Walter Benjamin remarked that there is a clear relationship
between epic and history. This is true to a certain extent. In
his "Poetics", Aristotles namely
makes a clear distinction between poetry and history, concluding
that "[…] poetry is
something more scientific and serious than history, because
poetry tends to give general truths while history gives
particular facts". This statement, of course, also
applies to epic poetry, which widens its scope beyond what
happened to "what might have
happened", thus thematizing universal truths and
displaying events as "models of the course of
the world" or
"meta-history".
Contrary to history, in epic poetry time as such,
"chronological time", is largely
irrelevant. The action of the
"Odyssey", for example, occurs
over a period of twenty years, but is compressed to merely forty
days in the epic. And in "Beowulf"
a few days correspond to over fifty years. This device
("In Media Res") was established
by Homer in the eighth century BC.
The real goal of the epic, from Homer to Spenser over Vergil and
Dante, has been to help man understand the past (which in epic
poetry, as we have stated, includes "what
might have happened") through the deeds of a hero
representing the fate of his community in order to better shape
the future. In the West, the
"Iliad",
"Odyssey", and
"Nibelungenlied", and in the East,
the "Mahabharata",
"Ramayana", and
"Shahnama" are often cited as
outstanding examples of the epic genre. To these we have to add
Vergil's
"Aeneid",
Lucan's
"Pharsalia", and
Statius's
"Thebaid".
The first recorded epic is the Sumerian
"Gilgamesh", while the longest is
the "Tibetan Epic" of King Gesar,
composed of roughly 20 volumes and more than one million
verses.1
It is also appropriate at this stage to mention some of the
translations of the greatest epics, as they constitute works of
art in themselves, like Douglas's
"Aeneid",
Harington's
"Ariosto",
Fairfax's
"Tasso",
Chapman's
"Homer",
Sylvester's "Du
Bartas", and Pope's
"Iliad". It is thanks to them that
we can read the greatest epics of the past, although of course a
translation will never be like the original.
In the epic, the narrative often starts in the
middle of an action2
with an invocation to the Muses. Primary or folks epics
often originate from heroic ballads and legends,
don't have a single author, are only written
down after centuries of oral tradition
3,
are about the nobility and are recited (and quite often sung) in
front of an audience (and for this reason usually consist of
short episodes of equal importance that are easy to memorize),
while secondary or literary epics (popularized by Vergil) imitate
primary epics, are the work of a single author, are about some
remarkable events and are meant to be read from a book by an
individual. Further characteristics worthy of consideration are
that in primary epics deities and other supernatural beings
(demigods or extraordinary heroes) interfere in human affairs and
are often the product of a fight or an adventure. The earliest
known European epic is Virgil's
"Aeneid", which follows both the
style and subject matter of Homer (a primary epic).
Important elements of the epic style include
an invocation and an epic question, dignified, stately language
and rhythm (created for example by lengthy lists), dignified
manner of address between characters, repetition, protracted
similes, long, formal speeches often followed by
"thus he spoke", the
ekphrasis (which will be described in detail later in this
paper), a climactic confrontation, bias towards low social
strata, and sometimes also magical elements like a haunted wood.
The hero himself is often introduced in the middle of the action
and is often a demigod armed with magic weapons, a warrior with
no equals (often emphasized by epithets like
"pious Aeneas"). He must go through several
trials often involving his descent in the underworld to test his
virtues and bring them to perfection (arete). His
antagonists are always quite valiant warriors themselves, as it
would be beneath the dignity of the hero to fight against
weaklings. Quite often though, they are against God (and that is
obviously the reason why the hero has to fight against them). In
his quest or fight, the hero often reaches a low point, the
moment when he starts to question the validity of his enterprise,
but he is then typically
"resurrected" from this state of
temporary mental inertia and is able to complete his quest /
adventure successfully.
An epic poem is usually a whole culture in a
microcosm4
through flashbacks and inset narratives and is either
centred on a war or on a journey, where the hero is usually on a
quest. The hero is often of auspicious birth, and the deeds and
events associated with him are often transferred to or taken over
from another hero, for instance the hero descending to the
Underworld.
Example -
The primary epic "Beowulf" begins:
Listen! We have heard of the glory of the Spear-Danes
in the old days, the kings of tribes--
how noble princes showed great courage!
Often Scyld Scefing seized mead-benches
from enemy troops, from many a clan;
he terrified warriors, even though first he was found
a waif, helpless. For that came a remedy,
he grew under heaven, prospered in honours
until every last one of the bordering nations
beyond the whale-road had to heed him,
pay him tribute. He was a good king!
"Beowulf", written in alliterative
measure, represents about 10% of the extant corpus of Old English
poetry. It has 3,182 lines in a single manuscript (Cotton
Vitellius A XV) and is considered the masterpiece of Old English
literature. It was most probably written between 700 and 750 (but
only printed in 1815) by a Christian poet (Beowulf himself was a
pagan, but in a Christian setting, as Grendel and Grendel's
mother are described as the kin of Cain in a Germanic warrior
society, thus mixing Christian and pagan elements) and describes
events of the 6th century. Originally, it was
untitled, but it was later named after the Scandinavian hero
Beowulf. In Beowulf, we recognize the Germanic tradition
metrically, stylistically and thematically, and yet the Christian
spirit is much stronger than in the German tradition, and Beowulf
himself is much more altruistic and generous than the traditional
Germanic heroes. Beowulf has even been seen as a Christian
allegory of the fight between light and darkness, culminating in
Beowulf's death as the tragic but appropriate
death of a good hero fighting for noble ideals. Beowulf is a work
of fiction, but it also contains an historic event, the raid by
king Hygelac into Frisia, ca 516. It is believed that there are
more real people and events in Beowulf, as some of them also
appear in early Scandinavian sources.
A more modern example -
The secondary epic "Paradise Lost"
by John Milton begins:
Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
The first edition of "Paradise
Lost" (1667) comprised ten books, but in the second
(1674), two books were split into two to make a total of twelve
books (like in Vergil's" Aeneid"), the longest
book being Book IX, with 1189 lines, and the shortest Book VII,
with 640. Each book starts with an argument (a summary of the
book's contents), a novelty as compared to the
first edition.
"Paradise Lost"
is an epic poem of extraordinary organization and power of
imagination, not lacking a touch of irony too, written in blank
verse5
(a very unconventional decision for an epic work, as
rhyme was the standard for this kind of dignified poetry, as
established by the great continental epic
writers6)
and recounting the story of the fall of Satan and the subsequent
temptation of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of
Eden "“ another innovative act giving up the
traditional heroic theme for a more
"human" story, as Adam and Eve are
represented in all their humanity, a little bit like the French
impressionist painters had shifted from officialdom and war to
scenes of ordinary life, and Shakespeare from the traditional
historical play to a kind of play where ordinary people are the
real protagonists.
In his presentation of the Genesis
theme, Milton remained loyal to the Puritan myth; at the same
time though he transformed it, carefully avoiding the excessive
display of sensibility so typical of the Puritan age, as when
Adam and Eve ask God for forgiveness.
Apart from the total of twelve books, there
are other similarities with Vergil, like
Milton's roll call of the leaders of the
fallen angels vs. Vergil's roll call of the
Italian chiefs preparing to fight against Aeneas. Milton himself
had foreseen the scope of "Paradise
Lost" in the introduction to
"Reason of Church Government",
where he explained that he wanted "to be an
interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things among mine
own Citizens throughout this Iliad in the mother dialect. That
what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens,
Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old did
for their country, I in my proportion with this over and above of
being a Christian, might doe for mine."
Satan is described powerfully as a real hero
in his reign, hell, but a tragic figure outside his dominion, a
figure well aware of his own evil and damnation, and yet unable
to do anything to escape his fate, as becomes evident in his
soliloquy directed to the Sun. He assumes many forms in the
course of the story, which go hand in hand with his progressive
degradation. This is the most common interpretation of the latter
half of the twentieth century, while the Romanticism tended to
see Satan as the true hero of the epic. Adam and Eve fall too and
succumb to Satan, as we all know, but in them there is hope for
redemption through grace and penitence, so that the fall becomes
a means of self-discovery (felix culpa). Satan's fate is
thus contrasted with that of Adam and Eve, and even more, of
course, with the fate of the Son of God.
Milton is a central figure in English epic, comparable to Vergil
in Latin, and he considered himself the third great narrative
poet in the English language after Chaucer and Spenser. No epic
writing in the English language could escape his influence after
him. In his time, a time that began to open to new foreign
cultures, in particular the French culture, he resisted such
influences to the last and expressed himself against them on
several occasions. In "Of
Education", he clearly expresses his aversion against
the propagating French culture and asserts we should still look
to Italy for modern critical theory. He was also quite popular
and widely read in the eighteenth century, particularly in the
middle class, where he had become authorized Sunday reading along
with the Bible and the
"Pilgrim's
Progress" "“ not only for the theme
of his epic, but also for his honesty and forthrightness.
At the same time though, in spite of being a convinced
neo-classic, he was open to new forms of epics that
didn't strictly follow the classical form. He
took the critical principles of the Renaissance very seriously,
as we can understand from just a few lines of
"Paradise Lost":
Say Goddess, what ensu'd when Raphael,
The affable Arch-Angel, had forewarn'd
Adam by dire example to beware
Apostasie, by what befell in Heaven
To those Apostates, least the like befall
In Paradise to Adam or his Race,
Charg'd not to touch the interdicted Tree.
However, Milton was not destined to write a heroic poem in the
Renaissance style, although he had planned to write an Arthuriad
just before the Civil War. So he had to go back to an age in
Europe before the rise of militant nationalism and choose an old
theme, the theme of morality and the battle between good and
evil. And that's how
"Paradise Lost" was born, an epic
poem modelled above all on the
"Odyssey", but that still presents
some Renaissance themes, like Adam going out in naked dignity to
meet Raphael, or Satan, who is partly a Renaissance tyrant.
A particular form or topos of epic poetry is
the ekphrasis, the
"timeless" verbal description of a
work of graphic art embedded into the larger context of the
proper history of the epic poem in question, the first
ekphrasis being the description of
Achilles' shield in the
"Iliad". Other forms (or
"versions of history", as we might
call them in the present context) are legends recounted, dreams
and visions, but for now, we want to focus on the
ekphrasis. The ekphrasis clearly exemplifies what
we have stated at the beginning of this paper, namely the display
of an event as a model or icon of the course of the world,
uniting past and future in an exemplary way, and including the
progress of the hero in the representation. It is also a
citation, a milestone (in some cases a warning or a lesson) and a
synecdoche7,
quite often at the same time.
The ekphrasis is so important for epic
poetry that Spenser's inability to use it
appropriately marks the beginning of the end of the traditional
epic and the introduction of the modern era.
Meta-history in the
"Iliad" was at its highest as a
celebration of endless repetitions. Vergil cites the Homeric
topos and transforms it, representing times and places that have
specific relevance for his own hero. But we are still dealing
with meta-history, with something that clearly goes beyond the
Trojan past and the future of the Roman people. In
Dante's "Divina
Commedia" then time becomes manifold, but it is
linear, contrary to the works of his
predecessors8.
In Spenser, however, we notice that the various heroes of his
"Faerie Queene" (a quite
successful9
epic poem in six books celebrating the Tudor dynasty in
an allegorical way based on the battle between virtues and vices,
which is what still makes it pleasant to read and interesting,
albeit occasionally difficult) move through a deceptive, mutable
landscape in which, however, they concretely have to acknowledge
their past and put it in perspective, thus breaking the tradition
of the ekphrasis as described above.
So we can see that from the Greek heroic era
over the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages to the
Renaissance, 10
the ekphrasis gradually loses its traditional
meaning and becomes a mere fragment alluding to a past that must
be superseded, overcome. At the same time, the message it conveys
becomes ambiguous.
Another feature we observe is that the maker
of the work of art gradually disappears, thus shifting the
relationship god-hero to a relationship between hero and history.
In Spenser, the tapestries and ivories his heroes are presented
with are from the hands of unknown and even
"demonic" makers. Some scenes in
Book I, for example, where Redcrosse is drawn in by
Despayre's art, are reminiscent of
Dante's Inferno, yet without having the
positive force present in Dante
11
. They were made in a distant and foggy past the hero has
no access to. Spenser cannot present a coherent connection
between past, present, and future, so that time in Spenser can
only be perceived as fragmented. In Spenser, the ekphrasis
becomes an artefact, the mere representation of an archaic view
of Eros that must be criticized and transcended, and the hero
doesn't embody the fate of his community any
more. History itself becomes irreversible, and the future
uncertain. As a consequence, we also observe that the
ekphrasis gradually loses its magic powers and in Spenser
even becomes a mere object of dubious utility, and the hero
gradually loses his ability to represent the fate of his
community in a meta-historical context in the measure in which he
loses his connection to the gods.
In Milton's
"Paradise Lost" then, the
ekphrasis disappears altogether, and the angel Michael
shows Adam the future in the form of a vision similar to a map.
Adam is not moving towards perfection either, but is rather cast
out of a perfect world, the role of the hero having degenerated
to the role of a sinner who will be made responsible for
humanity's fate.
Although Spenser didn't succeed in outdoing
Ariosto, as he would have liked to, as he once told Gabriel
Harvey, he was not the mere dreamer he is occasionally thought of
and still did a good job with his "Faerie
Queene", to which he dedicated the best years of his
life, managing to introduce new elements in the epic. We read
Spenser without too much effort, in spite of a few archaic words.
His language gets to the point and is straightforward, even when
dealing with complicated matters, a gift he inherited from Homer.
He also possesses an incantatory power in his descriptions, like
the Bower of Bliss, a power that, however, contrary to what
critics normally think, is not limited to his descriptions, but
can surprise the reader anywhere, including his landscapes
(usually regarded as rather dull). It is a power that evokes the
feelings of actual life and makes the reader forget he is reading
fiction in spite of the other aspect of
Spenser's epic, his portentous strange visions
and allegories. Sometimes these two qualities of
Spenser's writing even go hand in hand, as in
the case of Malbecco's transformations, an
allegory that crowns a very realistic episode. So, even if it
cannot be asserted that Spenser fulfilled the choric function of
the real (traditional) epic, he should undoubtedly be regarded as
a successful poet, who, like many successful poets, also had
followers, like the brothers Giles and Phineas Fletcher, and who
even influenced Milton in his medieval skills.
In his "Christs Victorie, and Triumph in
Heaven, and Earth, over, and after Death", published
in 1610, Giles, in his address to the reader, mentions his
indebtment to Spenser's
"Faerie Queene" for the metric
structure of his work "“ eight lines with a
final alexandrine -, although his language is more modern than
Spenser's.
In his "Purple Island", his
brother Phineas presents his allegory in a very skilful manner,
remindful of Spenser's clarity of diction, and
follows the medieval tradition thoroughly, for example in making
Intellect and Will the princes of the island in his epic.
Seventeenth-century England was an age of literacy and
didn't suit the essentially primitive nature
of the epic any more, or, as Milton remarked, it was
"too late for epic", and epic
poets were slowly starting to come down from the summit of
Parnassus. However, there are three works that are worthy of
mention in this context, namely Tennyson's
"The Death of Arthur" and
Arnold's "Sohrab and
Rustum", two minor epics that managed to adapt the
traditional form to the taste of their age by setting the action
in a distant, mythical past, as well as
Marlow's "Mighty
Line". In some of his writings, Dryden also managed
to achieve the nearest approach to the epic that was possible in
the late seventeenth century, although in many other respects he
failed and his creative energy was "dissipated
in a multitude of miscellaneous tasks", as Bredvold
remarked. He himself still held the epic in the highest esteem,
in spite of its slow decline, as we have stated, choosing a
middle way in the dispute between ancients and moderns in his
"Essay of Dramatic Poesy" and
calling the epic "the most noble, the most
pleasant, and the most instructive way of writing in verse, and
withal the highest pattern of human life",
"undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul
of man is capable to perform".
His first epicising poem was
"Annus Mirabilis", although he
himself considered it historic
12
rather than epic, as it was far too short for an epic and
its action was not one.
Much more successful than his attempts at writing his own epic
was Dryden's translation of the
"Aeneid", in whose introduction he
reiterates his notions of the epic and protests against its
decline, making it clear that, if cultivated, it
"could" flourish in England. Here
too though he fails to achieve real genius, and his translation
is far too rough in certain passages for
Virgil's subtlety and mysticism.
Dryden's genius was at its best not in the
epic, but in his "Fables" and his
"Odes".
The eighteenth century then saw further changes. Lois Whitney
describes the situation quite clearly and appropriately:
"The eighteenth century saw a change in the
critical conception of the epic from that of the Aristotelian
formalist at the beginning of the century to that of the
primitivistic critic in the latter part. Critics of the former
school regarded the epic, whether by Homer or Virgil, as the
highest and most difficult form of literary art, the product of a
sophisticated writer, who, as a conscious literary artist,
followed certain prescribed regulations and wrote with a definite
moral purpose. The primitivists, on the other hand, assumed that
the epic was the product of the primitive bard, ignorant of
rhetoric and the rules of the epic, who sang his lays to savage
audiences on festival occasions."
The "official" epic of the
eighteenth century is "Robinson
Crusoe" by Defoe, published in 1719, a clearly heroic
and aristocratic work about a man's shipwreck on a desert island
and his adventures.
This is also the age in which the epic starts to be burlesqued,
like in "Tom Thumb the Great" and
"Jonathan Wild" by Fielding, the
age in which a new kind of comic epic was introduced, like
"Joseph Andrews" by the same
author, although at the same time there were still examples of
"serious" epics, like
"Télémaque" by
Fénelon.
The eighteenth century also witnessed the creation of two great
works belonging to the traditional epic, as traditions are always
hard to die: Pope's
"Iliad" and
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire".
Pope's translation of the
"Iliad" is the result of six years
of hard work, although Pope confessed that his work was nothing
compared to Homer's, whom he admired with
quasi-religious reverence. Pope also made some slight changes to
the original work in his translation, like adding a certain
gentility to the warriors or transforming
Homer's shepherds into
"conscious Swains", as this seemed
to be more appropriate for the readers of his age. However, he
retained most Homeric peculiarities as no other translation
succeeded in doing, like the pathos he managed to convey in the
description of the parting of Hector and Andromache, or the
energy in the description of the pick of the Greek leaders in the
thirteenth book, or the fight over the body of Patroculus. The
general effect in these instances, which is the most important
element of a good translation, is the same as in the original,
and this is certainly a great merit of Pope's
"Iliad", in spite of the liberty
he took with certain details.
Pope managed to adapt the "Iliad"
to his age because of his skills as a translator and a poet, of
course, and also thanks to the remarkable correspondences between
Homer's age and his own age, the age of Queen
Anne, like the power in the hands of the nobles in time of war.
Gibbon always showed a remarkable interest in the epic, although,
as we notice in "Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire", his talent is much more evident in conveying
ideas rather than describing people or heroes
- great general truths and moral lessons -, as
history's task for Gibbon was exactly this: to
offer general lessons in morality.
The lessons we find in Gibbon's work are for
example the combination of disillusionment about humanity and a
moderate belief in progress
("liberty" and
"enlightenment"), typical of the
eighteenth century, the condemnation of religious fanaticism, and
the destructive power of religious strife.
Gibbon was also an incredibly strong man and a unique
intellectual. He spent twenty years on his work, and at the end
he was just as fresh as at the beginning, and although we cannot
call his work "epic" in the
strictest sense of the term, as it is more historical than epic,
it certainly expresses the mindset of eighteenth-century Britain
in the age of Hume in a manner remindful of the epic.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the idea of the epic
and its zeal had almost perished. The few attempts at an epic
work were unsuccessful, like Crabbe's, an
impossibility of attainment of which he was fully conscious. The
old mystical idea of the epic itself didn't
exist any more in the nineteenth century, as new forces and
interests were gaining ground. The more and more complex
lifestyle and the ever expanding stock of human learning made it
impossible to write an epic that spanned a whole society as
required by the traditional epic. The new era required new
thought patterns and a new literature. The most suitable style
remindful of the epic now became the middle-class novel. The
first of the "Waverly Novels" by
Scott, for instance, represent an epic area in themselves with
their wide, all-embracing themes. Another excellent example of
"modern" epic is George
Eliot's
"Middlemarch" (in the late
nineteenth century), which describes the stories of some of the
inhabitants of a small English town on the eve of the Reform Bill
of 1832.
The twentieth century has also produced some
significant poetry works of epic scope, like
"Savitri" by Aurobindo Ghose,
"The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel" by
Nikos Kazantzakis, "Paterson" by
William Carlos Williams, to name just a few, as well as new kinds
of modern epics like "The Prelude"
by William Wordsworth (a long lyric biographical poem),
"Der Ring der Nibelungen"
by Richard Wagner (an opera),
"The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot, and
"The Cantos" by Ezra Pound.
To conclude, I would like to remark that with different
objectives and styles, new forms of epics will continue to be
written also in the twenty-first century, as we are witnessing in
the works of the proponents of "Expansive
Poetry", an umbrella term coined by Frederick
Feirstein for a new kind of long poetry started in the 1980s and
characterized by strong narrative and dramatic elements.
References:
Bjork, R. and Niles, J., A Beowulf Handbook, University of Exeter
Press, Exeter, Devon 1997
Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition
Dubois, P., History, rhetorical description and the epic, D.S.
Brewer, Cambridge 1982
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://teenwriting.about.com/library/weekly/bltopicindex.htm
http://www.victorianweb.org/genre/epic2.html
Tillyard, E.M.W., The English Epic and Its Background, Chatto and
Windus, London 1954
Footnotes:
1 Length is a
characteristic of the epic and one of the main differences
between epic and tragedy. Tragic though can be contained in the
epic, as Huxley remarked. Aristotle even described the epic in
his "Poetics" as a mode of
imitation comparable with the tragedy.
2 This is not
problematic because the epic usually deals with familiar themes
of assumed historicity.
3 The word
"epic" comes from Greek
"epein", "to
speak".
4 In both space and
time.
5 Occasionally though,
there are extra syllables, and the stresses may vary too, so
that in "Paradise Lost" the
rhythm is never monotonous, but rather adapts to the sense of a
particular theme.
6 This does not mean
though, of course, that Milton's language is
not dignified.
7
The whole is represented by the part, the embedded
ekphrasis. Sometimes, the ekphrasis can stand for
other poems.
8
Dante uses for example the written work of his own past
to build part of the mountain of Purgatory.
9 Spenser was granted a
life pension for it.
10 The most
significant works of this period are "Mirror
for Magistrates", a collection of English
Renaissance narrative poems, the
"Barons'
Wars" by Michael Drayton, and
"Albion's
England" by William Warner, although they
didn't correspond to the traditional
standards of the epic.
11
In Dante the hero always moves forward, until he
reaches Paradise.
12
It was written to celebrate the naval campaigns against
the Dutch and the great fire of London in 1666.
by Albert Frank
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