Homeric epic, and in his recasting of anecdotal source materials, Herodotus, the Father of factually based History, had one foot firmly planted in the world of storytelling. My beginning-student writers, too, are just venturing upon the transition from the rhetoric of the heightened world of storytelling to that of the critical investigation of the real world. Through exercises in close reading and imitation, we use book 2 of the Histories as a model for a variety of organizing principles and rhetorical techniques to enliven and strengthen student academic prose.

Art and Archaeology

The archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann once met, in London, the poet Alfred Tennyson – who, though he saluted Mount Ida tenderly, never travelled much south of the Dolomites. In the course of conversation, Schliemann remarked: ‘Hissarlik, the ancient Troy, is no bigger than the courtyard of Burlington House’. ‘I can never believe that’, Tennyson replied. Most of us, I dare say, would understand Tennyson's disbelief – and agree, accordingly, with the sentiment that Troy the site is not a marvellous ‘visitor experience’. The location may be broadly evocative – for those imaginatively predisposed to survey a landscape of epic combat. Yet the excavated remains are rather underwhelming, and difficult to comprehend. The huge trench cut through the Bronze Age settlement by Schliemann, and the resultant spoil heap left on the northern edge of the citadel, certainly contribute to a sense of confusion. But that aside, the multiple layers of habitation, from c.3000 bc until Byzantine times, customarily represented like a pile of pancakes in archaeological diagrams, will test even those pilgrims arriving with some expertise in ancient construction methods. Choice finds from the city are lodged in remote museums; and the substantial extent of Troy in Hellenistic, Roman, and possibly earlier times, indicated mainly by geophysical prospection, is hardly discernible. So archaeologists, post-Schliemann, have to work hard to make the ‘Trojan stones speak’ – at least if they also wish to avoid the charge of being obsessed (as Schliemann notoriously was) with establishing some kind of historical reality for Homer's epic. The late Manfred Korfmann, director of the international excavations at Troy since 1988, produced an enthusiastic guidebook. Now his colleague C. B. Rose has made a one-volume synthesis of the results so far, The Archaeology of Greek and Roman Troy. This will be particularly welcome for students unable or unwilling to access the annual excavation journal, Studia Troica. But novices, I fear, may soon despair of grasping the phases of stratification and ceramic assemblage more often cited by the author than explained (e.g. ‘LH III2a/VIh’). And any reader seeking new answers for old questions about the site's relationship to ‘the Trojan War’ should prepare for disappointment. Much of the evidence for Troy in the late Bronze Age – the period of c.1250 bc, generally reckoned to correlate with events transformed into epic – remains elusive: where, for example, are graves comparable to those of Mycenae? On the other hand, the lesson of the multi-period approach is that Troy the historical city largely constructs its identity upon Troy the mythical citadel – as does the Troad region. So Rose does well to devote an entire chapter to the remarkable archaic sarcophagus recovered in 1994 from a tumulus in the Granicus valley, with scenes of the sacrifice of Polyxena, Hecuba's attendant distress, and some kind of celebration. The iconography here may not be easy to relate to the gender of the deceased (a middle-aged man, according to osteological analysis). Yet it makes a visual statement about the sort of mythical bloodline to be claimed in the region: and, in due time (for Rose's survey is chronological), we will see the epigraphic and monumental evidence for similar ancestral claims by members of the Julio-Claudian clan.

The Textualization of Homeric Epic by Means of Dictation

summary: The textualized versions of Homeric epic that stemmed from a process of dictation should be understood as co-creations of the poet, scribe, and collector. The evidence provided by numerous modern-day instances of the textualization of an oral traditional work supports this inference.

Homeric Heroes, Narcissistic Characters

After demonstrating that the heroes described by Homer and modern-day narcissistic characters have nearly identical traits, I suggest definitions of shame and guilt that answer the criticisms of classicists who doubt that a society controlled by shame can actually exist. After listing the responses to guilt and shame seen in the psychoanalyst’s consultation room, I apply these concepts to a reading of the Homeric epics revealing new insights into the motivations of Achilles and Odysseus, and by extension to the other heroes portrayed by Homer. Phenomenological observations, rather than metapsychological theories, are emphasized throughout the article.

From Cultural Forms to Policy Objects: Comparison in Scholarship and Policy

Abstract The category of intangible cultural heritage was constituted through recurrent and cumulative acts of comparison referring ultimately back to the representative anecdote of oral tradition, Homeric epic. In turn, once created, the category hailed diverse phenomena into itself, which were rendered thereby into comparable policy objects, the “elements of ICH.” This commentary reviews the analytical contexts invoked in the comparative work of this special issue: liberal modernity, the state, international norms, and folklorists' old purview, face-to-face interaction

The New Penelopean Poetics :, A Feminist Reassessment Of The Victimization Of Women In Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ‘‘The Ballad Of The Harp-Weaver’’ And ‘‘An Ancient Gesture’’

The Greeks have a certain authority, for they are the source of the Western traditions of poetry, philosophy, and science. The figure of Penelope in the Homeric epic can be seen as a symbol not only for woman’s trials in general but also for the trials of the woman artist in a man’s world. This study explores the penelopean myth as ideological tool of patriarchal system and it argues that gender stereotypes set in Greek myths have been recreated later by the modern American poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Encouraged by the feminist movement, Millay revised and rewrote the penelopean myth highlighting the gender stereotyping as an important feature in her poems, ‘‘The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver,’’ and ‘‘An Ancient Gesture.’’

Heroic onomastics in Roman Anatolia

This article is concerned with the use of heroic personal names ('heronyms') by the inhabitants of the Anatolian peninsula in the Roman imperial period. Such names can be classified under three broad headings: (1) heroic names drawn from the Homeric epics, chosen for their literary associations (Ajax, Hektor, Areiphilos); (2) heroic names favoured for their phonetic similarities to indigenous Anatolian personal names (Telemachos, Bianor, Nestor); (3) heroic names whose popularity results from their connections to local mythology (Sarpedon, Tlepolemos, Teuthras). The article concludes with some reflections on the 'onomastic Hellenization' of Anatolia in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Speech Presentation in Homeric Epic

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS Speech Presentation in Homeric Epic. Par Deborah Beck. Austin : University of Texas Press. 2012. Pp. x, 256. Les discours occupent une place importante dans l’épopée homérique, leur présentation n’a pourtant pas donné lieu à une étude systématique et raisonnée avant ce livre qui comble donc un vide. Son auteur avait déjà consacré une étude à la « conversation » chez Homère1 . La présente étude est à la fois plus générale (traitant tous les discours et pas seulement les dialogues) et plus théorique (l’introduction présente un vaste panorama sur la question du discours dans la littérature occidentale et sur la théorie des actes de langage due à John Austin2 , auquel l’auteur emprunte la typologie dont elle a besoin, en reconnaissant ses limites [11], et en lui adjoignant la notion de move3 ). Les occurrences ont été recueillies dans une base de données qui semble très complète4 et cela permet à l’auteur de présenter des statistiques sur la proportion de chaque type de présentation du discours au fur et à mesure de son analyse. Notons cependant que l’on se perd parfois un peu dans les chiffres (par exemple, 31 dans le décompte des discours directs présentés par Ulysse : 143, puis 144 sur 147). Peut-être aurait-on pu éviter cela par des tableaux récapitulatifs en annexe ? Le discours direct, de loin le plus fréquent chez Homère5 , occupe le premier chapitre, sous l’appellation direct quotation. Dans la première partie du chapitre sont étudiés les discours mimétiques (mimetic quotations) ; présentés par le narrateur principal pour une grande majorité, ils forment « l’épine dorsale » de l’épopée homérique, avec 70 pour cent des moves (26–27). Des études particulières sont alors consacrées à divers passages-clefs faisant intervenir Ménélas (Od. 4.376–381), à Ulysse et son long récit des chants 9–12 — qui ont suscité une abondante littérature mais pas d’étude spécifique de son usage du discours direct, ce qui justifie la présente étude —, aux discours trompeurs rapportés par Agamemnon dans le chant 19 de l’Iliade, au discours de sa nourrice rapporté par Eumée au chant 15 de l’Odyssée, en contraste avec celui d’Hélène dans Od. 4.274–279. Deux chapitres traitent ensuite du discours indirect, le discours indirect libre d’abord, probablement pour frapper le lecteur d’une manière un peu provocante puisque l’on dit généralement que cette forme a été inventée par le roman « moderne », c’est-à-dire au dix-neuvième siècle. Suivons donc l’auteur dans le cheminement proposé, qui consiste d’abord à affirmer l’existence du discours indirect libre chez Homère, en général dans des subordonnées adjacentes au récit et parfois à un discours indirect principal. L’exemple de Od. 9.100–102 donné (59–60) est probant : le narrateur Ulysse raconte qu’il a ordonné (kel—mhn) à ses compagnons d’embarquer rapidement (discours indirect sperxomŽnouw nh™n \pibainŽmen) et ajoute son intention au discours indirect libre (m} pvw tiw lvto”o 1 Deborah Beck, Homeric Conversation (Washington 2005). 2 En général, on a ainsi traduit l’anglais Speech Acts en français, surtout sous l’influence de John Searle. 3 Notion non austinienne me semble-t-il. Voir Dorothea Franck, « Speech Act and Conversational Move », Journal of Pragmatics 3 (1979) 461–466. D. Beck donne la définition suivante: « A “move” is essentially a particular speech act in a conversational context » (12). 4 On peut la consulter en ligne: http://www.laits.utexas.edu/DeborahBeck/home. 5 À peu près la moitié de l’Iliade et les deux-tiers de l’Odyssée consistent en discours direct (23). PHOENIX, VOL. 69 (2015) 1–2. 175 176 PHOENIX fag™n n—stoio l‡yhtai). Citons le commentaire (60) : « The...

An Introduction to the Chansons de Geste by Catherine M. Jones (review)

Reviewed by: An Introduction to the Chansons de Geste by Catherine M. Jones Mihaela L. Florescu Catherine M. Jones, An Introduction to the Chansons de Geste, New Perspectives on Medieval Literature: Authors and Traditions ( Gainesville: University Press of Florida 2014) 218 pp. Catherine M. Jones, the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor of French and Provencal at the University of Georgia, has produced an excellent introduction to the tradition of the Old French chansons de geste. The resulting book is divided into three major parts. In part one, the chansons are placed in historical and literary context. Part two presents on overview of the numerous texts. Part three looks at six popular chansons in greater detail: La Chanson de Roland, Le Charroi de Nimes, La Prise d’Orange, Raoul de Cambrai, Ami et Amile, and Huon de Bordeaux. Jones approaches the study of the chansons from feminist, postcolonial, and cognitive theory points of view. Jones explains the tradition of the chansons contending that while there are similarities with epics from earlier ages, such as the Homeric epics, the focus of the Old French chansons is more specific than that of its predecessors. The chansons are very much a product of a specific time and place, and often revolve around local conflicts in France usually involving the constant battles for power between the monarchy and the aristocracy and the medieval conflict between Western Europe and Islam. Many chansons de geste are associated with actual historical events. The events depicted in La Chanson de Roland, composed in the late eleventh or early twelfth century were based on an attack on Charlemagne’s troops that took place in 778. The character of Guillaume d’Orange, is loosely based on Guillaume, Count of Toulouse. Historical similarities can be seen even in the portrayal of minor characters. Geographical references and local conflicts are also based in historical fact. Nevertheless, an exact historical reading would be inaccurate as the events the chansons purport to portray were written hundreds of years after they were supposed to have occurred. It is possible the chansons had their start when noteworthy events were recorded contemporarily into lyrical narrative pieces later modified by generations of oral poets. The Old French chansons de geste may have evolved from the Germanic oral tradition prevalent at the time. Itinerant jongleurs in northern France may have been influenced by the traditions of their neighbors. Others theorize that the chansons were inspired by local legends. Neotraditionalists, such as Ramon Menendez Pidal, demonstrate that the early epics [End Page 249] preserved in manuscripts prove the stories predate the oldest surviving texts. Others point to Hellenists Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord’s findings on orally composed epic songs in Yugoslavia as evidence of an example of transmission of stories through an oral tradition which could have been very similar to the method employed to record the Old French chansons de geste. Delving into an even more distant past, Jones explores the possibility that the chansons are related to their older Indo-European forerunners. Joel Grisward’s three ideological identifiers of Indo-European culture are present in the Old French chansons de geste. The sacred, represented by a leader, in the form of a sovereign or a priest, the warrior, and abundance, represented by characters associated with nourishment and riches are the three Indo-European identifiers present in to Old French chansons. Grisward’s theory is further substantiated by the striking similarities in which the chansons align themselves with the earlier substrate of Indo-European themes. In the medieval age, the chansons de geste were distinguished from other writings by their distinctive form. The chansons from the twelfth century were composed in assonanced decasyllabic laisses. The decasyllabic line usually exhibits “epic caesura,” or a division into two parts, 4+6 syllables. The division 6+4 also appears from time to time. “Assonance” refers to the concept of an identical stressed (tonic) vowel at the end of each line. Chansons from the thirteenth century on, made use of the alexandrine verse of twelve syllable lines, featuring a division after the sixth syllable. The thirteenth century saw transition from assonance to rhyme, with many poems undergoing a transformative period containing both...

Die Vertiefung der Seele. Überlegungen zu einer These in Nietzsches Zur Genealogie der Moral

Abstract. In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche asserts, first, that the transvaluation of values of an original master morality by the slave morality is accompanied by an increasing deepening and differentiation of the human soul and, secondly, that this has led to mental instability and poor self-esteem by maximizing the sense of guilt and bad conscience. This paper argues on the basis of an analysis of the Homeric epics as a paradigm of a master morality, the teaching of church father Augustine of Hippo, and the Platonic psychology and ethics as an intermediate position for the accuracy of the first thesis and critically reflects the pros and cons of the second thesis.

"Mais pourquoi toujours des bergers?" Le roi homérique 'pasteur d'hommes'

The poet of the Homeric epics uses many pastoral similes, in particular when dealing with the power of the king, or the military chief, over his men, the laoi. These similes are too frequent, too different from one another and too complex to be interpreted as mere poetic devices. The figure of the shepherd-king is not to be seen as a worn out metaphor, but may be on the contrary one of the keys to understand what the Greek monarchie ideology consisted of. As the chief of the laoi, the king commands them, organises and leads them, but he also protects them and gives them food and care. As an homage to an anax andrôn who left us far too early.