Academic literature on the topic 'African Epic poetry'
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Journal articles on the topic "African Epic poetry"
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Reichl, Karl. "L’épopée orale turque d’Asie centrale. Inspiration religieuse et interprétation séculière." Études mongoles et sibériennes 32, no. 1 (2001): 7–162. http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/emong.2001.1141.
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The first chapter provides a short introduction to the Turkic oral epic of Central Asia (Bref aperçu de l’épopée orale turque d’Asie centrale). Among the various traditions of Turkic oral poetry, this and the following chapters focus on the epics of what is termed the « central traditions », i.e. the oral poetry of the Uzbeks, Uighurs, Kazakhs, Karakalpaks and Kirghiz. In these traditions different types of singers can be distinguished: baxši, aqïn, žïraw, manasči and others; these singers are in general professionals who have acquired their art and their repertoire in the course of a more or less formal training with one or more master singers. Although there are many similarities between these traditions, there is also a fair amount of variety as to the form, the genre and the manner of performance of the epics. Epics can be in verse, they can be in a mixture of verse and prose; the verse can be in octosyllabic lines, often alliterating, or in lines of eleven/twelve syllables, often rhyming; in the singers’ repertoire there are both heroic epics and lyrical love romances (dastans); the singer might perform the epic in chanting without the accompaniment of an instrument (as the Kirghiz manasči), he might accompany himself on a plucked or bowed instrument, and he might be further accompanied by another musician or even a small ensemble. In the second chapter the influence of Islam on the Central Asian oral epics is discussed (Le héros et le saint: l’influence islamique sur l’épopée turque d’Asie centrale). Islamic influence is found in epics and oral narratives of an overtly religious persuasion as well as in secular heroic epics and romances. The former (called džañnāma in Uzbek) celebrate the deeds of the Prophet and his followers and successors, their wars against the infidels and their achievements as Moslem leaders. These narratives have also influenced non-religious epics such as for instance the Uzbek dastan of Yusuf and Ahmad. An important role in these and other epics is given to various helper saints, in particular to ‘Alī, the Forty Saints, the Twelve Imams, and various pirs and holy men. In discussing the heterodoxy in the invocations of these saints it is argued that the most important source of religious inspiration in the epics must be sought in the popular Islam of Central Asia, which incorporates many pre-Islamic elements. In the third chapter the pre-Islamic strata as found in the Central Asian epics are further examined (Le héros et le chamane: les strates archaïques de l’épopée turque). It is shown that there is an intimate connection between epic singer and shaman. This emerges from the use of terms like baxši for both the bard and the shaman, from the symbolism of the singer’s instrument, comparable to that of the shaman, and from initiation visions and sicknesses found both among bards and shamans. A closer view at two Altaian epics (Kögütey and Altay Buučay) shows that in this tradition the world of the pre-Islamic Turks is well preserved, but similar archaic strata can also be detected in the epics of the central traditions, among them the transformations of the hero and his horse, heroic adventures in the underworld, various mythological figures and the reanimation of the hero. The fourth chapter is concerned with questions of interpretation (“Sens” et “conjointure”: problèmes d’interprétation). With reference to the distinction between sens and conjointure as made in the introduction to Chrétien de Troyes’ Érec et Énide it is argued that an oral epic such as Qoblan or Manas should not only be interpreted on the textual level but must also be interpreted from a pragmatic point of view. While a close reading of the epic as a work of verbal art (plot, characterisation, style, narrative structure and narrative technique) is indispensable for its analysis, a fuller understanding presupposes a knowledge of the function an epic performance has in an oral (or partially oral) society and the place an epic occupies in its value system. Heroic epics like Qoblan or Manas are felt to be historical (by singer and audience) and they play an important role in identifying the roots of an ethnic group and in re-inforcing its identity. While these heroic epics are believed to reflect historical truth, they have nevertheless undergone considerable transformation in the course of their transmission, thus conforming in the plot and motif structure to mythic patterns as described by M. Eliade. The final chapter examines the actual performance of Central Asian oral epics (La voix vive: aspects de la performance). With the help of the terminological apparatus of the ethnography of communication the various constituents of an epic peformance are described and the event character of oral epic poetry is underlined. By the same token, the comments on the musical aspects of performance in the first chapter are elaborated, with examples from the various central traditions of Turkic epic poetry. While the recitation of epic contains many dramatic elements, the performance of Turkic epic poetry does not cross the borderline to drama as in some African or Asian traditions. It is stressed in concluding that as an oral art the performance aspects of Turkic epic are of the utmost importance for its full appreciation.
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Binnie, Chelsea R. "Language as Symbolic Action: A Burkean Analysis of Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal." Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 23, no. 1 (August 5, 2015): 59–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/jffp.2015.681.
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This paper sets out to put Kenneth Burke’s thought on language as representative of symbolic action into conversation with Aimé Césaire’s epic poem, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. The paper is divided into three main sections that set the stage for Burke and Césaire’s work to converse. The first section lays out an overview of Kenneth Burke’s thought on language paying particular attention to his definition of man, understanding of symbolism and symbolic action, and thoughts on poetry and poetics. The second section provides a working history of African philosophy, the Négritude movement, Césaire as a philosopher, politician, and poet, and provides an overview of main themes and intentions present in Cahier. The third section works to put Burke and Césaire into conversation by using Burke’s understanding of symbolic action and his notion of order and identification to examine key passages from Césaire’s Cahier. The paper works to present an informative and textured engagement between the work of Kenneth Burke and Aimé Césaire.
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Kaplan, Jeff. "Dancing with the Dragon: Orality and (body) language(s) in a live performance of Beowulf." Nordic Theatre Studies 28, no. 2 (February 21, 2017): 36. http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/nts.v28i2.25534.
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This paper theorizes on the function of language and embodiment in northern European storytelling through a self-reflex analysis of the author’s experience performing Beowulf in its original dialect, as a solo, while dancing. Beowulf is Min Nama involved memorizing approximately 80 minutes of the medieval Beowulf epic in its original West Anglo-Saxon dialect (lines 2200—2766, Beowulf’s encounter with the dragon). Grappling with bardic verse for recitation in experimental live performance uncovered new facets in ancient performance texts. Working with the Beowulf poem for stage revealed the mnemonic quality of alliteration, the pervasive use of rhythmic patterns to signal shifts in ideas (a strategy similar to West African dance), and perhaps “deep rhythms” present in medieval northern Europe. As impetus for choreography, the verse contains rhythmic information, corresponding to musical/dance concepts such as pick-ups, counterpoint, and syncopation. Beowulf is Min Nama also required a theory of dialect for Old English, which the author based on modern Swedish, medieval Frisian, and modern Frisian — especially the voices of Frisian poets Tsjêbbe Hettinga and Albertina Soepboer. The project thus provides an entrée into the nexus between ancient and modern storytelling, and concludes that contemporary Frisian poetry represents a direct inheritor to ancient solo performance forms.
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Jones, Bridget. "Two Plays by Ina Césaire: Mémoires d'Isles and L'enfant des Passages." Theatre Research International 15, no. 3 (1990): 223–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s030788330000969x.
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In any consideration of theatre in the French Caribbean, the name Césaire is bound to be mentioned. Aimé Césaire's La Tragédie du roi Christophe (1963) is the most widely- known play in French by a black dramatist, and is now even in the repertoire of the Comédie-Française, and his plays figure widely in checklists of ‘African’ theatre. A revealing contrast can be made between the epic dramas of Aimé Césaire, written for an international audience, especially the newly independent black nations of the 1960s, and the work of his daughter, Ina. He tackles from the standpoint of Négritude major themes of historical drama: the nature of sovereignty, the forging of nationhood; he storms the heights of tragic poetry in French. She is attentive, not to the lonely hero constructing his Haitian Citadel of rock, but to the Creole voices of the grassroots. She brings to the stage the lives of ordinary women, the lore and legends that sustained the slaves and their descendants. Her achievement should of course be assessed away from her father's shadow, but the ‘divergent orientation of the two generations’ also suggests the greater confidence today in the role of Creole language and oral literature, and in a serious theatre within Martinique.
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Duarte, Miguel De Ávila. "A obra de…: cânone, apropriação, diáspora e a questão do nome na Odisseia vácuo, de Renato Negrão / The Work By...: Canon, Appropriation, Diaspora and the Question of Naming in Renato Negrão’s Odisseia Vácuo." O Eixo e a Roda: Revista de Literatura Brasileira 30, no. 2 (June 30, 2021): 26. http://dx.doi.org/10.17851/2358-9787.30.2.26-53.
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Resumo: Tomando como ponto de partida o poema-livro Odisseia Vácuo do performer, artista plástico e poeta contemporâneo Renato Negrão, o presente artigo pretende discutir questões relativas ao cânone artístico-literário, as possíveis relações entre a apropriação como procedimento de escrita e de criação e a apropriação cultural no contexto da diáspora africana e, por fim, como tais questões interferem nos próprios atos de nomeação. Para tanto, são construídos uma série de diálogos: com a epopeia fundadora de Homero; com o modernismo antropofágico; com a literatura de apropriação contemporânea estadunidense; com as propostas de Wölfflin e Valéry de histórias da arte e da literatura “sem nomes”; com o enredamento do primitivismo vanguardista e da invenção da colagem no primeiro cubismo; com a crítica contemporânea da apropriação cultural. Palavras-chave: escrita de apropriação; apropriação cultural; poesia brasileira contemporânea.Abstract: Taking as a starting point the poem-book Odisseia Vácuo (Vacuum Odissey), by the performer, visual artist and contemporary poet Renato Negrão, this article intends to discuss questions related to the literary-artistic canon, the possible relations between appropriation as writing and creation process and cultural appropriation in the context of African diaspora, and lastly, the way in which those questions interfere in the very acts of naming. For this purpose, I build dialogues with Homer’s founding epic, with Brazilian anthropophagic modernism, with American contemporary appropriative literature, also with Wölfflin’s and Valéry’s proposals of “nameless” art and literary histories and with the intertwining of avant-gardist primitivism and collage creation in early Cubism, as well as the contemporary criticism of cultural appropriation.Keywords: appropriative writing; cultural appropriation; Brazilian contemporary poetry.
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Krog, Antjie. "Some new perspectives on the Soweto uprising: H. M. L. Lentsoane’s poem “Black Wednesday” (“Laboraro le lesoleso”)." Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 59, no. 3 (September 18, 2022): 113–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i3.12197.
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The epic poem about the Soweto uprising, “Laboraro le lesoleso”, written in Sepedi (Northern Sotho) by H. M. L. Lentsoane has only recently been translated into English by Biki Lepota as “Black Wednesday” and published in the anthology Stitching a whirlwind (2018). In this article I suggest that, by discarding English, some crucial shifts from the bulk of protest poetry written in English must have taken place. Lentsoane wants to speak directly to fellow mother tongue speakers and not a national or broader African or international ear. It becomes clear that, by deploying various strategies based in orality, the poet manages to contribute new material and new approaches to creative texts of black protest during the apartheid years, e.g., a release from specific apartheid content about their oppression that every indigenous speaker had common knowledge of; an adherence to orality in terms of presentation, vocabulary, and form; and a linkage with the ancestors and a release from trying to reach the conscience of whites. This manifests through the poem’s particular perspective and emphasis as narrative, as telling, combined with vivid visceral poetic imagery of the event. The poem evocatively captures the unfolding of incidents while at the same time shifting the focus to an ancestral demand to stand up for righteousness in a universal field of justice.
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Austen, Ralph A., and Jan Jansen. "History, Oral Transmission and Structure in Ibn Khaldun's Chronology of Mali Rulers." History in Africa 23 (January 1996): 17–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3171932.
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The early history of the Mali empire is known to us from two sources: Mande oral literature (epic and praise poetry) recorded over the last 100 years and Ibn Khaldun's Kitab al-ʿIbar (Book of Exemplars) written in the late four-teenth century. The list of Mali kings presented by Ibn Khaldun is precise, detailed, entirely plausible, and recorded not too long after the events it purports to describe. For scholars attempting to reconstruct an account of this West African empire, no other medieval Arab chronicler or, indeed, any Mande oral traditions provide comparable information for its formative period.There is, however, reason to question the historical reliability of Ibn Khaldun's account precisely on the grounds of its narrative richness. When read in relation to the general model of political development and decay which Ibn Khaldun worked out in the more theoretical Muqaddimah (“Prolegomena”) of Kitab al-ʿIbar, as well as the larger context of the work in which it is imbedded, the Mali kinglist takes on some characteristics of an instructive illustration rather than a fully empirical account of the past. Indeed Ibn Khaldun himself, in his contemplation of the basis for asabiyah (group solidarity) among bedouin peoples, cautions us against literal interpretation of genealogical accounts:For a pedigree is something imaginary and devoid of reality. Its usefulness consists only in the resulting connection and close contact.Ibn Khaldun is certainly not as ideologically engaged in constructing the royal genealogy of Mali as a bedouin spokesman might be in reciting the list of his own ancestors. Nevertheless, this great Arab thinker has something at stake in this story which needs to be given serious attention by all scholars concerned with either the events of the medieval western Sudan or the process by which they have been incorporated into more recent narratives.
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Kotlerman, Ber. "SOUTH AFRICAN WRITINGS OF MORRIS HOFFMAN: BETWEEN YIDDISH AND HEBREW." Journal for Semitics 23, no. 2 (November 21, 2017): 569–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/1013-8471/3506.
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Morris Hoffman (1885-1940), who was born in a Latvian township and emigrated to South Africa in 1906, was a brilliant example of the Eastern European Jewish maskil writing with equal fluency in both Yiddish and Hebrew. He published poetry and prose in South African Yiddish and Hebrew periodicals. His long Yiddish poem under the title Afrikaner epopeyen (African epics) was considered to be the best Yiddish poetry written in South Africa. In 1939, a selection of his Yiddish stories under the title Unter afrikaner zun (Under the African sun) was prepared for publishing in De Aar, Cape Province (which is now in the Northern Cape Province), and published after his death in 1951 in Johannesburg. The Hebrew version of the stories was published in Israel in 1949 under the title Taḥat shmey afrikah (Under the skies of Africa). The article deals with certain differences between the versions using the example of one of the bilingual stories. The comparison between the versions illuminates Hoffman’s reflections on the relations between Jews and Afrikaners with a rather new perspective which underlines their religious background
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Πασχάλης, Μιχαήλ. "Η τεθλασμένη πρόσληψη της αρχαιοελληνικής ποίησης και το ποίημα «Πάνω σ’ ένα ξένο στίχο» του Γ. Σεφέρη." Σύγκριση 30 (October 30, 2021): 24–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.12681/comparison.25293.
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Refracted Modern Greek reception of Ancient Greek poetry and George Seferis’ poem ‘Upon a Line of Foreign Verse’The term ‘refracted’ describes instances where Modern Greek reception of Ancient Greek poetry is mediated through one or more intertexts, like Italian-Latin or French-Latin. After treating briefly Dionysios Solomos’ poem ‘The Shade of Homer’ (1821-1822) the paper focuses on George Seferis’ ‘Reflections on a Foreign Line of Verse’ (1931). Each of the two poets claims the Homeric heritage for himself as a Greek poet through a poem that constitutes a refracted reception of Homer. The former opens a chain of three literary windows one after the other: first the appearance of Homer to the character Ennius in Petrarch’s Latin epic Africa; next Cicero’s ‘Dream of Scipio’; and finally the appearance of Homer to the Latin poet Ennius, who in the proem of his Annals represented himself as a reincarnation of the Greek poet. In responding to Solomos about a hundred years later Seferis treated the subject of Homeric Odysseus’ sea wanderings by commenting on ‘Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage’, the opening line of Joachim du Bellay’s famous sonnet XXXI of the collection Les regrets (1558). Most probably Bellay reached back to Homeric Odysseus through a passage of Ovid’s collection of elegies written in exile and entitled Ex ponto. Ovid conceived his banishment from Rome to a region of modern Romania as the analogue of Odysseus’ wanderings away from Ithaca and became a source of inspiration for Du Bellay and other poets.
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Chigbu, Chigbu Andrew, Ike Doris Ann Chinweudo, and Chibuzo Martin Onunkwo. "Philosophical Quest and Growing up Motif in Ambiguous Adventure by Chiekh Hamidou Kane and Dead Men’s Path by Chinua Achebe." International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature 7, no. 7 (December 1, 2018): 117. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.7p.117.
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In literary tradition, some of the innovative and formative trends that characterise production and consumption of mimetic art in most third World countries of Africa focuses extensively on formation of the personal agents- specifically, the protagonist.This phenomenon has characterised most of the 21st Century texts and classed them under the literary sub-genre known as Bildungsroman. Bildungsroman is viewed primarily as a nineteenth-century literary phenomenon and the term is used so loosely and broadly that any novel – and even an epic poem like Iliad and Odyssey by Homer – that include elements of coming-of-age narrative might be labelled as a “Bildungsroman”.It is true that the type of novel commonly referred to as the “Bildungsroman” flourished in British literature in Victorian age, and was extremely popular among the realist writers. This accounts for early British publication of Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and others who employed the pattern, for their novels of character formation into the fictional model of the Bildungsroman literature; a genre that consists of the literary treatment of the process of development and formation of a character in relation to society. As it were, the variety of Philosophical Bildungsroman is an advance variant of Bildung that offers the necessary extension and complexity to the phenomenological literary concern of Martin Heidegger, who posits the philosophical experience of the individual as the “Dasine”. Dasien is Heidegger’s philosophical concept which means “being there”. As a concept in existential philosophy, Heidegger employs it to explain the very concept of personhood. The philosophical quest in this case is attained through the process of “unconcealment” meaning “the disclosure of truth”. Meanwhile, in rethinking Ambiguous Adventure and Dead Men’s Path as typical Bildung texts, the real unconcealment will be extricated from the “thingly character or the constitutive elements” (Poetry Language Thought, 54)of the protagonists, so as to determine, and have a clear vision and beauty of a (realist) representation of these agent (s) maturing in relation to the modern demands of society woven in universalistic model of growth and development via social background. Thus, ‘‘beauty becomes one way in which truth occurs as unconcealdness’’ (The Origin of the Work of Art, 55). This is because in philosophical Bildung, the attainment of successful maturation remains the object of our inquiry and concern, and this is framed within a large-scale diachronic model of human existence; who engages in the act of “thinking a thought, this kind of thinking concerns the relation of being to man” (Letter to Humanism, 1) and remains the prototype of a true Bildung character and texts understudy, namely: Ambiguous Adventure and The Dead Men’s Path. Therefore, this paper opens up a new pattern of thought by investigating philosophical quest and growing up motif in this two novels using Heidegger’s notion of dasien and unconcealment.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "African Epic poetry"
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Jansen, Jan. "De draaiende put een studie naar de relatie tussen het Sunjata-epos en de samenleving in de Haut-Niger (Mali) /." Leiden : Onderzoekschool CNWS, 1995. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/34727305.html.
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Galligan, Francesca. "Epic poetry of the Trecento : Dante's Comedy, Boccaccio's Teseida, and Petrarch's Africa." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2004. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3f60fef5-c77a-4ba1-afd1-9460f650f57b.
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This thesis locates Dante's Divine Comedy (1307-1318), Boccaccio's Teseida (c.1340-1), and Petrarch's Africa (c. 1338-9) within a developing tradition of epic poetry. The works are usually treated separately, and are classed as epic to a varying degree, but I show that a reading of them as epic in light of each other enhances understanding of each, and illuminates more generally a history of the epic genre. I explore the extent to which the authors considered epic to be a distinct literary form, and counteract the notion that there was no conception of the genre in the Middle Ages. I show that similar responses to key areas of epic writing underlie surface differences between the poems. Where critics have tended to explore classical influences, I emphasise the importance of medieval epic texts for the formation of all three poems. I argue that in important respects the Comedy constitutes a new epic model for Petrarch and Boccaccio. I focus on Dante's development of the classical warrior hero into the contemporary Christian poet-hero, exploring his development of themes from 12th century Latin epics including the Anticlaudianus and Alexandreis. I suggest that the resulting emphasis on the theme of poetry is echoed in the Teseida and Africa. I argue that the Teseida revolves around issues of genre that are played out through the poems' gods and heroes, and that ultimately it resolves itself as a Dantean epic, through the hero Arcita. I show that the focus on poetry in the Africa, achieved both through the inclusion of poets as characters (including Petrarch himself) and by the explicit discussion of poetry within Book IX in particular, and the location of a Christian god at the heart of this historical narrative, reflect a treatment of key issues that bears similarity to that of Dante in the Comedy.
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Harawa, Albert Lloyds Mtungambera. "Modulations of hybridity in Abodunrin's It would take time:." Diss., 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/19997.
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In this study I identify and argue for hybridity as a common feature in four postcolonial texts, namely Femi Abodunrin’s It Would Take Time, Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s Masks, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Matigari and Mvona’s An Arrow from Maraka. The study advances that when two or more cultures encounter one another hybridity affects the new emergent culture socially, linguistically, historically and politically. Employing Homi Bhabha’s interrelated terms, notably ambivalence, mimicry, liminality, the third space, in-between space and interstitial space —all of which gesture towards the concept of hybridity, the study explains the emergence of corresponding and equally complex identities in the postcolonial world. With a specific reference to Africa, the study establishes that postcolonial discourse is not as transparent because hybridity does not necessarily mean coming up with completely new aspects of Africa but it implies coming up with mixed cultures since different histories and cultures affect each other in order to come up with a new brand. As such the study concludes that hybridity is opposed to cultural purity and the assumed status quo. In this dissertation I therefore argue for hybridity as a solution to identity crisis because the new personality displays different traces which, in the words of Homi Bhabha, are called “transcultural identities” and such a plurality of identities leads to the production of hybrid personalities and cultures. Such transcultural forms within the contact zone, which Bhabha calls the “in-between space,” carry the burden and meaning of the new cultures that emerge in the postcolonial condition.English Studies
M.A. (English)
Books on the topic "African Epic poetry"
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Jansen, Jan. De draaiende put: Een studie naar de relatie tussen het Sunjata-epos en de samenleving in de Haut-Niger (Mali). Leiden: Onderzoekschool CNWS, 1995.
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Bird, Charles S. (Charles Stephen), 1935-, Koita Mamadou, Soumaoro Bourama, and Kamara Seyidu, eds. African oral epic poetry: Praising the deeds of a mythic hero. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2012.
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Mulokozi, M. M. The nanga epos of the Bahaya: A case study in African epic characteristics. Dar es Salaam: [s.n.], 1987.
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C, Conrad David, and British Academy, eds. A state of intrigue: The epic of Bamana Segu according to Tayiru Banbera. Oxford: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 1990.
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Banbera, Tayiru. Segu maana bamanankan na: Bamana language edition of the epic of Segu. Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison, African Studies Program, 1998.
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1924-, Innes Gordon, Sidibe B. K, Durán Lucy, Furniss Graham, Suso Bamba, and Kanute Banna, eds. Sunjata: Gambian versions of the Mande epic by Bamba Suso and Banna Kanute. London: Penguin, 1999.
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Sirah, Carlos. The high alive: An epic Hoodoo diptych. Olympia, Washington: The 3rd Thing, 2020.
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Pointer, Fritz H. A translation into English of the epic of Kambili (an African mythic hero): And an explanation of the relation of oral tradition to written text. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2012.
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Pointer, Fritz H. A translation into English of the epic of Kambili (an African mythic hero): And an explanation of the relation of oral tradition to written text. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2012.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "African Epic poetry"
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Hester, Nathalie. "3 Amerigo Vespucci and African Amazons: Reinventing Italian Exploration in Baroque Epic Poetry." In Gendering the Renaissance, 69–90. University of Delaware Press, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.36019/9781644533079-005.
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Finnegan, Ruth. "Oral Poetry." In Folklore, Cultural Performances, And Popular Entertainments, 119–27. Oxford University PressNew York, NY, 1992. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195069198.003.0015.
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Abstract Poems that are unwritten either because the cultures in which they occur are partially or wholly nonliterate (like the traditional native cultures of Africa, Australia, Oceania, and America) or because oral forms are cherished despite a population’s overall literacy. The exact scope of the term is disputed, but it usually also includes poetry originally composed and per formed orally that has reached us through written transmission, like some of the early epics. Some scholars also include poetry transmitted or performed by nonwritten media, such as broadcast performances or modern pop lyrics. Oral poetry takes many forms. Oral epics are widely found, particularly in Eurasia, from historic cases like the early Babylonian, Greek, and Indian epics to the later Finnish Kalevala and contemporary or near contemporary Asian examples like Kirghiz or Mongol narrative poetry or the modern Indian Pa buji epic. Ballads-shorter or more lyrical narratives-are particularly associated with Euro-American tradition but are found in arguably comparable form in various areas of the world.
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Van der Laan, Sarah. "Speaking with Homer." In The Choice of Odysseus, 37–63. Oxford University PressOxford, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198778295.003.0002.
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Abstract Chapter 1 explores early humanist efforts to establish Homer as the head of a Renaissance epic tradition. Readings of Francesco Petrarch’s Africa and Trionfi and Angelo Poliziano’s Silvae reveal that from its earliest days, Renaissance epic establishes speech with Homer as the ultimate proof of a poet’s place in the epic tradition. Throughout Petrarch’s epic output, metaphors of deafness and muteness to Homer and his heroes contrast with the language of hearing and speech that describes Petrarch’s relationships with Latin poets and reveal the limitations of the humanist poetics of imitation that Petrarch himself did so much to develop. Petrarch’s strategies to overcome Homeric silence resonate through two centuries of Italian and neo-Latin poetry. They lay out the challenge of poetic reckonings with Homer and the Homeric tradition taken up by later poets—most spectacularly Angelo Poliziano. In his presentation of Odysseus as a hero of experience and his choice of an Odyssean ending, Poliziano anticipates developments in the later epic tradition. As Petrarch’s humanism gives way to Poliziano’s, Homer begins to emerge from Virgil’s shadow as a predecessor who cannot be subsumed in ‘the classical epic tradition’ but must be heard and reckoned with independently. These poems distinguish Homer from Virgil, looking to him for alternatives to Virgil’s authority, exemplarity, and ethics. They turn the humanist problem of recovering original sources into a poetic problem of performing authority. For Renaissance epic poets, the immense challenge of creating an authorizing conversation with Homer becomes itself a heroic enterprise.
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Galligan, Francesca. "Poets and Heroes in Petrarch’s Africa: Classical and Medieval Sources." In Petrarch in Britain. British Academy, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.003.0006.
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This chapter examines the classical and medieval sources of Petrarch in writing his epic poem Africa. It brings to the fore the role of Dante's epic in Petrarch's poem and suggests that the prominence of poet characters such as Ennius and Homer, and the link between poet and hero parallel the role of poet characters such as Virgil and Statius in the Divina Commedia. It also provides evidence that Africa was influenced by Virgil's work.
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Taplin, Oliver. "Exploratory Charts." In Homeric Soundings, 1–45. Oxford University PressOxford, 1992. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198140276.003.0001.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Walcott’s epic has, I find, a deeper affinity with Homer-in scope and humanity as well as in its many reverberations-than anything in English poetry since Tennyson-deeper and perhaps greater even than David Jones’s In Parenthesis. One crucial affinity is the ever-presence of the sea, its traversability and its danger. Walcott’s Aegean is the Caribbean that surrounds St Lucia and the other islands, crossed by slaves from Africa, colonizers from Britain, tourists from America, as well as by exiles and homecomers: Of all the metaphors that have been applied to Homer over the centuries-the sun, a great edifice, a deep-browed king, a copious nursery-the most widespread has been the sea.2 Poet and poem become fused in this image.
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Withun, David. "American Archias." In Co-workers in the Kingdom of Culture, 43–77. Oxford University Press, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579589.003.0003.
Full textAbstract:
Among the numerous classical influences in the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, the influence of Cicero’s Pro Archia Poeta on The Souls of Black Folk is one of the most important. This chapter examines the influence of Cicero’s ancient defense of the poet Archias on the structure of Du Bois’s argument in defense of full civil rights and access to liberal education for African Americans. This chapter also discusses the classical inflection of other works by Du Bois, examining the classical allusions and foundations in his works of history, sociology, biography, and fiction. Particular attention is given to Du Bois’s attempts in each of these fields to write the story of African American history in the form of an epic, culminating with his final series of novels, The Black Flame Trilogy.
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"Robert Southey (1774-1843)." In A Century of Sonnets, edited by Paula R. Feldman and Daniel Robinson, 94–96. Oxford University PressNew York, NY, 1999. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195115611.003.0027.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract During his lifetime, Robert Southey was known as one of the “Lake Poets,” which included William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. While a student at Oxford, he planned (but never realized) with Coleridge a utopian community, which Coleridge called “Pantisocracy,” to be established in Pennsylvania, and wrote Joan of Arc, an epic poem celebrating democracy and liberty. His sequence, Poems on the Slave Trade, expresses Southey’s passionate objection to England’s involvement in the capture and selling into servitude of native Africans. In 1813, he was appointed poet laureate.
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Parrish, Timothy. "Ralph Ellison’s Three Days." In The New Territory. University Press of Mississippi, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496806796.003.0009.
Full textAbstract:
Timothy Parrish’s “Ralph Ellison’s Three Days: The Aesthetics of Political Change” argues that in Three Days, Ellison transcends the novel form, becoming an epic poet through prose that resembled fiction, history, and myth simultaneously, creating what he calls Ellison’s Book of America. As a true modernist novelist, kin to Louis Armstrong and James Joyce, Ellison understood that the modern novel is never truly finished; like Robert Musil’s A Man Without Qualities, whose aesthetic premise depended on its not being finished, Three Days both rejects and creates history. Parrish terms Ellison “the great modernist redactor of African American experience.” In ways that Ellison could not recognize, he did not finish the second novel because it could not be finished. Like the Civil Rights movement from which it emerged, Three Days is an incomplete project, unable to end “until the story of America and its struggle to realize its Edenic promises ends too.”
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Figueiredo, João R. "Luís de Camões’s The Lusiads and the paradoxes of expansion." In Local antiquities, local identities, 190–208. Manchester University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9781526117045.003.0010.
Full textAbstract:
Following a well-known trend in early-modern Europe, the Portuguese poet Luís de Camões widely refashioned the myth of Lusus, an obscure son of Bacchus mentioned by Pliny, with two main purposes: to explain the etymology of the words "Lusitania" (the former Roman province used as a synonym for Portugal) and "Lusíadas" (the descendants of Lusus and the title of epic poem, published in 1572); and to set in motion the narrative framework of Vasco da Gama's voyage to India, insofar Bacchus, the mythical ancestor of the Portuguese and former conqueror of India, fiercely opposes the king of Portugal's expansionist plans. To address such questions, Camões vies with Ovid and Pliny, two basic tenets of the classical revival in early-modern Europe, in creating a bigger-than-life metamorphosis: the Giant Adamastor, turned into stone at the nethermost tip of Africa, whose autobiography is the etiology of the Cape of Good Hope.