Author Topic: Classics Book Club, The  (Read 492846 times)

Babi

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #360 on: February 05, 2011, 09:00:43 AM »

Welcome to
The Classics Book Club, Beginning February 15 with


**NB: There are probably 50+ famous translations of the Odyssey. If you find the translation you have does not speak to you or does not convey to you what's happening, this book is too fabulous to waste on an old outdated translation: try a new one.

Free SparkNotes background and analysis  on the Odyssey



Book I: The Situation at Home:


Penelope at her Loom
John William Waterhouse
1912


Discussion Schedule:

February 7-14: Background, history, The Trojan War,  the Oral Tradition, Homer, the dates, let's get the backgound established.
February 15-22: Book I




"I haven't felt this excited about a prospective read/discussion for years."--- Gumtree

  
Discussion Leaders:  Joan K & ginny  



Everyone is welcome!  



 I am reminded of a phenomenon known to any parent.  A child will
demand a favorite story be read umpteen times,  and knows it so well
that the slightest omission or variation is greeted with cries of outrage
and a swift correction.  So I can well believe that an oral tradition will
carry a well known story fairly intact through many generations. Still,
language does change,  and translations do emerge over time, with
more or less felicitous results.

"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

ginny

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #361 on: February 05, 2011, 11:54:35 AM »
Well, see, that's the thing.

We're all familiar with the old game of forming a line and repeating a story,  and then seeing what the story  has become at the end of the line, it's never the same story. So imagine trying to repeat this Odyssey, I mean really.

I've always wondered how on earth anybody memorized this thing! What's the longest poem you have ever memorized?

Thank you, JoanR, PatH and Jude (a POEM yet!! Love it!) for the birthday wishes, this is so fun!

I must admit I have been thinking of it as a voyage, hopefully we won't end up like Gilligan! :)
With this crew and Joan K as First Mate, we're set for adventure and hopefully  unlike Ulysses's men, we can all survive to the end to tell about it. 


I must say that SeniorLearn has much to answer for - apart from having me crawling around on my knees searching for long neglected books it  has opened a 'tin of worms' which is seething in my head- disjointed and possibly confused memories of long ago reading. I guess it will do me good.


hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa a regular Pandora's box, huh?

A tradition is a social fact, based on the unspoken agreement of poets and audiences, from which neither can vary widely or abruptly. And the problem to be understood is how and why through many generations the normal Greek public expected its epic poets to speak in a particular artificial dialect, to use a particular type of simile and description, and to obey certain subtle and probably unconscious rules of symmetry. Certainly the artistic instinct implied in both poet and audience by these facts is very remarkable, but perhaps not more so than the exquisite conventions of symmetry and proportion which were traditional in other forms of Greek art, for instance in architecture and the carving of bas-reliefs.

This is something.  There IS a lot of repetition of the rosey fingered dawn stuff  and the wine dark sea. I won't bore you all with the woman, the grown woman,  who stared continually at the seas surrounding Greece and Crete  for two weeks  not to mention the land of the Sirens, Sorrento, some think, and never saw anything resembling wine dark, at all.  But who keeps looking every year anyway?

In our past history in this country we used to memorize long poems till "rote memory" got a bad rap. In fact China is about to dispense with it and they used it to rise to the educational heights they have done. But new research (I MUST find this article) reveals that doing rote memory leaves the mind free to then  analyze and apply those facts to  new principles, it's a good thing. It's like muscle memory involved in playing the piano.

I'm trying to think  of the longest thing I had to memorize and how far it went. I think it must be the Ancient Mariner, we were supposed to memorize the first part (and the whole thing if we could).... I got nowhere near that, but I did get the first part, I think. Snatches of it come back and I can do some of it now..  The Psalms of course.  Some of Shakespeare, but NOTHING like this thing.

Of the longest things you ever memorized, how much of any of it can you remember offhand?

pedln

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #362 on: February 05, 2011, 12:32:41 PM »
Quote
Of the longest things you ever memorized, how much of any of it can you remember offhand?

I think the ONLY thing I had to memorize was the prologue to Canterbury Tales, and it wasn’t very long.  “When that April .   .   .   .    .vertu engendered is the fluer”   Pronouncing it is something else.

My Fagles came yesterday.  Thank you to those who recommended this version, and gave the ordering info.  I think this will be the one I like the best,  though it is early yet.   The first line of the author’s Translator’s Postscript reads

“Homer makes us Hearers,”  Pope has said, “and Vergil leaves us Readers.”

The intro to the Pope translation on my Kindle (by Thomas Buckley) had this to say about the oral tradition:

Quote
For whom was a written Iliad necessary?  .  .  . The only persons for whom the Iliad would be suitable would be for a select few; studious and curious men; a class of readers capable of analyzing the complicatedemotions which they had experienced as hearers in the crowd.  .   . Incredible as the statement may seem in an age like the present, there is in all early societies, and there was in early Greece, a time when no such reading class existed.

ALF43

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #363 on: February 05, 2011, 12:58:32 PM »
Oh my gosh, I remember when I had to memorize Hamlet's speech in 10th grade.  "To be or not to be."  (Heck, that is still the question... ::)

I love to listen to stories! My grandmother would tell my cousin and I tales that we were held privy to as she told us "don't tell your mother i told you this story."  It kept us quiet for hours and now I, as a grandmother, understand the love and joy relating those stories must have given "grams."
I like to tell stories too, I like to "get into it."
I agree Pedln and as the oral tradition was passed on from generation to generation, many times by the minstrels or by the traveling bards, no reading class needed to exist.
 When I write something, much is left unsaid.
 If I can relate it, the story becomes much more interesting and adventurous.
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.  ~James Russell Lowell

ALF43

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #364 on: February 05, 2011, 12:59:55 PM »
Wow Ginny- Penelope is quite the stunning lady.  No wonder Odysseus wished to return to her.
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.  ~James Russell Lowell

pedln

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #365 on: February 05, 2011, 01:30:51 PM »
Andy, your listening experiences made me think of that movie Inn of Sixth Happiness, about a missionary in China close to WWII.  The people would all gather together to hear stories.

Frybabe

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #366 on: February 05, 2011, 01:34:24 PM »
Aside from Hamlet's soliloquy, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, we memorized Paul Revere's Ride and some of the Song of Hiawatha.

ALF43

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #367 on: February 05, 2011, 01:37:57 PM »
My mother used to try to get me to memorize "the Face on the Ballroom Floor."  It appeals to me now, but not at that point in time. ;D
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.  ~James Russell Lowell

JudeS

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #368 on: February 05, 2011, 02:47:18 PM »
What memories come to me of memorizing poems.  First and foremost all the Nursery rhymes. Then Robert Louis Stevenson -eapecially The Shadow(Goes in and out with me). Then in seventh grade "The Anciemt Mariner" and choosing a poem of our choice to recite.  i chose "In Flanders Fields" by Joel McCrae. I remember all the words to that and then In H.S.  large portions of T.S.Eliots "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".

If as is strongly rumored Homer was blind, perhaps from birth, other senses are embellished.  His hearing and memory could be highly developed so that he made  his living as a story teller.As an actor learns   the lines to a play, so did Homer learn all the words of the Odyssey . Finally a scribe wrote it down and perhaps embelished it (or not).

ALF43

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #369 on: February 05, 2011, 03:16:14 PM »
JudeS- really?  That is the first I've ever heard that?  Who's to say right?
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.  ~James Russell Lowell

rosemarykaye

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #370 on: February 05, 2011, 03:21:15 PM »
I am so glad that we were made to memorise poems and parts of plays at school.  I am forever quoting lines at my children - needless to say they think I should get back on my broomstick.  They don't seem to have to learn anything off by heart at school, and I think that is such a shame.

I learned great chunks of Anthony & Cleopatra, Henry IV, Henry V, Hamlet, etc.  When I went to stay with my French penfriend at the age of 14, we were taken to see the opera Falstaff sung in French, and I could follow the plot only because I knew Henry IV and V so well.

I still remember parts of TS Eliot - The Waste Land, and more especially the Lovesong of J Alfred  Prufrock (I say to my children "Let us go then, you and I" and they reply (if they can be moved to reply at all) "Waaa?" ) and some of the cat poems; also Robert Frost, Hilaire Belloc (Tarantella), Tennyson - The Lady of Shalott, Keats, lots of John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brook.  I wouldn't pretend that I remember many whole poems any more, but even little snatches are such a comfort and a joy when they come back to you at the right moments, aren't they?

They are also often handy for doing crosswords  :)

WH Smith seems to have lost my order for the Fagles Odyssey - I am so frustrated, am aching to join in with all of this.  I have emailed their customer services twice and received no reply; they have taken my money happily enough.  I am about to write them an extremely stroppy letter.

Rosemary

ALF43

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #371 on: February 05, 2011, 03:24:18 PM »
Oh, Oh Watch out.  Here comes Rosemary.  Everytime I read one of your posts about your kids, I chuckle and think, oh boy, she's got either tweens or teens.
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.  ~James Russell Lowell

JoanK

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #372 on: February 05, 2011, 05:02:00 PM »
Thank you, Jude. I'll give it another try.

I wonder if the Yugoslovian oral tradition has survived the (relativly) recent turmoil there. Books can be destroyed in war, too, but may have a better chance(?).

PatH and I had good memories children (where, where did it go?) and used to like to memorize things. We both liked "The Highwayman" and memorized it (she can still recite a lot of it). And the patter songs from Gilbert and Sullivan.

Our school made us memorize a poem every month. My only memory of that is once (I must have been about 10) -- my poem had a line "The squirrel held intercourse with the mountain". I went rushing into my mom:

"Mom. what does this word mean?"

"WHERE DID YOU HEAR THAT WORD?"

"I have to memorize it for school".

Such a fuss! My father's calmer head got her to look at the poem and calmed her down, but it took awhile.

Needless to say, I remember nothing about that poem, except the one line, which I'll never forget.

Frybabe

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #373 on: February 05, 2011, 06:05:40 PM »
All this kind of reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 where the books were burned. The book lovers rose to the occasion, and each who joined the outcasts committed a favorite book to memory, passing them along to others who would memorize them and perpetuate them also.

BarbStAubrey

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #374 on: February 05, 2011, 07:30:28 PM »
How dyslexia changed the stories told to my older two children -

Who knew about dyslexia in the early part of the twentieth century? Yes, the way the brain process written information seems to be passed on to at least one member of each generation starting with my father - Result: he and mom would visit and mom would read a story that she would be interrupted and the kids would ask grandpa to finish - of course he knew the outline of the story and not being able to read he pretended and with great flourish and gusto it all became very exciting with alterations that made the story even more entertaining than the original.

Upshot - I would be asked to read the story again - Oh no mama, read it like Grandpa - that is not how it goes - a long distance call to grandpa -  Dad how did you - what did you ??!!?? Barb I don't remember -  I just made it more fun - none of us knew he could not read - after this same scenario happening twice I would make it a point to listen whenever he "read" to my kids so I could tell the story as they wanted to hear it. I was not as good with the flourishes but I sure could get the voice sounds and story alterations.

Yep, you get the point - those story tellers were paid with food and a place to sleep by the inn keeper - to assure a full tummy and a good night's sleep it behooved the story teller to make the story as interesting as possible. Now in the Mediterranean I  understand the story teller was often a group, or a father and son and all those listening in an outdoor setting used their camel whips as a baton - they would strike the ground beating time in unison which kept the story teller on track - years ago I read that meter was the method that made memorizing and repeating a work easier and that was the rational  used why early prose has a rhythmical meter.

Have been, for a couple of years now, studying the early Christians and learning of the many many Bibles that existed and because of both popular use and politics the choice of Bible books were accepted 200 to 300 years after they were written and the current Bible as we know it was not recognized as 'The' Bible till the Council of Trent in the mid-1500s - Significant to me is that the Bible History of the New Testament is within the last 2000 years and it was not sorted out and agreed upon including verbiage translations even after 1500 years as well, there were differences of what to include in the Torah as to the written work written BC and here we have Homer we believe to have been an oral story for at least another 1000 years earlier than the written story which according to which anthropologist you read was written 700 to 900 years BC never mind we have in front of us the availability of several translations each slightly different with a few differences affecting the interpretation of the story.

And so to nail this as authentic I think we are barking up the wrong tree and we would be more at peace if we focus on understanding the  history of the time, the culture, and try to deduce the underpinnings of the story as we do with any piece of literature along with the beauty of the translation we are reading. I am just betting there were lots of 'grandpa's' along the way that made the story a bit more exciting with extra flourishes and told with a bit more gusto.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

bookad

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #375 on: February 06, 2011, 12:31:46 AM »
my memories of poems always begin with
Robert Frost's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'
whose woods these are i think i know
his house is in the village though
he will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow....


Flanders Fields I would think most Canadians know

and believe it or not we had to learn the 'Gettyburg Address' when I was in grade 8
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent....

but my favourite lines are from a poem by William Blake
'to see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour'


Deb :)
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wildflower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

rosemarykaye

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #376 on: February 06, 2011, 03:24:59 AM »
JoanK - again this group has provided me with my first laugh of the day - amd it's 8.22am!  Your squirrel story made me think of The Lady Of Shalott; I'm sure I only remember that because of the immortal line:

"The curse has come upon me! cried the Lady of Shalott"

You can imagine how that went down in a girls' school similar in its quota of supressed hysteria to that of the school in Picnic at Hanging Rock  :)

R

PatH

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #377 on: February 06, 2011, 07:31:15 AM »
Well, Rosemarykaye, now you've given me my first laugh of the day, and it's only 7:30.

ginny

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #378 on: February 06, 2011, 09:19:12 AM »
What a HOOT! hahaha another laugh o the day!

OH I forgot the Lady of Shalott which I have never been able to spell from the onion.  I LOVE these poems you've all memorized!

OH I can do the Lady;

Out flew the web and opened wide
The mirror cracked from side to side
The curse is (has?) come upon me, cried
The Lady of Shalott or however you spell it.

She left the ..something.. she left the loom
She took three? paces through the room

Boy I love Tennyson.  I've long wanted to read him here. I DO get him mixed up with  Macaulay, sometimes, tho,  author of Lays of Ancient Rome.

We need to do a game  here on our website where you try to remember what you had to memorize, without looking it up, it's hilarious, and see if somebody can piece the parts in. Without looking of course, anybody can look something up.  I LOVE all the things you've put here, isn't it fascinating what differences there are in what you learned to memorize and what pieces you learned!

Oh yes the Gettysburg  Address, we did too! And the Preamble to the Constitution.  I don't think they do any of that any more, do they?

Andrea on Penelope, I'm not thinking that it was her beauty that attracted the suitors,  but rather her  kingdom.  Waterhouse is a wonderfully graphic painter  and all his women are beautiful. Or most of them anyway.

Somebody mentioned "modern scholarship" on Homer and JoanR said, "I've got it, too, ginny."  She was referring to the new (The Classical Tradition, huge huge brand new  tome of how the classics have influenced us today it's as big as the new Oxford Latin dictionary and I think it weighs more,  and VOILA! Homer,  turns out to be one of the  huge entries, not surprisingly, the latest scholarship on his dates  we've all got him pretty much pegged:  "The most recent consensus puts him in the 8th century BCE."  And this is dated 2010, so I think we can accept this one as our Homer date?


Oh my word, if you can get your hands on a copy of this monster at the library, I'm pretty sure they are not going to let IT go home, you'll see the scholarship on Homer down thru the ages until today, it's absolutely fascinating, and no name or theory mentioned here is omitted, and a lot more added,  but it's FASCINATING to see how the perception of him has changed throughout time, how it changed, what that means, and what it's become. Traces the earliest known texts, that alone is fascinating.

It traces "the trajectory of the Iliad and the Odyssey through the Western tradition,"  too. HUGE article, my poor typing could not begin to attempt it.

Andrea it also says that a Homer portrait occurs in Homer's Hymn  to Apollo, "line 172, long identified as the bard's unique description of himself: 'a blind man from rocky Chios.'"

OH my word even to Poussin, the artist, starting with Herodotus, and ending with the moderns, I did not know that Ezra Pound's Cantos has Odysseus in it! I took an entire course in the "modern poets," and we did do Pound. (He was modern then, shows you how modern I am hahaha).   I am beginning to wonder if the old mind is going. ahhaaha Or maybe the old mind was on other things while "studying." I fear it's the latter. Garbage in, garbage out, right? hahahaa

Whooo, who KNEW this would be so exciting?

Everyone is welcome!!

ginny

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #379 on: February 06, 2011, 09:20:06 AM »
We start tomorrow with some background. This discussion now contains such valuable stuff  we don't want to lose it so we'll just keep on here.

We need background on Troy itself, the Trojan War, why  all the Greeks had assembled, what really caused the Trojan War, when the date of the Fall of Troy was, what an Epic poem is, that seems important, what kleos is, and how it pertains to this, if it does, and all kinds of things.

Please grab one of these brass rings or anything else YOU think is interesting or we need to think about as background and bring it here.

We have here a very fabulous group of intelligent people and obviously well read. We will be counting on you to bring up topics or questions you want to talk about, in other words hopefully YOU will supply some talking points,  just like you already have!

Bring 'em on!



Babi

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #380 on: February 06, 2011, 09:24:48 AM »
 Ah, but GINNY, that's what professional minstrels were all about.
They learned every word of long sagas from other minstrels. I
wonder if there was an apprenticeship for gifted young candidates?

Quote
When I write something, much is left unsaid. If I can relate it,
the story becomes much more interesting and adventurous.
How interesting, ALF. I am the opposite. If I write something down,
I can express myself more clearly and without distraction, and make
sue I haven't left something unsaid. Whenever I had something important to say, I would write a note and give it to the person I wanted to 'hear' it. Then we could go from there.

 Nothing like seeing Mom have a fit to impress something on your
mind, hmm, JOANK? I am constantly surprised at the things I can
recall from memorization in my early years. It's particularly
poignant when I realize I can't remember those memorable lines I
read yesterday!
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

Dana

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #381 on: February 06, 2011, 04:32:15 PM »
We used to have to memorize poetry and bits of Shakespeare in school , but the only long poem I have memorized recently is Tam O'Shanter, which is performed annually at Burn's suppers.  Well with my accent I was in high demand for the annual Burns night when we lived up north .  There was a Scottish hotel/restaurant that used to serve haggis all year round, not just in Jan. and put on a great Burns night, piper and all.  Anyway, Tam O'Shanter was pretty easy to memorize, it just rolls along. (If you miss bits, nobody understands anyway....!) Its pretty long, but nothing to compare with the Odyssey of-course.  Unfortunately here in S Carolina, they just say......Burns who.....???

BarbStAubrey

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #382 on: February 06, 2011, 05:51:40 PM »
Wow - the oldest known written copy of the Odyssey was only made available to the larger public in 2007 - it has been  housed since the 15th century in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, Italy and dates from the 10th century A.D., but the Byzantine goat skin parchment includes notes and comments that reach back as far as the 3rd century B.C., to the work of Homeric scholars in Alexandria, Egypt.

There was a smaller group of scholars who had access in 1901 to a photographed copy that did not show clearly the written notes and comments.

The entire story is here: http://www.research.uky.edu/odyssey/summer08/iliad.html
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

roshanarose

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #383 on: February 06, 2011, 09:44:33 PM »
Barb - a very interesting article.  Unfortunately, the link to see some of the script did not work for me.  Later when I get some more time I will have a fiddle and see if I can view it by some other means. 
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?  - Plato

Frybabe

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #384 on: February 06, 2011, 11:11:01 PM »
Wow is right! The article described the scanning techniques we read about when we did our discussion of Carol Goodman's The Night Villa. I would love to see the online copy, but that link is not working for me either.

http://digicenter2.furman.edu/luna/servlet/detail/furmanfdc~61~61~338726~148661:Ilias-cum-Scholiis,-Venetus-A,-Foli?embedded=true&widgetType=detail&widgetFormat=wiki

http://digicenter2.furman.edu/luna/servlet/detail/furmanfdc~61~61~338698~148659:Ilias-cum-Scholiis,-Venetus-A,-Foli?embedded=true&widgetType=detail&widgetFormat=forum

Even better, http://www.homermultitext.org/ has its "HMT Manuscript Browser" (see left hand column to click) where you can tell it what you want to look at.

Ginny, it looks like Furman has some involvment. Isn't that where you were teaching an evening Latin class a few years back?


BarbStAubrey

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #385 on: February 06, 2011, 11:41:29 PM »
Great link to manuscript - thanks Frybabe
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

JudeS

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #386 on: February 07, 2011, 01:22:25 AM »
Thanks Barb.  Your link worked for me and the enlargements did too.

Gumtree

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #387 on: February 07, 2011, 04:47:13 AM »
Barbara What a gem to uncover for us. Thanks and more thanks.
and to Frybabe as well for those links   It's mind blowing just what they can do with the technology today and how amazing that we had read about the techniques so recently when discussing The Night Villa.
Reading is an art and the reader an artist. Holbrook Jackson

Gumtree

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #388 on: February 07, 2011, 05:31:37 AM »
from Ginny:
Quote
We need background on Troy itself, the Trojan War, why  all the Greeks had assembled, what really caused the Trojan War, when the date of the Fall of Troy was, what an Epic poem is, that seems important, what kleos is, and how it pertains to this, if it does, and all kinds of things.


I'll have a go at the Epic poem:

The epic is a long narrative poem, almost always on a grand scale, and tells the story of the deeds of warriors and heroes. These heroic stories incorporate myth, legend, folktales and history. They are often of national significance in the sense that they embody the history and aspirations of a nation in a somewhat lofty or grandiose manner.

There are two kinds of epic poetry - the first is known as the oral epic and belongs to the the oral tradition - so it it originally composed orally and recited and then later are written down as is thought to be the case with 'Homer'

The second kind of epic  is known as the literary epic which is written down from the start. The Aeneid,  and Paradise Lost are examples of literary epics.



Here's a little of what M.H. Abrams says in his Glossary of Literary Terms

In its strict sense the term epic or heroic poem is applied to a work that meets at least the following criteria: it is a long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style, and centred on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or (in the case of John Milton's Paradise Lost) the human race.

There is a standard distinction between traditional and literary epics. Traditional epics were written versions of what had originally been oral poems about a tribal or national hero during a warlike age. Among these are the Iliad and Odyssey that the Greeks ascribed to Homer: the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf: the French Chanson de Roland and the Spanish Poema del Cid in the 12th century; and the 13th century German epic Nibelungenlied

Literary epics were composed by individual poetic craftsmen in deliberate imitation of the traditional form. Of this kind is Virgil's Aeneid which later served as the chief model for Milton's literary epic Paradise Lost


In his rather long essay on the epic Abrams goes on to say that epics usually share the following features derived from the traditional epics of Homer -

1. the hero is a figure of great national or even cosmic importance...
2. the setting of the poem is ample in scale and may be worldwide or even larger...
3. the action involves superhuman deeds in battle such as Achilles' feats in the Trojan War or a long, arduous, and dangerous journey intrepidly accomplished such as the wanderings of Odysseus....
4, In these great actions the gods and other supernatural beings take an interest or an active part...
5 An epic poem is a ceremonial performance, and is narrated in a ceremonial style which is deliberately distanced from ordinary speech and proportioned to the grandeur and formality of the heroic subject...

Reading is an art and the reader an artist. Holbrook Jackson

Gumtree

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #389 on: February 07, 2011, 05:38:15 AM »
And a link to the 10 greatest epics...

http://listverse.com/2008/07/06/top-10-greatest-epic-poem/

Oviously Iliad is rated No1 and Odyssey at 3 - Aeneid comes in at No 10.

You'll have to scroll right down to reach Iliad.
Reading is an art and the reader an artist. Holbrook Jackson

roshanarose

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #390 on: February 07, 2011, 08:19:53 AM »
Gumtree - Thanks for all the research you put into the questions Ginny asked.  By no means a short list.  I am going to give a go to Troy.  Just now all I can see is the face of Priam (Peter O'Toole), thanks to the wonders of cinematography, as he begs for the return of Hector's body.  I will need to read up on the Iliad as background, that is obvious.

I just wish I could get those images of the destructive fires near Perth out of my mind as well.  You are right - we may need to ask ourselves - "What did we do?"

I intend to look at the cause of the Trojan War.  To blame it on Helen and Paris reflects the Greeks' disdain of human folly.  More likely, it was about acquisition of territory.  Difficult, indeed, to interpret the reasons behind the Trojan War.  I have some serious reading ahead of me, but it will be worth it, as it encourages debate and didacticism.
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?  - Plato

Babi

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #391 on: February 07, 2011, 08:30:54 AM »
 DANA, I don't think it's the place, but the time. The younger
generation was taught a different group of poets, I suspect. So
many times, watching some quiz show, a question is asked that I
would have thought everyone knew, only to see a row of young,
puzzled faces.
   
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

ALF43

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #392 on: February 07, 2011, 12:13:23 PM »
I love the story of Helen-  The face that launched a thousand ships.  Check this out:  both mythology and cause.  I like this site.
timeless myths
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.  ~James Russell Lowell

Dana

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #393 on: February 07, 2011, 12:29:30 PM »
OK, kleos.  I read an interesting thing about the difference between kleos and time
kleos means reknown which Homer's heroes always strive for.  It means rememberance by future generations (through epic poetry actually, when you think about it)
time means honour or prestige, attained in the eyes of contemporaries.

Frybabe

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #394 on: February 07, 2011, 01:49:00 PM »
I feel a nap coming on, but before I do, I thought I'd chime in to say that I downloaded the Butcher and Lang version. Also, while exploring Project Gutenberg, I ran across Lang's Homer and His Age and downloaded that also.

Okay, my cat is pesting, I have dishes to do and an nap to take. You know what I will be doing don't you? Exploring the Kindle Store.  ;D

BarbStAubrey

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #395 on: February 07, 2011, 02:01:22 PM »
So far the research shows the Trojan war is possibly a myth - I have ordered the Michael Wood book of  his TV special looking for evidence of the Trojan War - Amazon does have the availability of watching the 4 night series for $1.99 each night - since the book was less then the  usual shipping fee when ordering from an outside vendor and it is going to be shipped by Amazon I went for the book.

This site really confused me telling me that the Trojan War was a poem composed during the middle ages to explain Chaucer's background for
Troilus and Criseyde.

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/troyint.htm

And here is a copy of the Roman prose written in the early C6th AD - whatever that date means - do  you think it means the 6th year or the 600th year? - anyhow there is talk of a forgery etc. etc. - interesting background as well as the prose entitled, Dares Phrygius

http://www.theoi.com/Text/DaresPhrygius.html

And this young man from Sweden has pulled together into one site many of the conflicting bits about Troy and how the Trojan war could fit a timeline.

http://home.swipnet.se/~w-63448/grekhist2.htm

And I love this site - I have seen many photos of the death mask of Agamemnon and  here it is with the story of how Schiliemann took the mask from the Mycenae dig as proof of the Trojan War.

http://www.historywiz.org/agamemnon.htm
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Dana

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #396 on: February 07, 2011, 02:31:49 PM »
in reading my post, time should have a thing like this ^ above the e, anyone know how to do that?

BarbStAubrey

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #397 on: February 07, 2011, 05:18:59 PM »
Why I am comfortable with the concept that what we read today as the Odyssey including the Trojan War was mythologized over the centuries is, because of the hours of research I did during the 1960s while I was still living in Kentucky on Traditional Folk Music and as a result what I learned about the oral tradition.

I had a friend who made me a lovely Mountain Dulcimer – they are narrow lap four string instruments - plucked or strummed using a feather quill rather than a large, often standing instrument, beaten as the European Dulcimer. Of course I could not leave well enough alone and so after learning to play some of the old music I became curious as to where, when, how etc.

One of the early and most revered collectors of early Ballads – was Francis James Child; I have a copy of his 10 books where he describes who he interviewed and what texts he found, including the many, many, many changes to each of the Ballads, some still sung, mostly in Southern Appalachia.

 Professor Child was born in 1825, graduated from Harvard in1846 having majored in Literature. This man is not a rural, friend-to-man, taking notes – he is a scholar - a two-year leave of absence from his duties as an English instructor at Harvard he studies at Berlin and Göttingen, where he earns his Doctor of Philosophy, after he obtained an advanced degree in Math from Columbia. His models and whom he had on his desk a copy of their faces were the Grimm Brothers.

His private passion for the study of poetry, ballads, folklore and music became central after he edited a series of British Poets. His research published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads included every obtainable version of existent and extinct Ballad tracing back to early versions in Italy, Greece, northern Europe and northern Africa. He includes in his manuscript a full discussion of related songs or stories in the ‘popular’ literature of all nations.

Some of his books are on-line - however, after comparing what Google is showing, whole swaths of text are missing and page numbers do not match the information on the same page number of these books.

Back to Child - Securing trustworthy texts was paramount. He achieved a coup with many attempts before gaining permission to research and publish the folio of Percy MS. an earlier researched account of some Ballads. He formed a library at the University on Folk-lore amassing 7000 volumes  

A popular ballad that most of us know today is Barbara Allan – Bonny Barbara Allan has 92 versions, here is one version written as an anonymous poem and another on Bartleby as an anonymous poem and Percy’s earlier researched version as the Cruelty of Barbara Allan – the ballad is referred to by Samuel Pepys in 1666.

I can easily get lost in all of this but the reason I want to share is; Professor Child’s research led him to the conclusion that, “long- repeated tradition have always departed considerably from their original - Oral recollection was a possession left to the uneducated - Once in the hands of the professional, the ballad singer, minstrel whose sole object is to please the audience before him, will alter, omit, or add, without scruple, and nothing is more common than to find different ballads blended together.”

“…last of all comes the modern editor, whose so-called improvements are more to be feared than the mischance’s of a thousand years. A very old ballad will often be found to have resolved itself in the course of what may be called its propagation into several distinct shapes, and each of these again to have received distinct modifications”

He goes on to extol how Ballads and oral poetry were at times lengthened or shortened or compounded with stanzas from several sources or, made unfaithful as they tried to fit the story into the Northern European’s view of Heroes or adjusted to accommodate the European, English, Scottish view of the Moore’s [Muslims] e.g. the ‘brown girl’ is most often a Moore. He does suggest the crusades brought together an interchange of stories and songs.

But folks - here is the real kicker – ”Ballads are at their best when the transmission has been purely through the mouths of unlearned people, when they have come down by domestic tradition, through knitters and weavers.”

And what is Penelope – A weaver! – no wonder there are some scholars who think the Odyssey was a story told by a woman rather than Homer, the man, the educated writer.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

BarbStAubrey

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #398 on: February 07, 2011, 05:33:27 PM »
From the -  An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper

Weaving The Primordial Weaver, the Great Weaver, is the creator of the universe, weaving on the loom of life the fate of all. All goddesses of Fate and Time are spinners and weavers. The weaver is also the Cosmic Spider and the tread of the Great Weaver is the umbilical cord which attaches man to his creator and his own destiny and by which he is woven into the world pattern and fabric.

Aha, so within this story could be some symbolic meaning that ties Penelope to the goddess of fate and time, which fits her part in the story in addition to her being a weaver.

The warp is the vertical plane, joining all degrees of existence; the qualitative essence of things; the immutable and unchanging; the forma; the masculine, active and direct; the light of the sun.

The weft or woof, is the horizontal; causal and temporal; the variable and contingent; the human state; the material , feminine and passive; the reflected light of the moon.

The warp and weft in relationship form a cross at each thread, the crossing symbolizing the union of opposites, the male and female principles united. Alternating Colours depict the dualistic but complementary forces of the universe. Night and Day are two sisters weaving the web of Time, the spatio-temporal fabric of cosmological creation.

Graeco-Roman:Athene/Minerva is a weaver of the world, as is Harmonia. The Fates, the Moirai, weave the web of destiny.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

JudeS

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #399 on: February 07, 2011, 06:49:25 PM »
Barb
Thank you for mentioning folk ballads.  As a young person (when was that?) I was enamored of folk ballads. I recently heard Barbara Allen sung on PBS by my favorite, Richard Dyer-Bennett, and ordered two of his CDs.
You can hear his version by going to his name and Barbara Allen.  But perhaps you are aquainted with this man who devoted his life to keeping folk music alive?

I can see the relationship between Ballads and our much more involved Odyssey and even the brothers Grimm.  It is the fact that they all want to help us remember stories from the past.  Especially today, when new inventions seem to evolve on a weekly basis it is even more important to remember the roots on which our culture is based. Even when, or especially when cruel and frightening things occurred and brave people stood up for what is good  and true.