Lesson 1.1 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.5, RL.9-10.9
The conventions, and why each one exists
Epic conventions look like arbitrary rules until you know that these poems were composed and performed aloud, often over several nights, by people who could not consult a written text. Every convention solves a problem that condition creates.
- An epic is a long narrative poem about a hero whose actions matter to a whole people.
- The subject is national or cosmic in scale, which is what separates an epic from a long adventure poem.
- The invocation of the Muse opens the poem by asking a god for the story, which frames the poet as a transmitter rather than an inventor.
- In medias res means beginning in the middle, with earlier events supplied later as narration.
- The epithet is a fixed descriptive phrase attached to a name, such as swift-footed Achilles or resourceful Odysseus.
- Epithets and repeated lines are memory aids, supplying the performer with ready-made phrases that fill a metrical line.
- The catalog lists ships, warriors or ancestors, which preserves genealogy for an audience with no archive.
- The descent into the underworld, called a katabasis, appears across unrelated traditions and lets the dead deliver information the living cannot have.
Where students lose marks: listing conventions. "The poem uses epithets" earns nothing. Say what a particular epithet does at the particular moment it appears.
The text. Homer, the Odyssey, opening lines, in Samuel Butler's 1900 English translation. Public domain.
Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.
Step one: identify the invocation. "Tell me, O Muse" is the first clause of the poem. The poet does not claim to be telling the story; he asks a goddess to tell it through him.
Step two: state what that framing buys. Authority. A performer claiming personal knowledge of events from centuries earlier would be making an unbelievable claim. A performer transmitting a goddess's account is making a different kind of claim, and the audience knows which one is being made.
Step three: notice the epithet. "That ingenious hero." Odysseus is identified by a quality before he is named, and the quality selected is intelligence rather than strength. In an epic tradition full of warriors, that is a choice.
Step four: find the plot summary. The opening gives away the sack of Troy, the wandering, the loss of every crewman, the cattle of the Sun, and the reason the men die. Sixty words contain the whole outcome.
Step five: state why the poem gives itself away. The audience already knew the story. Removing suspense about what happens directs attention to how it happens and to the performance itself, which is the same trade Shakespeare makes in the prologue to Romeo and Juliet.
Step six: read the moral claim. "They perished through their own sheer folly." Before a single scene, the poem has assigned blame for the crew's deaths to the crew. That verdict is not neutral and the rest of the poem will test it.
Step seven: locate the in medias res promise. "From whatsoever source you may know them" invites the Muse to begin where she likes, and she begins in the tenth year of Odysseus's wandering. The first four books do not even contain him.
Step eight: state what the conventions accomplish together. In ten lines the poem has established its authority, named its hero's defining quality, delivered the plot, assigned moral responsibility, and licensed itself to start anywhere. Nothing here is decoration; the opening is doing five jobs at once because a performed poem has one chance to do them.
Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.
- Define an epic.
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A long narrative poem about a hero whose actions matter to a whole people
- What is in medias res?
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Beginning in the middle, with earlier events supplied later
- What is an epithet?
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A fixed descriptive phrase attached to a name
- What is a katabasis?
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A descent into the underworld
- What quality does the Odyssey's opening line attach to its hero?
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Ingenuity, rather than strength
- Why does the poem begin by asking a Muse to tell the story?
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Because a performer claiming personal knowledge of events centuries old would be making an unbelievable claim. Framing the poem as transmission from a goddess makes a different and acceptable claim about where the knowledge comes from. The convention solves an authority problem that a written text with a named author does not have, and the audience understands exactly which claim is being made. It supplies authority a mortal performer could not claim
- Explain how epithets and repeated lines serve oral performance.
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A performer composing aloud in meter, without a text, needs ready-made phrases that fit the line. "Resourceful Odysseus" and "rosy-fingered dawn" occupy known metrical slots and can be deployed while the performer thinks ahead. What reads on the page as repetition was, in performance, the machinery that made continuous composition possible at all. They are prefabricated metrical units that free the performer to compose
- Why does the opening give away the plot?
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The audience already knew the story of Troy and its aftermath, so there was no suspense to protect. Stating the outcome at once redirects attention from what happens to how it happens and to the quality of the telling, which is what an audience at a performance is actually there for. It is the same trade Shakespeare makes with the prologue to Romeo and Juliet. The audience knew it already, so attention shifts to the telling
- What is not neutral about "they perished through their own sheer folly"?
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It assigns blame for the deaths of every crewman to the crew themselves, before a single scene has been narrated. Odysseus is described in the same sentence as trying to save them. The poem has delivered a verdict in advance, and a reader who notices that the verdict came first can then test it against the events, which include decisions Odysseus makes that put the crew in danger. It clears Odysseus of the crew's deaths before any evidence is given
- What do the opening conventions accomplish together?
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In about ten lines the poem establishes its authority through the invocation, names its hero's defining quality with an epithet, delivers the entire plot, assigns moral responsibility for the crew's deaths, and licenses itself to begin anywhere it likes. Five jobs in one passage. A performed poem gets one chance at an opening, and the conventions exist because that pressure is real. Authority, characterization, plot, judgment and license to begin anywhere