The appeal of epics...




This seems to be an odd trend in my reading life of late: I am reading new translations of epics. I mean, how nerdy can it get? I'm still poking my way through the Iliad (no rush), and enjoying it immensely. Though reading the accounts of how each local "hero" got impaled and died while eating breakfast can be a little off-putting. I listened to the On Being podcast the other day, in which Padraig O'Tuama was discussing the new translation of Beowulf; it's more vernacular-driven, and I'm intrigued. I found it on Amazon (yeah, I know, big A, but still), and it'll be here on Wednesday. 

Why epics? Why now? I suppose it's partly because I'm teaching literature classes exclusively this term. But maybe it's because the world is a freakin' hot mess right now, and something has to tie it all together before it unravels. Epics have little to do with reported facts, but everything to do with cultural Truths. The hopes, dreams, hurts, and victories of a group of people contending against foes both natural and supernatural, and having someone live to tell the tale, to pass on what is important and noble and essential to their cultural survival to the next generation is somehow comforting. 

I don't know how things are going to go both here in the US and around the globe, and I know that the weapons of destruction are far more deadly than bronze-tipped spears and magical swords, but humanity has survived other devastating things. I can only hope that we will, too. But who are our Shapers, our Storytellers, now? Who will write this epic? 

I can only hope it's not the idiots on Fox News.

Have a good day,

C

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