Shut, shut the door, good John! (fatigued, I said), Tie up the knocker, say I’m sick, I’m dead. The Dog Star rages! nay ’tis past a doubt All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out: Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land. –Alexander Pope, “Epistle to [...]
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Dante’s Cosmology and Idea
Dante’s age was highly legalistic. People wanted exact definitions of their status in society and of their expected behavior. They considered most of their relations to others a rigid contract, with reciprocal obligations. A great school of law had been recently established in Bologna, to revive the Latin Corpus Juris, or civil law. Vigorously developing [...]
Character v. Fate
When Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex, the cultural and intellectual zeitgeist of Athens was undergoing a paradigm shift, from the privileging of one cosmological view to that of another. The gods were dying and being replaced by Socrates and his ilk: those who wanted to eschew the days of superstition and prophecy in favor of a more secure faith in the educated man’s ability to figure the universe and his place in it out for himself without depending on the mystical prognostications from spastic oracles.
The Lessons of Hell
At his lowest point as a man and hero, Odysseus looks inward — away from the living — in order to see just how he fits into the world of the living, how he got to the position he’s in, and what he can to extricate himself from hell.
Poor, Confusing Elpenor
Near the end of his stay with Circe in Book X of the Odyssey, Odysseus and crew prepare to leave Aiaia and head for the Underworld. It wasn’t his idea: Circe told him to go to hell. Well, what does he expect? He hung out with her for a year, ate her food, shared her “flawless bed of love,” and one day — from the prompting of his men — decides to leave, and fairly urgently judging by what happens to Elpenor.
Oh, Orpheus
I’ve been thinking about Orpheus. Endowed with musical talents by the gods, he could charm the beasts, rocks, and trees into dance through the chords of his lyre and his passionate voice. When Orpheus’ love Eurydice was bitten by a serpent and died, he descended into Hades to bring her back, charming Charon, Cerberus, and [...]
On the Primary and Secondary Epics
Difference in the condition of the composition leads to a difference in the character of the poetry. Because Homer composed for recitation, his composition is in some ways freer and looser than Virgil’s.