Midterm Review Guide Flashcards
EPOS
monumental, long, solemn poem, usually focusing on heroic characters and their travails, often also involving gods or demi-gods.
The Homeric Question
i.e., were Iliad and Odyssey written by one poet, Homer, or by many writers? First posed by German professor Friedrich August Wolf in his Prolegomena ad Homerum, Halle 1795.
Oral Poetry
improvised, unwritten poetry, works by repeating entire scenes (type scenes), verses, half-verses, and stock epithets. Milman Parry (1902-1935) discovered these typical features when he recorded Serbo-Croat singers in Bosnia performing traditional improvised epics in the 1930s and recognized the same features in Homer; his pupil, Albert Lord, refined the theory further.
Epic Style
typical example of epic style are similes, decorative epithets, formulaic verses, catalogues, epic retardations, etc.
Decorative Epithets
a feature of oral poetry; adjectives that are always linked to a person or thing, reflecting a typical characteristic of it, i.e., swift-footed Achilles, white-armed Hera, curved ships.
Simile
an extended metaphor, elaborated with lots of (superfluous) detail, e.g., the Greek army is compared to breakers: “As a heavy surf assaults some roaring coast, piling breaker on breaker whipped by the West Wind, and out on the open sea a crest first rears its head, then pounds down on the shore with hoarse, rumbling thunder, and in come more shouldering crests, arching up and breaking against some rocky spit, exploding salt foam to the skies – so wave on wave they came, Achaean battalions ceaseless” (book 4, p. 159); similarly, the Trojan army is compared to bleating sheep: “like flocks of sheep in a wealthy rancher’s steading, thousands crowding to have their white milk drained, bleating nonstop when they hear their crying lambs – so the shouts rose up from the long Trojan lines” (book 4, p. 159). Other typical similes compare heroes to lions, bulls, wild boars, or wildfire, and fallen fighters to trees that have been felled.
Formulaic Verses,
frequently repeated verses to describe type scenes, such as times of day, dressing, eating, departure, death, e.g., “and the dark came swirling down across his eyes.”
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Catalogue Poetry
catalogue-like poetic lists, e.g., of the enemies a warrior kills in battle or of the armies opposing each other in battle, like the Ships’ Catalogue in Iliad 2.
Aristeia
a hero’s finest hour (Gr. áristos = best), cf. Diomedes’ aristeia in book 5 or Patroclus’ in book 16.
Epic Retardation,
a slowing down of the narrative by means of digressions, typical for epic poetry.
Ecphrasis,
Greek = “description”, i.e., the detailed description of people, things (esp. pieces of art or buildings), or events, usually in form of a digression within a larger narrative, e.g., the description of Odysseus’ boar-teeth helmet in book 10 or Achilles’ shield in book 18.
Dressing Scene
type scene, semi-formulaic description of a hero or god arming for battle or departure.
Heroic Taunting,
another type scene, the exchange of insults between heroes before a duel.
flashback / foreshadowing,
references to earlier events in the Iliad or in myth (e.g., the campaign of the Seven Against Thebes or Achilles’ earlier capture and ransoming of Trojans) or to future developments, such as Achilles’ death or Troy’s destruction.
Dramatic Irony
a literary plot device in which the readers’ superior knowledge enables them to understands more of the events than the characters and to realize that they act foolishly or in error, e.g., when Hector taunts Patroclus in book 16 for allegedly trying to obey Achilles’ command not to come back to the ships before he had killed Hector [book 16, p. 440], when we know that Achilles told Patroclus the exact opposite, namely to come back as soon as he had chased the Trojans from the ships.
