Sunday, September 22, 2019
The Iliad And The Epic Style Essay Example for Free
The Iliad And The Epic Style Essay ‘Epos’ which is the root Greek word for â€Å"epic† means , â€Å"early, unwritten narrative poetry, celebrating incidents of heroic traditions.(Rees.1966). High seriousness and elevated style are associated with epic, which is evidenced in the convention of Invocation at the start of an epic. In Iliad the poet invokes the muse to assist his dedicated labour: â€Å"Sing Goddess the wrath of Achilles Pleiades/the ruinous anger that woes on the Danna’s brought.†Aristotle in his Poetics describes epic as seeing life as a whole. We see in the Iliad, the epic song as the expression of an entire nation or race, the epic spans a long period of action (at least 10 years of siege and conquest of Troy by the Achaeans). Critics named as ARCHITECTOINICS, the controlled power and design of the epic, in which the poet managed a vast canvass spanning oceans and including the gods in its scope; at the same time never wavering from its central design: the revenge of Achilles and the conquest of Troy are epic subject of the Iliad. Homeric similes and epithets became conventions following the Iliad where Homer constantly engages stock epithets like â€Å"fleet-footed Achilles†,†wine-dark sea†or â€Å"rose fingered dawn†. The epic simile is a device by which the poet would temporarily deviate from his subject while he is making a long drawn out comparison, which in itself stands like a descriptive poem independent of the subject. For example the reaction of Hector on hearing the encouraging words of Apollo in Canto 15 of the Iliad, where the poet launches a detailed comparison of a horse  highly descriptive and grand in its flow, as a parallel to the reviving spirits of Hector.(â€Å"Like a stalled horse fed to the full in the manger/breaks loose from his halter..etc.†) Other conventions like war council, elaborate games and competitions started with Iliad where Achilles is shown throwing a grand Game show after the funeral of his friend Petroclus. The intervention of gods in the destinies and affairs of men is a constant epic feature, called the â€Å"epic Machinery†. The seeds of disaster were in the Olympian incident of Paris son of Priam and prince of Troy acting as Judge in a Beauty competition among Goddesses, Aphrodite, Hera and Athena. Paris decides in favor of Aphrodite as she grants his wish of getting for wife the most beautiful woman. He meets Helen ,wife of Menelaus king of Greece, and abducts her to Troy and thus the Great War starts. It is God Apollo who guides Paris to kill Achilles by sending an arrow at his heels; the fire gods fashion the armor for the invincible Achilles.The gods represent inexorable Fate,in whose grip men are powerless; in whose hands men are puppets. The personae are all divine in origin too. Helen and Achilles’ parentage goes back to Zeus and the sea nymph Thetis respectively; Zeus Athena and Hera have direct stakes in the war, which is but an extension of their strife to control one another. Catalogues of chieftains who participate in the war and the list of the ships launched by Menelaus, which again are part of epic conventions, give an exalted setting to the heroic struggle. The revenge of Hector, the wrath of Achilles, the prolonged siege of Troy provide the grand and solemn background against which the characters like Agamemnon Ajax and Hector acquire supernatural stature. The Iliad has highly descriptive passages on the life in Troy, the tragic aspects of war, on friendship and simple aspects of life. The scene of Hector taking leave of his wife is immortal poetry, and the epic itself is a moving expression of heroism high Idealism. And patriotism. The Heroes themselves are partly historic and partly mythical, legendary characters.`                                              REFERENCE: S.O. Andrew M.J. Oakley, (translators) Homer’s Iliad, 1960.London JM Dent SonsLtd. RJ Rees, An Introduction To English Literature,(p.46-50).1966.Macmillan,London.                                                  [emailprotected][emailprotected][emailprotected][emailprotected][emailprotected]_
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