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The heart of the question is the following: "On the
basis purely of Books I - III of The Odyssey,
formulate for yourself a description of the "epic" as a literary genre."
The question asks, in effect, what kind of thing an
"epic" is.
How do we characterize this particular genre? Given that the epic is
a long, complex narrative, how is it different, for instance, from
its nearest modern equivalent, the novel?
This opens up a range of related questions, for all of which there
are things to be observed in the opening books. What kind of language
does the
epic use? At a minimum, you'll notice it's verse, not prose. Beyond
that, you might note that this translation, at least,
uses long unrhymed lines of varying rhythm arranged
in long,
loose stanzas or the verse equivalent of paragraphs. Novels obviously
don't
do this, nor, for that matter, do ballads, which tend to be shorter and
use more
regular stanzas.
What can you say about the structure, the way in which the narrative
events are parceled out and presented—not so much what
happens
but how what happens is presented. Here, as some of you noticed,
Homer starts with an invocation, then moves into a quick summary
of the whole narrative before focusing, rather unexpectedly,
on Telemachus, delaying the presentation of the main action. We follow
Telemachus' actions while more of the back
story is fed to us its bits and pieces.
We can then ask, not who these particular characters are, but what
kinds of characters they are. The major
characters tend to be either
human aristocrats or deities. We hear of characters from the
lower social classes, but these so far are playing minor roles.
A comprehensive characterization of the epic would of course be well
beyond the range of a brief essay test. In class you brought up man
more traits than the few listed her. But if you review your paper,
you can see how far you went in the relevant directions.
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