Textbook Notes (pp. 64-82)

(Connections: Literature Around the World: The Epic)

• audience a thousand yrs ago would thrill to heroic stories sung and chanted
• Early Heroic Tales: epic- long narrative poems that celebrated the adventures of legendary heroes
• function of a hero: courageous, wise, intelligent
• learn the accomplishments the ancient societies admired
• epic of Gilgamesh is an ancient Near Eastern poem about 4,000 yrs old
• epic of Iliad is a Greek poem about 3,000 yrs old

(from Gilgamesh The Prologue Translated by David Ferry)

• build Uruk- ancient Sumerian City
• Gilgamesh helps his people
• no single author
• "two-thirds a god, one-third a man, the king"
• greatly praised
• like Beowulf

(from the Iliad Homer Translated by Rishmond Lattimore)

• Achilleus- greatest Greek warrior
• Hektor- best Trojan warrior
• goddess Athene- disguised as the Trojan warrior Deiphobos
• during Trojan war
• who will die under the other's spear
• Hektor has already fled 3 times around the great city of Priam
• "no trustworthy oaths between men & lions, nor wolves an and lambs have spirit that can be brought to agreement"
• Pallas Athene snatched the spear and gave it back to Achillieus -----Wait a second, why??
• wants to die fighting
• suspenseful atmosphere
• Achilleus is victorious in the end
• Hektor asks for the dogs to not eat him & for his body to be taken home
• Achilleus says the dogs and birds will have him as a feast & that his mother won't be able to lay him on his death-bed and morn him
• had a revengeful ending

(from A History of the English Church and People Bede Translated by Leo Sherley-Price)

• Britain- formerly known as Albion -an island
• Rutubi Portus- England corrupted to Reptacestir
• old times, country had 28 noble cities & innumerable castles
• winter nights 18hrs, longest days 15hrs, shortest 9hrs
• original inhabitants of island were Britons -- crossed into Britain from Armorica
• they asked Scots to settle, but request refused
• Ireland largest island after Britain
• Picts crossed into Britain since no room in Scots 
• Picts asked wives of the Scots -- when dispute arose, they should choose a king from the female royal line rather than male
• Britain 3rd nation: Scots who migrated from Ireland under their chieftain Reuda & by force/ treaty the Picts that they still hold
• reptiles die after breathing in the air? enjoys immunity to poison?

(from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Translated by Anne Savage)

• force had not broke down English, 3 yrs of slaughtering cattle and men & kings best thanes died
• 6 ships went to Isle if Wight & did much evil -- in Devon & along sea-coast
• complex setting -- diction's confusing
• Alfred was king all over English except the part under the Danish rule
• he was a prideful king
• they all faced grief throughout the story