Introduction

If‘‘epic,’’ ancient or modern, represents a ‘‘genre’’ in any meaningful sense, our first task should be not to enumerate the characteristics of a classification, but to ask what might be the ultimate usefulness, whether to literary criticism or cultural studies, of such categorizing. What do we gain from calling something an epic? Should the category therefore be as wide as possible or bounded and narrow? To answer fully, we need to look at the historical roots of our own taxonomy of genres in classical Greek sources (section 2, below), as well as at a broad range of contemporary comparative evidence from nonwestern societies in which traditions seemingly comparable with classical ‘‘epic’’ exist (section 3).

The circularity in the latter procedure will be immediately apparent. If the first rule of the comparative method is to know what to compare, there will always be the chance that we do not know enough: that our initial selection of epic-like material from India, Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia somehow omits highly important poetry or prose that a Eurocentric mindset, raised on classical epic, cannot grasp as relevant. Even to divide verbal art into ‘‘poetry’’ and ‘‘prose’’ might turn out to be misleading, from the standpoint of non-western traditions (as Dennis Tedlock and others have argued, focusing on Native American works). But since every investigation needs to start somewhere, the critic’s hope is that the “hermeneutic circle’’ morphs into a spiral: that the initial selection prompts re-thinking of old classifications, and even leads to productive reactions by others working in different fields. Although this volume is concerned primarily with ancient epic, from regions near the Mediterranean, it might lead to fresh analyses of compositions from many periods and places.

To enable this dialogue, and to prevent a premature canonization of‘‘genre’’ that only impedes further understanding, we should begin with the assumption that ‘‘epic’’ is a contingent and culture-bound category. It may be ‘‘poetry’’ or ‘‘prose’’ or some tertium quid, by our reckoning. It may even look like what we would call ‘‘drama’’ or ‘‘lyric.’’ Despite such formal differences, many societies may share a functionally similar category. What this chapter will argue is that ‘‘epic,’’ applied to similar categories across cultures, plays a necessary role that transcends genre (thus making fruitless the attempt to pin it down as any single genre). In other words, ‘‘epic’’ stands out precisely by presenting

Itself, time after time, as the ‘‘natural’’ state of speech, the pre-existent mode, the word-before-genre, the matrix of other forms. And this consistent tendency can in turn best explain the semantic development and assumptions that have given us the very term which we are undertaking to analyze.

Ultimately, any concept of genre that underwrites the specific classification of ‘‘epic’’ should stress, above all, two communicative functions. First, as a means of channeling and clarifying communication between authors and readers (or performers and audiences), a shared genre acts as an agreement concerning the horizon of expectation, whether about the language, motifs, characterizations, themes, or even length of a given work. (We do not expect a “novella’’ to be 700 pages long. One might expect an ‘‘epic’’ performance to last at least an evening.) It is an implicit signaling device for senders and recipients of verbal art. Second, for those, like ourselves, removed in time from the immediate experience, genre forms an essential piece of cultural information. Knowing a culture’s genre system, and its network of associations, is as significant as learning about its history, geography, economy, or languages. Once the native system is elicited, we can compare it with those of other societies, just as we can compare languages. And as with any such anthropological explorations, the knowledge thereby gained only counts when taken further, as a means of fostering human communication. To put it negatively, we should not define ‘‘genre’’ or ‘‘epic’’ simply as an ideal Platonic form for static contemplation. Definitions need to be dynamic aids to learning and social integration.

Modern handbooks of literary terms, in defining ‘‘epic,’’ inevitably mention features of content, such as a cosmic scale; a serious purpose; a setting in the distant past; the presence of heroic and supernatural characters; and plots pivoting on wars or quests. The presence or absence of any such features should not be decisive, however, in defining a genre. Nor because they happen to be common to both oral and written (or ‘‘primary’’ and ‘‘secondary’’epic), can these features be seen as proof that a natural or universal ‘‘epic’’ form exists, since ‘‘secondary’’ epics are of course explicitly modeled on the former. More recent scholarship, by contrast, has deconstructed the wall between written and oral modes and all but abandoned notions (going back to the early twentieth century) of‘‘primary’’ epic (supposedly, Homeric poetry, Beowulf, and most non-western poems) as opposed to ‘‘secondary’’ epic (Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, Virgil’s Aeneid, the works of Milton, Spenser, Tasso, etc.; see further Chapters 25, 33, and 13, by Nelis, Putnam, and J. Foley). The match between ‘‘primary’’ and ‘‘oral’’ was never satisfactory, anyway, since most of the compositions available to readers had long been texts, whatever their performance history. A better solution has been the recognition of ‘‘transitional texts’’ in the formulaic style typical of composition-in-performance. In addition, modern ethnographers can attest to the fluidity of the very idea of ‘‘text’’ in many cultures that are most productive of‘‘epic.’’ Finally, the distinction between ‘‘primary’’ and ‘‘secondary’’ has been seen to encode more insidious contrasts between ‘‘primitive’’ song produced by underdeveloped, often tribal groups and ‘‘cultivated’’ writing done by elite males, usually in the service of a developing nation-state. At its worst, the contrastive pair was just a polite substitute for the chauvinistic opposition of‘‘pre-art’’ versus ‘‘high art.’’

What has led handbook writers to associate as ‘‘epics’’ such disparate compositions as Beowulf and Paradise Lost, over and above the features of content just mentioned, are roughly comparable formal features including the length of a poem; the very fact of poetic form (‘‘heroic’’ verse lines); musical accompaniment or song style; highly rhetorical speeches by heroic figures; invocations or self-conscious poetic proems; similes; and ‘‘typical’’ or recurrent scenes and motifs. These formal features are usually treated rather clinically as isolated textual markers, rather than as intertwined relics of possible performances. For instance, length of composition is often considered an absolute, apart from possibly variable contexts of audience interaction. Was Beowulf ever longer or shorter and still, for medieval English hearers, the ‘‘same’’ poem? Does performance length depend on where the ‘‘epic’’ was shared (during work or festivals, in royal hall or tavern)? Could a 50-line version still be ‘‘Beowulf ’’? Does cosmic scale demand extreme length? By the same token, can the Old English Seafarer be ‘‘epic’’ (and if not, what genre is it?). Such questions arise especially with ancient texts for which we have multiple versions, such as Gilgamesh. They can be approached, if not positively answered, by examining such Indic traditions as Ramcaritmanas, of which even a brief song session by women at local shrines is still regarded as ‘‘epic’’ recitation. To take another example, long similes - seemingly the stock-in-trade of ‘‘epic’’ composition - turn out in many cultures to be poetic interludes consciously imported from companion traditions (what one might call ‘‘lyric’’). In these cases, as in many others, contemporary performances force us to question traditional handbook definitions. ‘‘Epic’’ emerges as a notional instead of normative term.