The Gods of Epic

Regarded as the supreme kind of poetry, the epic is fundamentally a divided form, both in its making (the epic poet is required to overcome the whole tradition) and in the thing made (the poem attempts to “limit the limitless”) The major basis of this ambivalence is the impact of the gods, which most criticism—emphasizing structure or human hero or fable—has not approached or understood The gods have been anthropomorphized, or regarded as ornamental, or as the matter of allegory, or as psychological projections. But the gods-in-epic—immortal, amoral, without sorrows, inscrutable—have been largely ignored. The problem with anthropomorphism is that speculation about it obscures the theomorphic tendencies of epic—i.e., the impulse of the human towards some kind of divine status. The exemplary case is that of Achilles, the paradigmatic hero, choosing heroic glory with death over long life with honor. Enjoying the special favor of Zeus, Achilles is properly regarded by his fellows as godlike. But he is not a god, as his descent to humanity in the sublime twenty-fourth book of the Ihad reveals fully. There he discovers through suffering and compassion both his humanity and his particular condition of sonship and fatherhood The paradigm discloses more; the failure of Achilles' glory is peculiarly ironic, a startling example of what in this essay is defined and described as “epic irony.” Epic irony is formally and structurally specific to epic poetry. It consists largely in the irony that arises at the intersection of the divine and the human, and so is the one element which can properly contain the main ambivalence and division within epic. After describing and defining epic irony, the essay suggests its workings in the Ihad (in the particular instance of Achilles and the failure of glory), in the Aeneid (briefly), and in Paradise Lost Since the religious and theological orientation of each of these poems differs markedly from that of the others, no attempt is made to discuss these differences in detail. In Paradise Lost, passages dealing with Satan, God, and man (especially in Books I III, VIII, and X) are discussed to show both the nature and the working of epic irony in this poem. Divine utterance, spatial and temporal structures, reflexive and parodic imagery, and the debate of human being with angelic intelligence are briefly analyzed. The main irony is finally creative, pivoting on Adam's love for Eve and the Son's love for man. The impact of epic irony may be somewhat diminished by the Christian paradoxes that support the thematic movement, but—as in earlier epic—the irony arises mainly at the intersection of divine and human, and it is the main force containing the profound ambivalence of both poety and poem. The gods dispense both good and evil together.

Aesthetics · Allegory · Art · Glory · HERO · Humanity · Irony · Literature · Poetics · Poetry · Theology · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Philosophy