As per Natalie’s request, this month’s poetry challenge is to write an epic poem… in a month. This feat is impossible enough so there are no additional requirements. Don’t forget, whoever wins gets the coveted whomper stick and also gets to make up next month’s challenge. So bring it, I want to see the next Iliad up on this site in a month. Write something to torture freshman with for the next 2000 years!
In case anyone wants to know what officialy an epic poem is, here’s the wiki article:
An epic is a lengthy, revered narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation.[1] A work need not be written to qualify as an epic, although even the works of such great poets as Homer, Dante Alighieri, and John Milton would be unlikely to have survived without being written down. The first epics are known as primary, or original, epics. Epics that attempt to imitate these like Virgil’s The Aeneid and John Milton’s Paradise Lost are known as literary, or secondary, epics.[2] Another word for epic poetry is epyllion (plural: epyllia) which is a brief narrative poem with a romantic or mythological theme. The term, which means ‘little epic’, came in use in the Nineteenth century. It refers primarily to the type of erotic and mythological long elegy of which Ovid remains the master; to a lesser degree, the term includes some poems of the English Renaissance, particularly those influenced by Ovid. One suggested example of classical epyllion may be seen in the story of Nisus and Euryalus in Book IX of The Aeneid.
Contents
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1 Oral epics or world folk epics
2 Notable epic poems
2.1 Ancient epics (to 500)
2.2 Medieval epics (500-1500)
2.3 Modern epics (from 1500)
3 Other “Epics”
4 See also
5 Notes
6 External links
7 Bibliography
[edit]Oral epics or world folk epicsThe first epics were products of preliterate societies and oral poetic traditions. In these traditions, poetry is transmitted to the audience and from performer to performer by purely oral means.
Early twentieth-century studies of living oral epic traditions in the Balkans by Milman Parry and Albert Lord demonstrated the paratactic model used for composing these poems. What they demonstrated was that oral epics tend to be constructed in short episodes, each of equal status, interest and importance. This facilitates memorization, as the poet is recalling each episode in turn and using the completed episodes to recreate the entire epic as he performs it.
Parry and Lord also showed that the most likely source for written texts of the epics of Homer was dictation from an oral performance.
Epic: a long narrative poem in elevated stature presenting characters of high position in adventures forming an organic whole through their relation to a central heroic figure and through their development of episodes important to the history of a nation or race.
Epics have 6 main characteristics:
The hero is of imposing stature, of national or international importance, and of great historical or legendary significance.
The setting is vast, covering many nations, the world, or the universe.
The action consists of deeds of great valor or requiring superhuman courage.
Supernatural forces—gods, angels, demons—insert themselves in the action.
A style of sustained elevation is used.
The poet retains a measure of objectivity.
The hero generally participates in a cyclical journey or quest, faces adversaries that try to defeat him in his journey, and returns home significantly transformed by his journey. The epic hero illustrates traits, performs deeds, and exemplifies certain morals that are valued by the society from which the epic originates. Many epic heroes are recurring characters in the legends of their native culture.
Conventions of Epics:
Praepositio: Opens by stating the theme or cause of the epic. This may take the form of a purpose (as in Milton, who proposed “to justify the ways of God to men”); of a question (as in the Iliad, where Homer asks the Muse which god it was who caused the war); or of a situation (as in the Song of Roland, with Charlemagne in Spain).
Invocation: Writer invokes a Muse, one of the nine daughters of Zeus. The poet prays to the Muses to provide him with divine inspiration to tell the story of a great hero. (This convention is obviously restricted to cultures which were influenced by Classical culture: the Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, or the Bhagavata Purana would obviously not contain this element)
In medias res: narrative opens “in the middle of things”, with the hero at his lowest point. Usually flashbacks show earlier portions of the story.
Enumeratio: Catalogues and genealogies are given. These long lists of objects, places, and people place the finite action of the epic within a broader, universal context. Often, the poet is also paying homage to the ancestors of audience members.
Epithet: Heavy use of repetition or stock phrases: e.g., Homer’s “rosy-fingered dawn” and “wine-dark sea.”Literate societies have often copied the epic format; the earliest European examples of which the text survives are the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes and Virgil’s Aeneid, which follow both the style and subject matter of Homer. Other obvious examples are Nonnus’ Dionysiaca, Tulsidas’ Sri Ramacharit Manas.
3 responses so far ↓
1 worsty von hoan // May 12, 2008 at 5:14 pm
holy hells bells I’m so winning the whomper stick this month. also, does this mean I get to whomp anyone i want with it? furthermore, when I win and make the new challenge, its going to be fucking off the hook. yeah, I said off the hook. oh shit…
2 worsty von hoan // May 12, 2008 at 8:45 pm
beat this! whomp!
The Astyaneid
Would that not in the grove–
WRATH, sing, O nine mouths
descended from Zeus and Mnemosyne,
of the lost Astyanax, King of the City.
As Troy fell Astyanax, falling just so,
from the tall parapets of Troy to the ground,
having been dangled from the hands
of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles,
cried as infants do. Unruly child.
Andromache, his weaving mother,
wove a handkerchief for herself to cry into,
and when he hit the ground her dainty
napkin, finished, dried her tears.
The child, son of Hector the great horse-tamer,
swept up in war and the great chaos of
the things men do in it
was covered in muck and mired
in the blood of his Trojans, spilled by
ruthless Achaeans.
He was, until he was swept into the forest by his
fear, and hid in the horse-shed of
a nearby farmer, Perses, and later
made his way deeper into the bush.
Muses, nine and mousike-mouthed,
sing of lost Astyanax, and bring us to him
when he reaches nine years of age,
grown and raised by wolves before Romulus,
and before Remus suckled, inoculated
by careless snakes, and never tamed by wild horses,
Astyanax, Hector’s son and opposite.
While in the echoey halls of Mount Olympos,
dining on ambrosia and mortal men’s meat,
the Olympian Gods recount their dreams
and the troubles they have brought to mankind,
and flick marbles with elegant fingers,
Ares, sacker of poleis, is distracted.
He gazes, head in hand, at the wide world,
at Illium, first of all, the land of Trojan Astyanax,
and at Mytilene, Smyrna, Ephesus, Priene,
Miletus, Halicarnassus, Cnidus, Rhodos,
Xanthus, Pergamum, Cyzicus,
Nicomedia, Nicaea,
and on the opposing coast, mirrored across the
thrumming waters of the Aegean,
ever stirred to froth by
the dark-haired god Poseidon,
Epidauros, Apollonia, Larissa, Ambracia,
Delphi– that land of poison gas which whittles
the minds of open-eyed priestesses, and
crashes their teeth together, and strengthens
their cords, it takes them by the throat–
and Megara, Thebes, Athens, Corinth,
Argos– sharing its name with royal Odysseus’
raw-feeding dingo– and Messene, Olympia, Chalcis,
and,
on their own, afloat in the sea like stars
the Cyclades,
dotting the night sky with their planets,
the most lonely Cretans in Gortyn and Knossos,
circling round the sun of Delos, sacred island.
Seeing that the poleis would have only sought to
destroy each other, with the unidirectional
sucking of resources from periphery
to center, and
that they would have made their fortunes on the
sweat of ill-omened men,
some slaves, some waged, others not wise
enough not to piss into the wind,
Ares spies our child, Astyanax, the lost one,
and whispers into the little ear-shell of this
mercurymind. The crafty war-maker says:
“Astyanax, alien human child,
Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, flung you
from the tall parapets of Troy
and wished to end with you Illium forever,
saying to your poor weeping mother,
Andromache, daughter of great-hearted Eetion,
‘Your son you named Scamandrius, but the people
call him Astyanax, King of the City;
his father my father took to his death,
piercing him in the nipple with a strong spear;
Achilles, leader of men, driving it home
to the heart of huge Hector.
From this babe I fear, then,
retribution and also that
he might become King, as the
Trojans’ portent in their naming.
We want no more Kings of Troy.’
This he said to your mother, Andromache,
while he held you up by the ankle,
tunic over your face and bottom exposed,
shameful even for an infant, if it is done
upside-down and against his will,
and shameful even for grown men.
Recall the son of Tisander, Hippocleides
who, dancing on a table,
enflamed by dawn-colored wine and the toots
of an otherwise innocent flute,
dancing now in one style, now in another,
stood on his head and
danced away his own marriage.
Cleisthenes, the bride-to-be’s father,
used a word for ‘dance’ with a certain
similarity to a word for ‘testicle’
and thereby shamed,
in his well-heeled way, Hippocleides.
Hippocleides did not care, but you
Remember this, and know the shame
that Neoptolemus brought on your
poor infant body, before flinging it
to the Illian soil through the war-time air.
Unlike Dardanian Aeneas, you must
not found great cities but destroy them;
the war you breathed while falling
from those so-high parapets,
a crying babe suckling in the arms of
only the wind and Dawn
in her yellow robe,
was not a war between cities but to end cities.
Artemis, the archer-goddess,
and Apollo, the unshorn,
rouser of armies,
the lord who shoots from afar,
had conspired with me to set men to this
last War so that, in the end,
man could see that civilization was
like Hippocleides’ head-stand, too.
It inverted everything,
put the ass in the saddle,
and yet it was only a matter of time before gravity,
the round Earth’s only rule for mankind,
would bring down whatever stood too
tall there, blocking the sky,
pushing back the sea,
leveling the mountains.
Meanwhile the head, laid low under
the toga, which fell like a veil,
blocking it from the horrified faces
of the onlookers and, most of all,
the love of its eye-spies, dear
daughter of Cleisthenes, Agarista,
did not realize until these collapses,
and attendant catalepsies of the soul,
what was in store.
Lost boy, son of Priam’s son of the glinting helmet,
no longer Scamandrius either,
you must know that you are not a King and yet
you are like royal Odysseus.
Homer says that Odysseus fought
to save his own life
and bring his shipmates home.
But not by will nor valor could he save them.
Homer forgot himself when he wrote the rest
of that glowing stanza
about Helios, the sun, and what he did
to the ‘children and fools’ who killed
and feasted on his cattle;
of Odysseus’ men, the children and the fools
were those who knew to feast on his moos
for
in their starveling hunger they ate
bessy and bossy but not in the rest of their games
in the tecta of Lord Helios, in which
they had no need of husbandry
neither animal nor floral
not even human, for that matter.
They only occasionally ate, teeth shining
bloody, with their yearling pups, the
never-touched-by-the-goad.
So, no-longer-Astyanax,
no-longer-Scamandrus,
bright traitor-to-your-species,
you will chase it,
what happens when the Earth’s
one rule finds us unruly
and we ourselves pull on the
ropes, for to end yet again.
You will chase it with splints
and rags and crutches,
wire cutters, mercury minds.
Odysseus’ Argos shared a name, after all,
with a dog of the underworld,
brother of Cerberus, hellhound.
So, little species traitor,
cause your earth-given mischief,
sing into autochthonous flames
and lick your ropeburns
For to see by Helios’ eyes
and Zeus’, master of the bright lightning,
to see by your owl eyes
which you got from Athena,
unwearied.”
Thus did brazen Ares whisper,
into the air full of the boy’s war,
the enemy of men,
sacker of cities.
Would that not in the grove
where the first trees were felled
for the first long-nosed ships–
3 mackenzie // May 13, 2008 at 11:42 am
woah, I’m going to have to get my ass in gear or I’m actually going to have come up with $10 to send you the whomper.
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