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An ambiguous term, "epic" is
used most often to designate a long narrative poem recounting heroic deeds,
though it has also been loosely used to describe novels, such as Tolstoy's War
and Peace, and motion pictures, such as Eisenstein's Ivan
the Terrible. In literary usage, the term encompasses both oral and written
compositions. The prime examples of the oral epic are Homer's Iliadand OdysseyOutstanding examples of the written epic include Virgil's Aeneid
and Lucan's Pharsalia in Latin; Chanson
de Roland in medieval French; Ariosto's Orlando
Furioso and Tasso's Gerusalemme
liberata in Italian; Poema (or Cantar) de mio Cid in
Spanish; and Milton's Paradise Lost and
Spenser's Faerie Queene in English.
There are also seriocomic epics, such as the Morgante of a 15th-century Italian poet, Pulci, and the
pseudo-Homeric Battle of the Frogs and
Mice. Another distinct group is made up of the so-called beast
epics--narrative poems written in Latin in the Middle Ages and dealing
with the struggle between a cunning fox and a cruel and stupid wolf. Underlying
all of the written forms is some trace of an oral character, partly because of
the monumental persuasiveness of Homer's example but more largely because the
epic was, in fact, born of an oral tradition. It is on the oral tradition of the
epic form that this article will focus. (see also literary genre, oral
literature)
An epic may deal with such various
subjects as myths, heroic legends,
histories, edifying religious tales, animal stories, or philosophical or moral
theories. Epic poetry has been used by peoples all over the world and in
different ages to transmit their traditions from one generation to another,
without the aid of writing. These traditions frequently consist of legendary
narratives about the glorious deeds of their national heroes. Thus scholars have
often identified "epic" with a certain kind of heroic oral poetry,
which comes into existence in so-called heroic ages. Such ages have been
experienced by many nations, usually at a stage of development in which they
have had to struggle for a national identity. This effort, combined with such
other conditions as an adequate material culture and a sufficiently productive
economy, tend to produce a society dominated by a powerful and warlike nobility,
constantly occupied with martial activities, whose individual members seek,
above all, everlasting fame for themselves and for their lineages.
The main function of poetry in
heroic-age society appears to be to stir the spirit of the warriors to heroic
actions by praising their exploits and those of their illustrious ancestors, by
assuring a long and glorious recollection of their fame, and by supplying them
with models of ideal heroic behaviour. One of the favorite pastimes of the
nobility in heroic ages in different times and places has been to gather in
banquet halls to hear heroic songs, in praise of famous deeds sung by
professional singers as well as by the warriors themselves. Heroic songs also
were often sung before a battle, and such recitations had tremendous effect on
the morale of the combatants. Among the Fulani (Fulbe) people in The Sudan, for
instance, whose epic poetry has been recorded, a nobleman customarily set out in
quest of adventures accompanied by a singer (mabo),
who also served as his shield bearer. The singer was thus the witness of the
heroic deeds of his lord, which he celebrated in an epic poem called baudi.
(see also heroic
poetry, African literature)
The aristocratic warriors of the heroic
ages were thus members of an illustrious family, a link in a long chain of
glorious heroes. And the chain could snap if the warrior failed to preserve the
honour of the family, whereas, by earning fame through his own heroism, he could
give it new lustre. Epic traditions were to a large extent the traditions of the
aristocratic families: the Old French word geste, used for a form of epic that flourished in the Middle Ages,
means not only a story of famous deeds but also a genealogy. (see also chanson de geste)
The passing of a heroic age does not
necessarily mean the end of its heroic oral poetry. An oral epic tradition
usually continues for as long as the nation remains largely illiterate. Usually
it is after the heroic age has passed that the narratives about its legendary
heroes are fully elaborated. Even when the nobility that originally created the
heroic epic perishes or loses interest, the old songs can persist as
entertainments among the people. Court singers, then, are replaced by popular
singers, who recite at public gatherings. This popular tradition, however, must
be distinguished from a tradition that still forms an integral part of the
culture of a nobility. For when a heroic epic loses its contact with the banquet
halls of the princes and noblemen, it cannot preserve for long its power of
renewal. Soon it enters what has been called the reproductive stage in the life
cycle of an oral tradition, in which the bards become noncreative reproducers of
songs learned from older singers. Popular oral singers, like the guslari
of the Balkans, no doubt vary their songs to a certain extent each time they
recite them, but they do so mainly by transposing language and minor episodes
from one acquired song to another. Such variations must not be confounded with
the real enrichment of the tradition by succeeding generations of genuine oral
poets of the creative stage. The spread of literacy, which has a disastrous
effect on the oral singer, brings about a quick corruption of the tradition. At
this degenerate stage, the oral epic soon dies out if it is not written down or
recorded.
The ancient
Greek epic exemplifies the cycle of an oral tradition. Originating in the
late Mycenaean period, the Greek epic outlasted the downfall of the typically
heroic-age culture (c. 1100 BC) and
maintained itself through the "Dark Age" to reach a climax in the
Homeric poems by the close of the Geometric period (900-750 BC). After Homer,
the activity of the aoidoiwho sang their own epic songs at the courts of the nobility, slowly
declined. During the first half of the 7th century, the aoidoi
produced such new poems as those of Hesiod and some of the earlier poems of
what was to become known as the Epic Cycle. Between 625 and 575 BC the aoidoi gave way to oral reciters of a new type, called rhapsodes
or "stitchers of songs," who declaimed for large audiences the already
famous works of Homer while holding in their hand a staff (rhabdos), which they used to give emphasis to their words. It seems
probable that these rhapsodes, who played a crucial role in the transmission of
the Homeric epic, were using some sort of written aids to memory before Homeric
recitations were adopted in 6th-century Athens as part of the Panathenaic
festivals held each year in honour of the goddess Athena. (see also Mycenaean civilization)
To compose and to memorize long
narrative poems like the Iliad and the
Odyssey, oral poets used a highly
elaborate technical language with a large store of traditional verbal formulas,
which could describe recurring ideas and situations in ways that suited the
requirements of metre. So long
as an oral epic tradition remains in its creative period, its language will be
continually refined by each generation of poets in opposite directions,
refinements that are called scope and economy. Scope is the addition of new
phrases to express a larger number of recurrent concepts in varying metrical
values fitting the possible positions in a verse. Economy is the elimination of
redundancies that arise as gifted poets invent new set phrases that duplicate,
both in a general sense and in metrical value, the formulas that already exist
in the traditional stock. (see also mnemonic,
prosody)
Nowhere has this refinement proceeded
any nearer to perfection than in the language of the Homeric epic. As has been
shown by statistical analysis, it exhibits a remarkable efficiency, both in the
rareness of unnecessarily duplicative variants and in the coverage of each
common concept by the metrical alternatives useful in the composition of the
six-foot metric line the Greeks used for epic poetry.
Thus, for example, if the idea of a ship
has to be expressed at the end of a line of verse, the ship may be described as
"well-trimmed" (neos eises),
"curved" (neos amphielissa),
or "dark-prowed" (neos
kyanoproiros), depending entirely on the number of feet that remain to be
filled by the phrase in the hexameter; if the phrase has to cover the two final
feet of the verse and the words have to be put in the dative case, the formula
"of a well-trimmed ship" will be replaced by "to a black
ship" (nei melaine). The sole
occurrence of "Zeus who gathers lightning" (steropegereta Zeus), which is an exact metrical equivalent of the
more common "Zeus who delights in thunder" (Zeus terpikeraunos), constitutes one of the very few actual
duplications of such formulas found in Homer.
Finally, some of the typical scenes in
the heroic life, such as the preparation of a meal or sacrifice or the launching
or beaching of a ship, contain set descriptions comprising several lines that
are used by rote each time the events are narrated.
This highly formalized language was
elaborated by generations of oral poets to minimize the conscious effort needed
to compose new poems and memorize existing ones. Because of it, an exceptionally
gifted aoidos, working just prior to
the corruption of the genre, could orally create long and finely structured
poems like the Iliad and the Odyssey,
and those poems could then be transmitted accurately by the following
generations of rhapsodes until complete written texts were produced.
Oral heroic poetry, at its origin,
usually deals with outstanding deeds of kings and warriors who lived in the heroic
age of the nation. Since the primary function of this poetry is to educate
rather than to record, however, the personages are necessarily transformed into
ideal heroes and their acts into ideal heroic deeds that conform to mythological
or ideological patterns. Some of these patterns are archetypes
found all over the world, while others are peculiar to a specific nation or
culture. Thus, in many epic traditions, heroes are born as a result of an
illegitimate union of a maiden mother with a divine or supernatural being; they
are exposed at birth, fed by an animal, and brought up by humble foster parents
in a rustic milieu; they grow up with marvellous speed, fight a dragon--in their
first combat--to rescue a maiden whom they marry, and die young in circumstances
as fabulous as those that surrounded their birth.
In the traditions of Indo-European
peoples a hero is often a twin, who acquires soon after his supernatural birth
an invulnerability that has one defect, generally of his heel or of some other
part of his foot, which ultimately causes his death. He is educated by a
blacksmith, disguises himself as a woman at some time in his youth, and conquers
a three-headed dragon, or some other kind of triple opponent, in his first
battle. He then begets, by a foreign or supernatural woman, a child who, reared
by his mother in her country, becomes a warrior as brave as his father. When
this child meets his unknown father, the latter fails to recognize him, so that
the father kills his own child after a long and fierce single combat. The hero,
himself, usually dies after committing the third of three sins.
In Japan, to take another example,
renowned members of the warrior aristocracy of the past, who have acquired the
status of popular heroes, are in many cases supplied in their legend with four
exceptionally brave and faithful retainers called their shi-tenno,
the guardians of the four cardinal
points; these form the closest entourage of their lord--who is usually depicted
as excelling in command but not in physical strength--and defend him from
dangers. The retainers reflect a mythological model, taken from Buddhism, of
four deva kings, who guard the
teaching of the Buddha against the attack of the devils. (see also Japanese religion)
A striking pattern for a number of epic
traditions has been found in a so-called "tripartite
ideology" or "trifunctional system" of the Indo-Europeans.
The concept was based on the discovery of the remarkable philosophy of a
prehistoric nation that survived as a system of thought in the historic
Indo-European civilizations and even in the subconsciousness of the modern
speakers of Indo-European tongues.
This philosophy sees in the universe
three basic principles that are realized by three categories of people: priests,
warriors, and producers of riches. In conformity with this philosophy, most
Indo-European epics have as their central themes interaction among these three
principles or functions which are: (1) religion and kingship; (2) physical
strength; (3) fecundity, health, riches, beauty, and so forth. In the long
Indian epic the Mahabharatafor example, the central figures, the Pandava brothers,
together with their father Pandu, their two uncles Dhrtarastra
and Vidura, and their common wife, Draupadi, correspond to traditional
deities presiding over the three functions of the Indo-European ideology. (see
also symbolism,
Hinduism)
During the first part of their earthly
career, the Pandava suffer constantly from the persistent enmity and
jealousy of their cousins, Duryodhana and his 99 brothers, who, in reality, are
incarnations of the demons Kali and the Paulastya. The demons at
first succeeded in snatching the Kingdom from the Pandava and in exiling
them. The conflict ends in a devastating war, in which all the renowned heroes
of the time take part. The Pandava survive the massacre, and establish on
earth a peaceful and prosperous reign, in which Dhrtarastra and
Vidura also participate.
This whole story, it has been shown, is
a transposition to the heroic level of an Indo-European myth about the incessant
struggle between the gods and the demons since the beginning of the world.
Eventually, it results in a bloody eschatological battle, in which the gods and
the devils exterminate each other. The destruction of the former world order,
however, prepares for a new and better world, exempt from evil influences, over
which reign a few divine survivors of the catastrophe.
The earliest-known epic poetry is that
of the Sumerians. Its origin has been traced to a preliterate Heroic Age, not
later than 3000 BC, when the Sumerians had to fight, under the direction of a
warlike aristocracy, for possession of this fertile Mesopotamian land. Among the
extant literature of this highly gifted people are fragments of narrative poems
recounting the heroic deeds of their early kings: Enmerkar, Lugalbanda, and Gilgamesh.
By far the most important in the development of Mesopotamian literature are the
five poems of the Gilgamesh cycle. This epic tells the odyssey of a king,
Gilgamesh, part human and part divine, who seeks immortality. A god who dislikes
his rule, fashions a wild man, Enkidu, to challenge him. Enkidu first lives
among wild animals, then goes to the capital and engages in a trial of strength
with Gilgamesh, who emerges victorious. The two, now friends, set out on various
adventures, in one of which they kill a wild bull that the goddess of love had
sent to destroy Gilgamesh because he spurned her marriage proposal. Enkidu
dreams the gods have decided he must die for the death of the bull, and, upon
awakening, he does fall ill and die. Gilgamesh searches for a survivor of the
Babylonian flood to learn how to escape death. The survivor shows him where to
find a plant that renews youth, but after Gilgamesh gets the plant it is
snatched away by a serpent. Gilgamesh returns, saddened, to his capital. (see
also Sumerian
literature, Mesopotamian
literature)
The legend of Gilgamesh was taken over
by the Babylonians, who
developed it into a long and beautiful poem, one of the masterpieces of mankind.
Another Babylonian epic, composed around
2000 BC, is called in Akkadian Enuma
elish, after its opening words, meaning "When on high." Its
subject is not heroic but mythological. It recounts events from the beginning of
the world to the establishment of the power of Marduk, the great god of Babylon.
The outline of a Babylonian poem narrating the adventure of a hero named Adapa
("Man") can be reconstructed from four fragmentary accounts. It shares
with the Epic of Gilgamesh the theme
of man's loss of an opportunity for immortality. (see also Akkadian literature)
Among clay tablets of the 14th century
BC, covered with inscriptions in an old Phoenician cuneiform alphabet, from Ras
Shamra (the site of ancient Ugarit), in northern Syria, there are important
fragments of three narrative poems. One of these is mythological and recounts
the career of the god Baal, which seems to coincide with the yearly cycle of
vegetation on earth. As was usual with the death of gods in the ancient
Mediterranean world, Baal's end brings about a drought that ceases only with his
resurrection. Another fragment, about a hero named Aqhat, is perhaps a
transposition of this myth of Baal to the human level. Just as the death of Baal
is avenged on his slayer by Baal's sister Anath, so is the murder of Aqhat,
which also causes a drought, revenged by his sister Paghat. Since the end of the
poem is missing, however, it is not known whether Paghat, like Anath, succeeded
in bringing her brother back to life. (see also Baal Epic, Syrian
and Palestinian religion, Aqhat
Epic)
The third fragment, the Ugaritic epic of
Keret, has been interpreted as a Phoenician version of the Indo-European theme
of the siege of an enemy city for the recovery of an abducted woman. This theme
is also the subject of the Greek legend of the Trojan War and of the Indian epic
RamayanaThe fragmentary text does not reveal, however, whether the
expedition of Keret, like that of the Achaean army against Troy, was meant to
regain the hero's wife or to acquire for him a new bride. (see also Keret Epic)
In its originative stage, especially,
the Greek epic may have been strongly influenced by these oriental traditions.
The Greek world in the late Bronze Age was related to the Middle East by so many
close ties that it formed an integral part of the Levant. At Ugarit a large
quarter of the city was occupied by Greek merchants, whose presence is also
attested, among other places, at the gate of Mesopotamia, at Alalakh, in what is
now Turkey. Thus, it is no surprise that, for example, the Greek myth about the
succession of the divine kingship told in the Theogonyof Hesiod and elsewhere is paralleled in a Hittite
version of a Hurrian myth. In it, Anu, Kumarbi, and the storm god respectively,
parallel Uranus, Cronos, and Zeus in the Theogony.
The Hittites had continuous diplomatic relations with the Achaeans of
Greece, whose princes went to the royal court at Hattusa to perfect their skill
with the chariot. The Greeks, therefore, had ample opportunity to become
familiar with Hittite myths. (see also Greek
mythology)
The Epic
of Gilgamesh was then well-known in the Levant, as is indicated by
discoveries of copies of it throughout this wide area. Many parallels with the Epic
of Gilgamesh have been pointed out in the Odyssey;
the encounters of Odysseus with Circe and Calypso on their mythical isles,
for instance, closely resemble the visit by Gilgamesh to a divine woman named
Siduri, who keeps an inn in a marvellous garden of the sun god near the shores
of ocean. Like the two Greek goddesses, Siduri tries to dissuade Gilgamesh from
the pursuit of his journey by representing the pleasures of life, but the firm
resolution of the hero obliges her finally to help him cross the waters of death.
In the Iliad, Patroclus, who dies as a substitute for his king and dearest
friend, Achilles, and then gives Achilles a description of the miserable
condition of man after his death, bears striking similarities to the friend of
Gilgamesh, Enkidu.
If these are indeed borrowings, it is
all the more remarkable that they are used in Homer to express a view of life
and a heroic temper radically different from those of the Sumerian epic of
Mesopotamia. Gilgamesh persists in his quest of immortality even when Siduri
shows him the vanity of such an ambition, but Odysseus shuns a goddess's offer
of everlasting life, preferring to bear his human condition to the end. The loss
of a beloved friend does not make Achilles seek desperately to escape from
death; instead he rushes into combat to revenge Patroclus, although he knows
that he is condemning himself to an early death, and that the existence of a
king in Hades will be incomparably less enviable than that of a slave on earth.
The Mesopotamian mind never tires of expressing man's deep regret at not being
immortal through stories about ancient heroes who, despite their superhuman
strength and wisdom, and their intimacy with gods, failed to escape from death.
A decisively different idea, however, is fundamental to the Greek heroic view of
life. It has been demonstrated that the Greek view is derived from an
Indo-European notion of justice--that each being has a fate (moira)
assigned to him and marked clearly by boundaries that should never be crossed.
Man's energy and courage should, accordingly, be spent not in exceeding the
proper limits of his human condition but in bearing it with style, pride, and
dignity, gaining as much fame as he can within the boundaries of his moira.
If he is induced by Folly (Ate,
personified as a goddess of mischief) to commit an excess (hybris)
with regard to his moira, he will be
punished without fail by the divine vengeance personified as Nemesis.
At the beginning of the Iliad,
a plague decimates the Achaean army because its commander in chief, Agamemnon,
refuses to return a captive, Chryseis, to her father, a priest of Apollo who
offers a generous ransom. By unjustly insulting Achilles, Agamemnon commits
another excess that causes the defeat of his army. Achilles, in the meantime,
lets Ate take possession of his mind and refuses, to the point of excess, to
resume his fight. He thus brings about a great misfortune, the loss of his
dearest companion, Patroclus. Patroclus, however, also contributes to his own
death by his hybris in pushing his
triumph too far, ignoring Achilles' order to come back as soon as he has
repulsed the enemy far from the Greek ships. The death of Hector also results
from his hybris in rejecting the
counsel of Polydamas and maintaining his army on the plain after the return of
Achilles to combat. After so many disasters caused by the mischievous action of
Ate among men, the last book of the Iliad presents
a noble picture of Priam and Achilles, who submit piously to the orders of Zeus,
enduring with admirable courage and moderation their respective fates.
On the other hand, at the beginning of
the Odyssey, Zeus evokes the ruin that
Aegisthus will have to suffer for having acted "beyond his due share"
by marrying Clytemnestra and murdering Agamemnon. This sets an antithesis to the
story of the wise Odysseus, who, to accomplish his destiny as a mortal hero,
never changes his purpose trying always to make the best of his countless
misfortunes. He earns by this the favour of Athena and succeeds eventually in
regaining Ithaca and punishing the wooers of Penelope for their hybris
during his long absence. Present scholarship inclines to the view that such
admirably well-structured poems as the Iliad
and the Odyssey could have been
created only by a single highly gifted poet whose name was Homer. This position
contrasts with the extreme skepticism that marked all phases of Homeric
criticism during the previous century. Yet the personality of Homer remains
unknown and nothing certain is known about his life.
In comparison, information derived from
his own works is fairly plentiful about the other great epic poet of Greece, Hesiod.
He produced them presumably around 700 BC, while tilling a farm in Askra, a
small village of Boeotia. The social and geographical background of his poems,
called didactic because of their occasionally moral and instructive tone,
differs from the aristocratic society of Ionian Asia Minor that Homer addressed.
Despite their different style, subjects, and view of life, however, Hesiod's Theogony
and the Works
and Daysillustrate
the same basic conception of justice as the Homeric epic. The Theogony
describes a long sequence of primordial events that resulted in the present
world order, in which man's inescapable lot is assigned to him by Zeus. The Works
and Days explains, through a series of three myths, why the lot of man is to
work hard to produce riches. Man has to shut his ears to the goddess who causes
wars and lawsuits, listening only to the goddess who urges him to toil more
laboriously than his neighbour to become richer. Pain and suffering have become
unavoidable since Pandora opened the fatal jar containing all the ills of
mankind at Prometheus' house in conformity with the will of Zeus. Moreover, the
age of the race of iron has arrived when the fate of human beings is not to pass
their lives in perpetual banquets or warfare, as did the preceding races, but to
suffer constantly the fatigue and misery of labour. As long as the goddesses
Aidos (a personification of the sense of shame) and Nemesis (a personification
of divine retribution) stay with mankind, however, helping people observe their moira without committing excesses, man can still gain riches,
merits, and glory by the sweat of his brow. Only if he knows how to avoid all
faults in doing his daily work will he not offend Justice (Dike), the
sensitive virgin daughter of Zeus. This is why it is so vitally important for a
farmer to know all the rules listed in the rest of the poem about seemingly
trivial details of his work.
Latin epic poetry was initiated in the
3rd century BC by Livius Andronicus,
who translated the Odyssey into the
traditional metre of Saturnian verse. It was not until the 1st century BC,
however, that Rome possessed a truly national epic in the unfinished Aeneidof Virgil (70-19 BC), who
used Homer as his model. The story of Aeneas' journey, recounted in the first
six books, is patterned after the Odyssey,
with many imitative passages and even direct translations, while the
description of the war in the last six books abounds with incidents modelled
after those from the Iliad. More
basically, however, Virgil made use of another model, Rome's own national legend
about the war fought under Romulus against the Sabines. This legend preserves,
in a historical disguise, an original Indo-European myth about a primitive
conflict between the gods of sovereignty and war and the gods of fecundity,
ending with the unification of the two divine races. In the development of this
theme by Virgil, Aeneas and the Etruscans can be seen as representing the gods
of sovereignty and war, and the Latins representing the gods of fecundity.
Aeneas, who has brought the Trojan gods to Rome, is forced to fight with the
help of the Etruscans against the Latins. It is the destiny of Aeneas to rule,
and it is the fate of the Latins to share their land and women with the invaders
and to accept Aeneas as their king. This resembles the unification of the
warring races that climaxes the Indo-European myth. (see also Latin literature,
Romulus and Remus)
The power exercised by the Indo-European
ideological pattern on the Roman mind even under the empire is seen in the Pharsaliaof Lucan (AD 39-65). In this historical epic, Cato, Caesar, and Pompey are
depicted respectively as moral, warlike, and popular in a way that gives the
story a clear trifunctional structure.
A typical Heroic Age occurred during the
wanderings of the Germanic tribes from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD. Out of
this, too, came a rich oral tradition, from which developed in the Middle Ages
many epic poems. One of the greatest of these is the Old English Beowulfwritten down in the 8th century. Archetypal Indo-European themes also
reappear in these epics. For example, the theme of the fatal fight between
father and son is recounted in the German Hildebrandsliedof which a 67-line fragment is extant. Again, an heroic version of the
Indo-European myth about the rescue of the Sun Maiden from her captivity by the
Divine Twins, which also provided the basic plot of the Greek Trojan cycle and
the Indian Ramayana, is found in the German Gudrun (c. 1230). (see
also Germanic
religion and mythology, German
literature)
The French chansons de geste are epic
poems whose action takes place during the reign of Charlemagne and his immediate
successors. The Chanson de Roland, probably
written down about the end of the 11th century, is by far the most refined of
the group. The story of the poem had developed from a historical event, the
annihilation of the rear guard of Charlemagne's army at Roncesvalles in the
Pyrenees in 778 by Basque mountaineers. The Basques, however, are transformed in
the epic to the Saracens, who to a later generation typified France's enemies in
Spain. The other chansons de geste, none of which is comparable to Roland
as a literary work, have been classified into three main cycles.
The cycle of Guillaume d'Orange
forms a biography of William (probably a historical, count of William of
Toulouse, who had, like the hero of the epic, a wife called Guibourg and a
nephew, Vivien, and who became a monk in 806). Guibourg, the most faithful of
wives, and the noble Vivien take prominent roles in the epic. The so-called Cycle
of the Revolted Knights groups those poems that tell of revolts of feudal
subjects against the emperor (Charlemagne or, more usually, his son, Louis). The
Cycle of the King consists of
the songs in which Charlemagne himself is a principal figure. (see also French literature)
The Arthurian Romance seems to have
developed first in the British Isles, before being taken to the Continent by
Bretons, who migrated to Brittany in the 6th and 7th centuries. The core of the
legend about Arthur and his knights derives from lost Celtic mythology. Many of
the incidents in the former parallel the deeds of such legendary Irish
characters as Cú Chulainn,
an Ulster warrior said to have been fathered by the god Lug, and Finn,
hero of the Fenian cycle about
a band of warriors defending Ireland, both of whom are gods transformed into
human heroes. The earliest extant works on Arthurian themes are four poems of Chrétien
de Troyes, written in French between 1155 and 1185: Erec,
Yvain, Le Chevalier de la Charette (left unfinished by Chrétien and
completed by Godefroy de Lagny), and an unfinished Perceval. In German, after 1188, Hartmann
von Aue (who also wrote two legendary poems not belonging to the
Arthurian cycle, Gregorius and Poor
Henry) modelled his Erec and Iwein on those of Chrétien. The story of Perceval was given a
full account by Wolfram von
Eschenbach (c. 1170-1220) in
his Parzival and in the unfinished Titurel.
Another incomplete work of Wolfram, Willehalm,
deals with the legend of William of Orange. Tristan
of Gottfried von Strassburg is based directly on the older French version of
Thomas of Britain (c. 1170-80). The
romance proper, however, although it has similarities to the epic, differs in
its lack of high purpose: fictions are told for their entertainment value rather
than as models for national heroism. Developed in France in the Middle Ages, the
romance is usually an adventure story with a strong love interest, intimately
associated with the "courtly love" tradition of that time. (For
further treatment, see below Romance .)
(see also Irish literature,
Celtic literature)
In Japan, there were in ancient times
families of reciters (katari-be) whose
duty was to hand down myths and legends by word of mouth and to narrate them
during official ceremonies and banquets. After the introduction of Chinese
letters, however, from the 4th century AD onward, these traditional tales were
put in writing and the katari-be professional
gradually died out. By the end of the 7th century, each clan of the ruling
aristocracy seems to have possessed a written document that recounted the
mythology and legendary history of Japan in a form biassed in favour of the clan
concerned. These family documents were collected at the command of the emperor Temmu
(672-686) and were used as basic materials for the compilation of the first
national chronicles of Japan, the Koji-ki(712) and the Nihon shoki(720). The myths and legends that are contained in the earlier parts of
these two books derive, therefore, from the oral tradition of katari-be.
Although no document preserves those narrations in their primitive form, it
is generally assumed that they were originally in the form of poems. Many
scholars believe that they were genuine epic poems, which were produced during a
period of incessant warfare around the 4th century. At that time mounted
aristocratic warriors of the future imperial family struggled to extend its
power over the larger part of Japan. Exploits of warriors, such as the emperor
Jimmu or Prince Yamato-Takeru, in the earliest extant texts--the Koji-ki and Nihon shoki of
the 8th century--probably derive from a heroic epic about the wars of conquest
of the first emperors, whose legendary feats were transformed into those of a
few idealized heroic figures. (see also Japanese
literature)
The middle of the Heian
period (794-1185) saw the emergence of a new class of warrior known as
samurai. They attached a greater importance to fame than to life. The battles
they fought became the subject of epic narratives that were recited by itinerant
blind priests to the accompaniment of a lute-like instrument called a biwa.
In the early part of the 13th century,
tales about the wars of the preceding century, fought between the two strongest
families of samurai, the Genji, or Minamoto, and the Heike, or Taira, were
compiled in three significant war chronicles. The Hogen monogatari and the Heiji
monogatari deal with two small wars, the Hogen (1156) and Heiji
(1159), in which the Genji and Heike warriors fought for opposing court
factions. The structure of the two works is roughly the same. Each celebrates
the extraordinary prowess of a young Genji warrior, Minamoto Tametomo in the Hogen
monogatari and Minamoto Yoshihira in the Heiji
monogatari; each hero fights to the finish in exemplary manner not so much
to win, for from the beginning each foresees the defeat of his own side, as for
the sake of fame; and the consummate courage of the two heroes forms a striking
contrast to the cowardice of court aristocrats. The bitterly fought Gempei
War (1180-85), in which survivors of the Genji family challenged and
defeated the Heike, is recounted in detail in the Heike
monogatari, the greatest epic of Japanese literature. The sudden decline and
ultimate extinction of the proud Heike, whose members had held the highest
offices of the imperial court, illustrates the Buddhist philosophy of the
transitory nature of all things; it invites the readers to seek deliverance from
the world of sufferings through a faith that will take them to a land of eternal
felicity at the moment of their death. The work is filled with tales of heroic
actions of brave warriors. The most conspicuous is Minamoto
Yoshitsune, one of the chief commanders of the Genji army: the legend of
this man of military genius continued to develop in later literature, so that he
has become the most popular hero of Japanese legend. (see also Hogen Disturbance, "Heike
monogatari," )
The vitality of the written epic is
manifested by such masterworks as the Italian Divine Comedy of Dante (1265-1321) and the great Portuguese
patriotic poem Os
Lusíadas of Luiz de Camões (1524-80), which celebrates the voyage of
Vasco da Gama to India. In more recent times, novels and long narrative poems
written by such major authors as Scott, Byron, Tennyson, William Morris, and
Melville were patterned, to some extent, on the epic. Their fidelity to the
genre, however, is found primarily in their large scope and their roots in a
national soil; their distance from the traditional oral epic tends to be
considerable.
Among the epics written in modern times,
the Finnish Kalevala (first ed. 1835;
enlarged ed. 1849) occupies a very special position. This is because its author,
the Finnish poet-scholar Elias Lönnrot
(1802-84), who composed this masterpiece by combining short popular songs (runot)
collected by himself among the Finns, had absorbed his material so well and
identified himself so completely with the runo
singers. He thus came close to showing what the oral epic, which he could
study only at its degenerative stage, might have been at its creative stage, on
the lips of an exceptionally gifted singer.
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