Table of Content
- Do you capitalized mythology when using it as Greek mythology?
- Between Achilles and Odysseus, which one could be considered a better hero than the other?
- The Odyssey Major Work Data Sheet
- Compare and Contrast Bronze Age Greece to Classical Greece
- What key traits do the stories seek to impart to the listeners?
- Homer's Influence In Ancient Greek Literature
- What is mythology used for?
The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity. The allegorical interpretation of the Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance. Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory. In western Europe during the Renaissance, Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens.
The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as the poet Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral. The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories. The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures. The Iliad, particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Yet another empirical approach to Homeric poetry is provided by the discipline of historical linguistics (Nagy 1974; Muellner 1976; Frame 1978; see in general Watkins 1995). The application of this approach to the diction of oral poetry yields new techniques of reconstruction, where the terminus of a given reconstruction backward in time can stop short of a “proto-language” phase.
Do you capitalized mythology when using it as Greek mythology?
The framed epic about Meleager, quoted as a direct speech by the framing epic, is introduced by way of a special word houtōs ‘thus’, signaling the activation of a special form of speech otherwise known as the ainos (PH 7§1n4). Technically, an ainos is a performance conveying a meaning that needs to be interpreted and then applied in moments of making moral decisions (PH 7§§1–4). In the classical period of Greek literature, Homer was the primary representative of what we know as epic. The figure of Homer as a poet of epic was considered to be far older than the oldest known poets of lyric, who stemmed from the archaic period. It was thought that Homer, acknowledged as the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, stemmed from an earlier age. Herodotus says outright that Homer and Hesiod were the first poets of the Greeks (2.53.1–3).
Although Homer is thought to have lived in the early Archaic Age, the subject matter of his epics is the earlier, Bronze Age, Mycenaean era. Between then and when Homer may have lived there was a "dark age." Therefore Homer is writing about a period about which there is not a substantial written record. Homer's two epic poems have become archetypal road maps in world mythology. The stories provide an important insight into early human society, and illustrate, in some aspects, how little has changed.
Between Achilles and Odysseus, which one could be considered a better hero than the other?
That is the short-range intention of Phoenix as a narrator narrating within the master Narration that is the Iliad. But the long-range intention of the master Narrator is quite different from the short-range intention of Phoenix. The master Narrative shows that the embedded narrative of Phoenix was misguided – that is, misguided by hindsight. If Achilles had accepted the offer of Agamemnon, as Phoenix had intended, this acceptance would have undermined the epic reputation of Achilles (HQ 142–143). While some scholars believe Homer is solely responsible, others claim that the poems were retold and revised by numerous people. This theory has led to various explanations for the use of the word Homer.
In their greatest moments of epic action, the heroes of Homeric poetry show their true nature. They are larger than life, superhuman, especially in their interactions with gods._Not only in Greek epics but also in cognate epics like the Indic Mahābhārata, the superhuman status of heroes depends on their special relationship with divinity and with the sacred (EH §§70-73). Even the Ithaca of Odysseus is real only to the extent that it was recognized as real by those who heard epics about Odysseus over time.
The Odyssey Major Work Data Sheet
Now, after his encounter with the Phaeacians, Odysseus becomes once again the master of the ainos. Despite such moments of disorientation for Odysseus, his noos ‘thinking’ ultimately reorients him, steering him away from his Iliadic past and toward his ultimate Odyssean future. That is, the hero’s noos makes it possible for him to achieve a nostos, which is not only his ‘homecoming’ but also the ‘song about a homecoming’ that is the Odyssey. For this song to succeed, Odysseus must keep adapting his identity by making his noos fit the noos of the many different characters he encounters in the course of his nostos in progress. In order to adapt, he must master many different forms of discourse, many different kinds of ainos. That is why he is addressed as poluainos ‘having many different kinds of ainos’ by the Sirens when he sails past their island (xii 184; BA 12§19n1; PH 8§30).
It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions. Nearly all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Book X of the Iliad is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet. His ongoing story, which is the Odyssey, must be about the sailor who is making his way back home, not about the warrior who once fought at Troy. The kleos of Odysseus at Troy cannot be the master myth of the Odyssey, since the kleos of Achilles at Troy has already become the master myth of the Iliad . The kleos of Achilles in the Iliad has preempted a kleos for Odysseus that centers on this rival hero’s glorious exploits at Troy.
As a master of the ainos, Odysseus keeps on adapting his identity by making his noos fit the noos of the many different characters he encounters. And the multiple ainoi of Odysseus can thus be adapted to the master myth of the Odyssey. Even the transparent meaning of Polyphemus (Poluphēmos), the name of the Cyclops blinded by Odysseus, foretells the hero’s mastery of the ainos. As an adjective, poluphēmos means ‘having many different kinds of prophetic utterance’, derived from the noun phēmē ‘prophetic utterance’ (as in xx 100, 105; HR 55–59); this adjective is applied as an epithet to the singer Phēmios , portrayed in the Odyssey as a master of the phēmē ‘prophetic utterance’ (BA 1§4n1). In the case of Polyphemus, the very meaning of his name, which conveys the opposite of the meaning conveyed by the false name of Odysseus, Outis ‘no one’, foretells the verbal mastery of the hero who blinded the monster.
From this moment on, now that Odysseus has succeeded in making his return from his journeys at sea, he must succeed also in making another kind of return. That is, he must now return to his former social status as king at home in Ithaca. In the course of the twenty years that elapsed since his departure for Troy, however, the hero’s social status at home has been reduced to nothing. Now he must work his way up from the bottom of the social scale, starting from nothing. He starts by being a nobody – that is, by being a somebody who has nothing and is therefore a nobody. This way, his interaction with the suitors of his wife exposes them as lacking in interior moral nobility despite their exterior social nobility (Nagy 1985 §§68–70).
Homeric poetry, in the process of evolving as an oral tradition, reflects the realities of Greek civilization all the way from the middle of the second millennium BCE to the seventh century BCE and perhaps even later. This formulation, which takes into account the testimony of Homeric poetry as an ongoing system of communication and the successive layers of archaeological evidence, represents an evolutionary model . Homeric poetry, as the primary epic mediator of myth, remakes the perceived past into such a sacred age by way of deliberately privileging realities perceived as belonging to a past age of heroes. Such realities can be tested by comparing them with corresponding realities ascertained independently by way of empirical approaches.
In this way, epic allows Odysseus to seize the advantage at the expense of Ajax. The epic focus of interest shifts from the integrity of Ajax to the craftiness of Odysseus, and this shift blurs the moral focus of Homer. From the retrospective vantage point of the moral high ground claimed by the lyric poetry of Pindar, this shift in interest causes the despair that led to the suicide of Ajax. This despair is tied to the epic story that tells how Ajax, consistently marked as the second-best of the Achaeans after Achilles in the Iliad, failed to win as his prize the armor of Achilles after the martial death of that hero, who is consistently marked as the best of the Achaeans (BA 2§§1–6). The despair of Ajax is tied also to his failure to become the next hero in line to be called the best of the Achaeans and thus to continue the epic of Homer after the Iliad. This failure is pointedly mentioned in the Homeric Odyssey (xi 541–567; PH 8§33n110).
The two most prominent names in the history of this research are Milman Parry and Albert Lord . Although Parry had started his own research by analyzing the internal evidence of Homeric poetry, as reflected in the texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey, he later set out to observe first-hand the living oral poetic traditions of the former Yugoslavia . As I argue in the companion piece “Lyric and Greek Myth,” the traditions of Greek lyric were rooted in oral poetry. If, then, Homer as a poet of epic was thought to have lived in an even earlier era than the era of the earliest known poets of lyric, it follows that the traditions of epic as represented by Homer were likewise rooted in oral poetry.
In Greek Mythology, the Greeks used swords, spears, bows and arrows, shields, potions, and the gods used their symbol of power which was different for every god/goddess. The reality of Odysseus is in fact the myth of Odysseus, since that myth derives from the historical reality of Homeric poetry as a medium of myth. The reality of the myth is the reality of the medium that conveys the myth to its listeners over time. N.S. Gill is a Latinist, writer, and teacher of ancient history and Latin. She has been featured by NPR and National Geographic for her ancient history expertise.
So the hero Ajax misses the point when he accuses Achilles of loving Briseis more than he loves his comrades (IX 622–638). Achilles loves his would-be wife the same way that Meleager loves Kleopatra, but there is a deeper meaning to be found in that hero’s love for Kleopatra, and that deeper meaning has to do with the relevance of the name of Kleopatra to Achilles. What Achilles loves more than anything else in the whole world is what the name of Kleopatra means to Meleager – and what the name of his own nearest and dearest comrade Patroklos means to him. As we have seen, these two names Patrokleēs / Kleopatra both mean ‘the one who has the glory of the ancestors ’, and both these names amount to a periphrasis of the expression klea andrōn
The age of epic heroes is a sacred world of myth that must be set apart from the everyday world of the present. The mythology of epic heroes must distance itself from the present by holding on to a remote past far removed from the world of listeners hearing the glories of heroes. To hold on to such a past, this mythology must show not only that an age of heroes existed once upon a time but also, just as important, that such an age does not exist any more. It must privilege what is past over what is present, and it must remake that past into a sacred age of heroes. What must mean more than anything else to Achilles is not only Patroklos himself but also the actual meaning of the name Patrokleēs , which conveys the idea of the klea andrōn. For Achilles, the words klea andrōn represent the master myth in the actual process of being narrated in the epic of the Iliad.
No comments:
Post a Comment