106 EPIC

what in th-c. terms would have been a pro- Tasso, or Milton. None of these approaches was
feminist position. without its difficulties.
Epics written by women include Enrico ou-
vero Bisancio acquistato (Enrico, or Byzantium II. Theory
Conquered, ), by the Venetian Lucrezia A. Classical and Alexandrian Greek. The rich
Marinella; the biblical epic Iudith by the Fr. epic trad. of the Greeks (Homer, Hesiod, Arc-
woman of letters Marie de Calages (); and tinus, Antimachus) was at first criticized more
the creation poem Order and Disorder (; from an ethical than a literary standpoint.
first complete ed. ), identified in  as Xenophanes (frag. , Diels-Kranz), e.g., ob-
the work of Lucy Hutchinson. jected to Homer and Hesiod’s depiction of
gods as thieves, adulterers, and deceivers. In
E. Divine Action. Epic is primarily concerned the Republic, Plato combines the ethical and
with the deeds of mortals, but its most power- literary when he attacks Homer for teach-
ful characters are gods. In the Iliad, the Odyssey, ing the young morally pernicious ideas by the
and the Aeneid the Olympian gods intervene method of imitation. Since, for Plato, Homer
frequently in human affairs, assisting some and is also the founder of tragedy, both genres stand
destroying others. Sometimes the gods act in condemned.
the interest of justice as they see it; sometimes For Aristotle, too, poetry is imitation, but
they act on their own prerogative or even whim. from this, he draws a radically different conclu-
Their enormous power is neither good nor evil; sion. Not only is imitation natural to humans,
it simply is. The supreme Olympian god (Zeus but, as intensified by tragedy, it can produce,
in Gr., Jupiter in Lat.) holds final authority, but by means of pity and fear, a katharsis ton path-
he allows wide latitude to his fellow Olympians ematon. That for Aristotle this puzzling but evi-
to act as they see fit, and so they do. This lati- dently drastic effect is also valid for epic follows
tude allows for factions or competing interests from his acceptance of another Platonic insight,
among the gods, which play a major structural that epic is inherently dramatic. Since, unlike
role in cl. epic plot. The quarrelsome, anthro- Plato, Aristotle argues that drama is the superior
pomorphized gods of epic scandalized some genre, the best epic must be Homer’s because it
readers even in antiquity, Plato among them, is already “dramatic” (an adjective that Aristotle
but since they figured so prominently in the may have coined). Since Aristotle believes that
most prestigious poems of the age, they were drama (Gr., “that which is done”) is important,
too important to ignore. it follows that the action has primacy. Not the
How to Christianize divine action was one soul of the hero but the mythic interaction of
of the enduring problems of postclassical epic. personae is the soul of the play, and indeed
Christian poets who sought to imitate Homer Aristotle criticizes epics that assert their unity
and Virgil assumed that a mod. epic that would merely by hanging a collection of disparate ad-
rival the ancients required a supernatural ele- ventures onto a well-known name. Aristotle de-
ment of some kind; they also knew that, in this mands organic unity from the epic and requires
respect, their cl. models could not be followed that it be eusynopton (easily grasped in its total-
too closely. The pagan gods were no longer ac- ity) and that it not exceed the length of dramas
ceptable, but what could be put in their place? shown at one sitting, a period of time usually
One approach, derived from the long herme- calculated at , or , lines. Apollonius
neutic trad. of reading the gods of cl. epic al- of Rhodes’s Argonautica, written in Alexandria
legorically, was to introduce allegorized divine (d c. BCE), exactly meets the criterion.
characters. These might be *personifications, Aristotle objects to the confusion of epic and
like Milton’s Sin and Death; they might be the historical narrative, perhaps because he has a
Olympian gods themselves in allegorical guise, strict notion of the historian’s duty to record.
as in the Lusiads, Petrarch’s Africa, or Spenser’s He ignores the fact that already Thucydides,
“Mutability Cantos.” Another approach, de- e.g., had used mythical models to interpret
rived from the chivalric trad., was to replace in- events. He disapproves of the versification
tervening gods with magic: enchanted woods, of Herodotus, but in allowing for “poetic” or
mythical beasts, sorcerers, demons, and the imaginative prose, Aristotle opened the door to
like. A third approach, the most distinctively the mod. epic novel. The definition of epic at-
Christian, was to substitute God and Satan for tributed to his pupil and successor as head of
the community of Olympian gods, as in Vida, the Lyceum in Athens, Theophrastus, as “that
 EPIC 107

which embraces divine, heroic, and human a senior for elucidation that would become a
affairs,” shifts the emphasis from form to con- topos of the Lat. eulogy (e.g., in Claudian and
tent. Aristotle’s modification in the Rhetoric of Sidonius Apollinaris) and even be adapted by
his views on vocabulary is related. The Poetics Dante in the first canzone of the Vita nuova.
had laid down that epic vocabulary should be Since this topos had Homeric precedent (Iliad
clear but elevated, marked by the use of poetic . ff.), Callimachus was indicating which
words or “glosses.” The later Rhetoric, however, parts of the Homeric legacy were imitable and
under the impulse of Euripides, permits the use how. In his elegiac Aetia, Callimachus advanced
of words from the lang. of everyday life. He ac- Hesiod as the figurehead of his new approach
cepts as Homeric the comic Margites (The Crazy to epic.
Man; cf. Orlando furioso), now lost, a silly ac- The Argonautica is a further demonstration
count in mixed meters of a bumpkin who is not of the Alexandrian theory of epic. Out of their
even sure how to proceed on his wedding night. element in the heroic ambience, the characters
Such openness contradicts Plato’s severity and collectively and Jason individually are often
that of many later “Aristotelians.” gripped by amekhanie (helplessness). Unified by
The scholia or interpretive comments written verbal echoes of the red-gold icon of the fleece,
in the margins of Homeric mss. prove that, after the poem underplays the conventionally heroic
Aristotle, a practical crit. was worked out that in showing both the futility of war and the
preserved and extended his insights. Here, the degradation of the hero who, dependent on a
Iliad and the Odyssey are regarded as tragedies, witch’s Promethean magic, eventually becomes
though the notion was not lost that Homer the cowardly murderer of Apsyrtus. Homeric
was also the founder of comedy. The contrast allusions point the lesson, and the reader knows
between epic and hist. is maintained. “Fantasy” from Euripides that eventually the marriage of
is praised (cf. Dante, Paradiso .) both as Jason and Medea will end not in triumph but
pure imagination and as graphic visualization of in disaster.
detail. Nonlinear presentation of the story may
be made and at a variety of ling. levels. B. Classical and Medieval Latin. The Cal-
The Certamen, also called the Contest of limachean and Apollonian epic, i.e., the kind
Homer and Hesiod, is extant in a text from the written by scholar-poets, treated the lit. of the
d c. CE but is believed to stem from an earlier past by allusion and reminiscence in a poly-
work by Alcidamas (th c. BCE). From antiq- phonic way. Catullus, the bitter foe of histori-
uity, the question of which poet wrote first, cal epic, also uses this technique in his poem
and therefore had greater claim to legitimacy, . Similarly, in the Aeneid, Virgil uses Homer
existed, as did the idea that a poetic contest had as a sounding board rarely for simple harmony
taken place between the two. In the Certamen, but to secure extra and discordant resonance for
which expands on a brief mention of a competi- his mod. symphony. Thus, Dido is at once the
tion in the Works and Days (th c. BCE), Hesiod Odyssey’s Calypso, Circe, Nausicaa, and Arete,
wins because his works deal with the domestic and the Iliad ’s Helen and Andromache. Aeneas
and agricultural, rather than the martial. This is Odysseus, Ajax, Paris, Agamemnon, Hec-
issue of the domestic as an appropriate focus tor, and Achilles. There is no end to the slid-
for epic will appear again in Milton’s Paradise ing identities and exchanges (metamorphoses) of
Lost and in later explorations of the relationship the characters. The poet who had quoted from
between novel and epic. Callimachus in Eclogue  in order to introduce
Callimachus in Alexandria (d c. BCE) shared an Ovidian poetic program and had progressed
Aristotle’s objections to the versification of to epic through the Hesiodic Georgics, may,
Herodotus. In rejecting the eulogistic epic, he therefore, be properly regarded as Callima-
worked out, in his own epic Hecale, a different chean. But he is also Aristotelian, both in the
kind of Homer-imitatio from the straight com- dramatic nature of his poem and in its tragic
parison of the mod. champion to a Homeric affinities. In Italy, Aeneas gropes toward victory
counterpart, a type apparently sought by Alex- over the bodies of friend and foe alike. Vengeful
ander the Great from the poetaster Choirilos of Dido, by the technique of verbal reminiscence
Iasos. Too little of Callimachus’s epic Galateia and recurrent imagery, is never absent from the
now survives to make judgment possible, but poem. And although the epic exalts the origins
his Deification of Arsinoe in lyric meter set the of Rome, “umbrae” (shadows) is characteristi-
precedent for the appeal by a junior deity to cally its last word.
108 EPIC

The first Alexandrians were scholar-poets, Rutulians—continually intrude, Virgil’s epic is

and the third head of the library, Eratosthenes, nonetheless the act of a civilization writing its
still exemplified this ideal. But the early diver- own self-contained and victorious hist.
gence of the two vocations led to a split be- The crit. by Agrippa of the Aeneid for its
tween creative and critical sensibilities. Horace’s communia verba, recorded by Donatus in his
Ars poetica (st c. BCE), described by an ancient Life of Virgil, shows that there had developed
commentator as a versification of the prose trea- even under Augustus the theory that epic, as
tise of the Alexandrian scholar Neoptolemus of the most sublime of genres, demanded the most
Parium, though clearly in its emphasis on the sublime lang. Petronius’s implied crits. of Lucan
vates more than this, recommends by its form in the Satyricon prove the persistence of this no-
a musicality in which arrangement and corre- tion. At the end of cl. antiquity, the same theory
spondence, interlace and arabesque, will replace received a fatally deceptive application. Rhetor-
the pedestrian logic of prose. A Roman and an ica ad Herennium (ca. – BCE), influential
Augustan, Horace moves beyond Callimachus in the Middle Ages, distinguished three styles,
when he urges that the poet, without in any high, middle, and low; and, conveniently, Vir-
way betraying Gr. refinement, must also be a gil had written three major poems: obviously,
vates, engaged with his society and with the re- the Eclogues must exemplify the low style, the
form of public morals. This is an aspect of cl. Georgics the middle, and the Aeneid the high.
epic subsumed by Dante in his allusion to Ora- This was the doctrine that eventually found its
zio satiro (Inferno .). med. canonization in the rota virgiliana (Virgil-
Finally, Horace, who spoke of Homer’s ian wheel) devised by John of Garland. By this,
“auditor” (listener), took for granted a feature names, weapons, even trees that could be men-
of ancient epic theory now often overlooked. tioned in the different styles were carefully pre-
Epic did not cease to be oral with Homer. The scribed. One part of the deadly consequences of
power of Virgil’s “hypocrisis” (acting ability), this doctrine was that the opening toward com-
the “sweetness and marvelous harlotries” of his edy in the epic (the Margites) was lost. Yet even
voice, are attested in the Life written by Do- the late antique commentator Servius had re-
natus (th c. CE). This Aristotelian closeness to marked of the Aeneid, book , “paene comicus
drama again implies polyphonic composition. stilus est: nec mirum, ubi de amore tractatur”
According to this understanding of Virgil, there (the style is almost comic, and no surprise, con-
cannot be a single, univocal, “right” interpreta- sidering the theme is love), and the trad. of Vir-
tion of the action. gilian epic practice does not reject the comic.
However, with Virgil, epic, generally con- Stung by Platonic crit. of Homer’s “lying,”
cerned with reflecting and establishing the Gr. Stoic philosophers in particular had devel-
self-identity of the culture that produces it, oped a method of interpreting the Homeric
becomes heavily invested in the political. Virgil narrative in symbolic terms intended to rescue
casts Aeneas as the first of a line of rulers cul- its moral and theological credibility. In his ef-
minating in the emperor Augustus, thus tying forts to reclaim all the genres for the new reli-
the foundation of Rome to the Trojan War and gion, the Christian Lat. poet Prudentius (ca.
rewriting Aeneas’s adventures as a myth of im- –) wrote the epic Psychomachia, in
perial foundation. He reinvents the crafty hero which the contending champions were no lon-
of the Odyssey as the ideal Roman character: Ae- ger flesh-and-blood heroes but abstract quali-
neas is an extraordinary warrior, but he is pius ties of the soul. It was only a short step from
and obedient, qualities that were more valued this to allegorizing Virgil’s Aeneid, the most
by imperial Rome, and are, in the Aeneid, re- important example of this being Fulgentius
sponsible for its founding. If Virgil’s dramatic (late th–early th c.). Highly praised allegori-
qualities are polyphonic, his narrative is none- cal epics have been written, of which the most
theless what M. Bakhtin, writing about epic in important is probably Spenser’s incomplete Fa-
the mid-th c., would term “monologic”: the erie Queene (, ).
Aeneid ’s story is told in the inimitable and de- The critical failure of later antiquity meant,
fined voice of a national identity that, as Quint in effect, that any epic theory that was to make
argues, accepts its own version of events as ab- sense had to be recoverable from the practice of
solute and ignores the possibility of another, major poets. This fact lent even greater signifi-
outside voice. While the voices of marginalized cance to the already towering figure of Dante,
figures—the abandoned Dido, the defeated since it was he who, as the author of the epic
 EPIC 109

Divine Comedy in the vernacular, broke deci- genre with its own narrative conventions and
sively with both med. prescription and practice. subject matter: the romance. Cinthio argued
He acknowledges the influence of Virgil’s style against the stultifying classicism of his con-
(Inferno .–), and invokes in reference to temporaries, suggesting that, as cultures and
his own journey that of Aeneas to the under- tastes develop, so too do literary forms, which
world, during which the future hist. of Rome should be judged by practical example rather
is revealed to him (.–). However, even than by abstract theory. According to the pre-
as Dante is influenced by Virgil’s political vi- cept set by Ariosto and his predecessor Mat-
sion of epic, the epic journey is here recast as teo Maria Boiardo, epic tells the story of one
a personal and internal process, the struggle of man, romance the story of many; thus, the lat-
the Christian soul to find God; the grandeur ter has a more episodic, less unified structure
of conquest becomes the humility of spiritual than epic. The publication of Tasso’s Gerusa-
seeking. lemme liberata () brought the discussion
to near-fever pitch: his work was frequently
C. Renaissance to Modern. The Ren. crit- pitted against Ariosto’s, and both were praised
ics (Marco Girolamo Vida, De arte poetica, as an example of Aristotelian unity (Camillo
; Francesco Robortello, In librum Aristo- Pellegrino, Il Carrafa, ) and dismissed as
telis de arte poetica explicationes, ; Antonio a work of inferior artistry. Tasso, responding
Minturno, De poeta, ; L’arte poetica, ) to the debate (Discorsi dell’arte poetica, ,
were often prescriptive rather than descrip- although composed –), takes the part
tive. Armed with the Poetics (trans. into Lat. by of the Aristotelians, insisting that romance and
Giorgio Valla in , ; Gr. text ; It. epic are not discrete genres and that, instead,
trans. ) and eventually with an amalgam Ariosto’s loose structure and multiplicity of ac-
of Aristotle and Horace, they advanced to wear tion make for a highly flawed epic.
down the “unclassical” in epic but were largely The political nature of Virgilian epic con-
the unconscious victims of old ideas. J. C. Scal- tinues in the Ren. Camões’s Lusiads builds on
iger, the most gifted scholar among them (Poet- an ostensibly prosaic story—the trading expe-
ices libri septem, ), uses the evidence of lang. dition of da Gama—to write a glorious and
to decry Homer and exalt Virgil: the display by elaborate Port. hist. Tasso’s portrayal of the First
Homer of humilitas, simplicitas, loquacitas, and Crusade as the rightful liberation of Jerusalem
ruditas in his style must make him inferior to by an army of virtuous Christians is intended
the Roman. If Virgil echoes Homer’s descrip- to stir up support for the Catholic ambition,
tion of Strife in his picture of Fama in book  of during the Counter-Reformation, of captur-
the Aeneid, that is an excuse for loading Homer ing Jerusalem from Ottoman control. Spens-
with abuse. And just as ruthlessly as Agrippa er’s layered allegory is a celebration of Queen
with Virgil, these critics set about Dante, Ari- Elizabeth I in the figure of the “Faerie Queene”
osto, and Tasso for their unclassical backsliding. Gloriana, while it simultaneously casts her as
In particular, because of the runaway popu- the direct descendant of Gloriana and King Ar-
larity of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (), the thur. The poem, moreover, deals with a number
issue of what kinds of subject matter, lang., of contemp. political issues, incl. the trial of
and formal structure could be considered le- Mary, Queen of Scots; anxieties about Catholi-
gitimately epic was of great interest in Italy in cism and the empire of Philip II; and England’s
the mid-th c. A number of critics objected colonial interest in Ireland.
to Ariosto (often in the strongest terms) be- In Eng., Milton (Paradise Lost, , ;
cause of his lack of moral purpose and, more Paradise Regained, ) was greatly influenced
significant, his failure to adhere to Aristotle’s by both It. example and precept. He knew
requirements for both a single, unified story Giacopo Mazzoni’s Difesa della Commedia di
and “probability” (which for Aristotle meant Dante () and the theoretical work of Tasso,
persuasiveness rather than, as for these crit- whose old patron, Count Manso, he had met
ics, the absence of the fantastic). Attempting during his travels in Italy (–). He quotes
to rescue Ariosto from his detractors, Giam- from the Orlando furioso at the beginning of
battista Giraldi Cinthio (Discorso intorno al Paradise Lost (., cf. Orlando furioso ..).
comporre dei romanzi, ) and Giambat- And yet Paradise Lost is a self-consciously Eng.
tista Pigna (I romanzi, ) wrote that Ari- work, employing a traditionally Eng. meter and
osto’s text was not a bad epic, but of a distinct thoroughly Protestant in its theology. Milton’s
110 EPIC

Epitaphium Damonis () toys with the idea ; Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock,
of a historical epic on Arthurian legends, and ; and The Dunciad, ) or mocking lofty
his notebooks, preserved in Cambridge, show lang. (Samuel Butler, Hudibras, –), and
that he considered a dramatic treatment of reverenced the original epic form. Both Dryden
the same topics and of the story of Adam. In and Pope produced trans. of cl. epics. The con-
returning to epic, he fixed on this theological tinued public interest in early epic is likewise
theme, to which the closest cl. parallel would be reflected in James Macpherson’s – publi-
Hesiod’s Theogony. It enabled him to set out his cation of Ossian, which he claimed to have trans.
profoundest beliefs in the origin of the moral from an ancient Gaelic text and which sparked
order of the universe, the human condition, controversy between those who insisted on its
and the Christian promise of atonement. Like inauthenticity (Samuel Johnson among them)
Hesiod, moreover, Milton moves away from and those who argued for its antiquity and for-
the subject matter of the Virgilian trad., the mal unity. In an argument that proved enor-
“Warrs, hitherto the onely Argument / Heroic mously influential even into the th c., G.W.F.
deem’d” (Paradise Lost .–). His epic con- Hegel theorized that epic, as a primitive form,
tains an extended martial episode—the war in was the expression of a nation’s unified charac-
heaven, in which Satan’s followers rebel against ter, system of values, and worldview; the age of
divine authority—but the work is largely do- technological modernity cannot produce epic
mestic in its focus, portraying the relation- because people no longer engage vitally with
ship between Adam and Eve as one of shared the world around them (Lectures on Aesthetics,
work, untainted sexuality, and great mutual compiled –).
love, thus prefiguring the domestic focus of the Conflict with France and increasing status as
novel. Milton’s assumption in the poem of a an imperial power helped to spur a resurgence
difficult lang., criticized by Samuel Johnson, is of epics or works with significant epic charac-
part of the struggle to convey truths larger than teristics in th c. Eng. (Dentith, Tucker). The
life. His Paradise Regained uses a simpler style romantics admired the vast cultural and poetic
to depict Christ’s rebuttal of the temptations of scope of the epic but were less intimidated by it
Satan, emphasizing his humanity rather than than their predecessors: P. B. Shelley is as quick
divinity and, in Dantean fashion, his humility to criticize what he sees as the derivative efforts
rather than glory. of Virgil as he is to praise Homer, Dante, and
In the th c., Fr. critics adapted and propa- Milton (Defence of Poetry, ). However, poets
gated the It. recension of Aristotle’s rules, em- who addressed martial, political, or national
phasizing unity, *decorum, and verisimilitude, themes confronted the same potential archa-
although the first trans. of the Poetics into Fr. ism that had troubled writers in the previous
did not appear until . André Dacier’s ed. century and a half, with widely varying results
and commentary (La Poétique d’Aristote conten- (Walter Scott, Marmion, ; Alfred, Lord
ant les règles les plus exactes pour juger du poème Tennyson, Idylls of the King, –; William
héroique et des pièces de théâtre, la tragédie et la Morris, Sigurd the Volsung, ). At the same
comédie, ) became standard. This and other time, another kind of epic emerged, which dealt
critical works (René Rapin, Réflexions sur la poé- with nonmartial, contemp. subject matter and
tique d’Aristote, ; René le Bossu, Traité du which was largely unhampered by issues of ar-
poème épique, ) were regarded as normative chaism because it addressed directly the values
throughout Europe. The epics they inspired and concerns—here, primarily issues of selfhood
have been universally regarded as failures. and individual experience—of the age that pro-
By the late th. c., in Eng., epic was both duced it. In The Prelude (, pub. ), Wil-
a major influence and a source of anxiety. It liam Wordsworth adapts the traditional proem
was impossible to write epic in the straight- to declare human intellect and emotion, as well
forward manner of the Ren. poets; the genre as a few intangibles (e.g. Truth, Beauty, Love)
was no longer part of current literary practice, his epic subjects; Lord Byron’s worldly and sa-
and any attempt to produce it was to self- tirical Don Juan (–), through the adven-
consciously and artificially to delve backward tures of an oft-seduced innocent, reinscribes the
into the archaic. The poets of the Restoration epic conventions into a world-weary and ironic
and th c. wrote mock epic, which both paro- voice; Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh
died, portraying the trivial or the ridiculous () uses a lofty and heroic style to narrate
in lofty style ( John Dryden, “MacFlecknoe,” the adventures of an intellectually gifted young
 EPIC 111

woman, who, in turn, insists that epic heroism a cacophony of voices and thoughts, and it is
is possible in any age. often impossible to distinguish the thoughts of
But it is the novel that has proven the most one character from the voice of another or from
resilient and productive descendant of the epic the narrator.
trad. Two th.-c. studies, Georg Lukács’s Theory The creation of epic continues in recent
of the Novel () and Bakhtin’s essay “Epic and years; the most prominent example is Derek
Novel” (written , pub. ), have been in- Walcott’s Omeros (), which translates Ho-
fluential in examining the relation between the meric elements into a story dealing with Afri-
two genres, which, following Hegel, they see as an can hist. and working-class protagonists on a
issue of antiquity versus modernity. For Lukács, Caribbean island. Omeros is, like the epics of
epic expresses a “totality” of collective experience the Virgilian trad., explicitly political, bringing
that precludes individualism because the society to light the effects of colonialism and slavery
that produces epic is utterly unified; the novel is and imbuing the lives of its disenfranchised
the mod. attempt to recover that sense of total- characters, as Dentith observes, with epic im-
ity, now lost, by reshaping the world through a portance and dignity.
process of individual experience. Bakhtin argues See NARRATIVE POETRY.
that epic deals with a founding hist. that exists ! Criticism and History: H. T. Swedenberg,
before any sense of a transitory present and that, The Theory of the Epic in England, –
therefore, its perspective is absolute: there is no (); C. M. Bowra, From Virgil to Milton
possibility of reinterpretation because there are (), and Heroic Poetry (); E.M.W. Til-
no outside voices. The novel, by contrast, con- lyard, The English Epic and Its Background
sists of many voices in a world of mutable time. (); R. A. Sayce, The French Biblical Epic in
For both, epic is the product of an absolute to- the Seventeenth Century (); T. M. Greene,
tality: Lukács sees the novel as heralding the loss The Descent from Heaven: A Study in Epic Con-
of this totality, while for Bakhtin, it signals its tinuity (); R. Durling, The Figure of the Poet
triumphant overthrow. In addition, novels fre- in Renaissance Epic (); J. M. Steadman,
quently address similar questions of modernity, Milton and the Renaissance Hero (); A. B.
often casting themselves as a derivation of or Giamatti, The Earthly Paradise and the Renais-
departure from antiquity (Scott, Ivanhoe, ; sance Epic (); M. R. Lida de Malkiel, Dido
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, –]). en la literatura española ()–on the Defense
Perhaps most famously, George Eliot’s Middle- of Dido; L. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, trans.
march (–) draws on St. Theresa’s “epic B. Reynolds (); Parry; F. Blessington,
life” as a symbol to explore the frustration that “Paradise Lost” and the Classical Epic ();
passionate and inspired young women encoun- G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans ();
ter in an age that allows them few opportunities M. Murrin, The Allegorical Epic (); M. M.
for greatness. The novel ends on a domestic note, Bahktin, “Epic and the Novel,” The Dialogic
as its heroine redirects her potentially epic nature Imagination, ed. M. Holquist, trans. C. Emer-
to marriage and private life. son and M. Holquist (); S. Revard, The War
This is not to say that the cl. epic was effaced in Heaven (); A. Fichter, Poets Historical:
by modernity or the birth of the novel. On the Dynastic Epic in the Renaissance (); J. Kates,
contrary, literary modernism of the early th Tasso and Milton: The Problem of Christian Epic
c., which was deeply influenced by the unprec- (); L. Robinson, Monstrous Regiment: The
edented violence of World War I, brought with Lady Knight in Sixteenth-century Epic ();
it an interest in reviving and reincorporating the C. Martindale, John Milton and the Transforma-
trad. T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (), Ezra tion of Ancient Epic (); R. Martin, The Lan-
Pound’s many publications of the Cantos (– guage of Heroes (); A. Parry, The Language
), and James Joyce’s Ulysses () reinvent of Achilles and Other Papers (); D. C. Fee-
the stories and themes of cl. epic to reflect a ney, The Gods in Epic (); J. B. Hainsworth,
new kind of consciousness, marked by disil- The Idea of Epic (); A. Lord, Epic Singers
lusionment, fragmentation, and discontinuity. and Oral Tradition (); A. Ford, Homer:
Ulysses translates the vast scope of the Homeric The Poetry of the Past (); S. Wofford, The
epic to a novel spanning only one day and deal- Choice of Achilles: The Ideology of Figure in the
ing with ordinary, middle-class characters and Epic (); C. Burrow, Epic Romance: Homer
concerns; far from the monologic epic spirit or to Milton (); P. Hardie, The Epic Successors
the polyphony of Virgil’s style, Joyce’s novel is of Virgil (); D. Quint, Epic and Empire
112 EPIGRAM

(); M. Desmond, Reading Dido (); (); B. Graziosi, Inventing Homer: The Early
M. Murrin, History and Warfare in Renaissance Reception of Epic (); S. Dentith, Epic and
Epic (); J. Watkins, The Specter of Dido: Empire in Nineteenth-Century Britain ();
Spenser and Virgilian Epic (); F. Moretti, H. F. Tucker, Epic, Britain’s Historic Muse
Modern Epic (); G. Teskey, Allegory and – ().
Violence (); Epic Traditions in the Con- T. B. GREGORY (HIST.); J. K. NEWMAN;
temporary World: The Poetics of Community, T. MEYERS (THEORY)
ed. M. Beissinger, J. Tylus, S. Wofford ();
Lord; J. Everson, The Italian Romance Epic in EPIGRAM (Gr. epigramma, “inscription”). An
the Age of Humanism (); Horace, The Epis- ancient form, first carved on gravestones, statu-
tles of Horace, trans. D. Ferry (); Statius, ary, and buildings. Epigrams encompass an al-
Silvae, ed. and trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey most infinite variety of tone and subject, but
(); R. Padrón, The Spacious Word: Cartog- they are defined by concision (relatively speak-
raphy, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern ing: while many epigrams are two to four lines
Spain (); A Companion to Ancient Epic, ed. long, others are considerably longer). Many
J. M. Foley (); J. C. Warner, The Augustin- but certainly not all epigrams aim for a point
ian Epic, Petrarch to Milton (); T. Gregory, or turn. Alone and as part of other forms, the
From Many Gods to One: Divine Action in Re- epigram has many formal affiliations. Longer
naissance Epic (); S. Zatti, The Quest for epigrams can shade into *elegy or *verse epistle.
Epic: From Ariosto to Tasso (). Poetic *epitaphs are a subgenre of epigram, and
! Theory: D. Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle emblems, *proverbs, aphorisms, maxims, and
Ages, trans. E.F.M. Benecke (); Faral; J. E. adages have often been shaped into epigrams.
Spingarn, History of Literary Criticism in the Re- The *sonnet, particularly the Eng. sonnet, with
naissance, d ed. (); H. Strecker, “Theorie its structure of three *quatrains and a conclud-
des Epos,” Reallexikon I .–; E. Reitzen- ing *couplet, has strong roots in the epigram.
stein, “Zur Stiltheorie des Kallimachos,” Fest- Epigrams influenced Western poetry through
schrift Richard Reitzenstein (); Lewis; M.-L. two cl. sources: the Greek Anthology and Roman
von Franz, Die aesthetischen Anschauungen der epigrammatists, esp. Catullus and Martial. The
Iliasscholien (); M. T. Herrick, The Fusion Greek Anthology is additive, incl. poems written
of Horatian and Aristotelian Literary Criti- over the course of more than a thousand years,
cism, – (); Auerbach; Curtius; a gathering first begun by Meleager around 
Frye; Weinberg; D. M. Foerster, The Fortunes BCE. It originates the concept of anthology itself
of Epic Poetry: A Study in English and Ameri- (literally, “garland or gathering of flowers”), a
can Criticism – (); F. J. Worst- collection arranged by some kind of ordering
brock, Elemente einer Poetik der Aeneis (); principle. Greek Anthology epigrams range from
G. N. Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer (); epitaphic to erotic, from invitations to thank-
A. Lesky, A History of Greek Literature, trans. you notes, from satiric to polemical to moral;
J. Willis and C. de Heer (); K. Ziegler, most are in *elegiac distichs. In the th c. CE,
Das hellenistische Epos, d ed. (); J. K. Constantine Cephalas, a Byzantine Greek,
Newman, Augustus and the New Poetry (); compiled a -part anthol., combining and re-
E. Fränkel, Noten zu den Argonautika des Apol- arranging earlier collections. In , Maximus
lonios (); S. Koster, Antike Epostheorien Planudes compiled an expurgated version, the
(); Classical and Medieval Literary Criti- first to appear in print (in ; called the Plan-
cism, ed. A. Preminger et al. (); Homer to udean Anthology). It had a profound effect on
Brecht: The European Epic and Dramatic Tradi- subsequent Neo-Lat. and developing vernacu-
tion, ed. M. Seidel and E. Mendelson (); lar poetry. In , Claudius Salmasius (Claude
R. Häussler, Das historische Epos der Griechen Saumaise) discovered a copy of Cephalas’s ver-
und Römer bis Vergil (); G. S. Kirk, Homer sion of the anthol. in the Elector Palatine’s li-
and the Oral Tradition (); R. Häussler, Das brary in Heidelberg. This full version, known
historische Epos von Lucan bis Silius und seine as the Palatine Anthology, was finally published
Theorie (); J. K. Newman, The Classical between  and  in  vols.
Epic Tradition (); S. M. Eisenstein, Non- Roman devels. of the epigram trad. bear the
indifferent Nature [], trans. H. Marshall stamp of particular authors. Especially influ-
(); R.O.A.M. Lyne, Further Voices in Ver- ential are Catullus and Martial, who arranged
gil’s “Aeneid” (); D. Shive, Naming Achilles epigrams in groups unified by the presence of a
 EPIGRAM 113

witty, observant persona. Catullus’s epigrams of coexist, or one can dominate. In a sense, the epi-
everyday life and intimate social relationships gram was most pervasive in the long th c. John
demonstrate the form’s lyric potential. Martial Dryden, Nicolas Boileau, Alexander Pope, Vol-
explicitly modeled his epigrams on Catullus’s taire, J. W. Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller wrote
but developed a much sharper degree of social epigrams; and, more generally, the centrality of
*satire, underscored by the strong closure ef- the couplet to neoclassical poetics is an epigram-
fected by a point or turn. matic devel. By the late th c., however, many
Ren. poetry embraced the epigram: from poets reacted against pointed wit and turned to
anthol.-influenced collections incl. sonnet se- epigram’s lyric potential. Thomas Gray’s “Elegy
quences (e.g., Clément Marot in France), to Written in a Country Churchyard” combines
incisive satiric epigrams influenced by Martial aphoristic formulations with elegiac reverie; and
(e.g., Baltasar Alcázar and Juan de Mal Lara in William Wordsworth, while explicitly reject-
Spain), to aphoristic commonplaces. The ex- ing epigrammatic wit, worked extensively with
tensive treatment of the epigram by important epigram’s subgenre, epitaph. Nevertheless, the
theorists such as J. C. Scaliger (Poetices libri sep- pointed epigram remained important. William
tem [Seven Books of Poetics], ) and George Blake returned to epigram’s origins, engraving
Puttenham (The Arte of English Poesie, ) poetry with image. The proverbs embedded in
established it as a core cl. genre. Because of its Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (“The road
antiquity and brevity, the epigram was central of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”) fore-
to humanist education, trans. and imitated by shadow the strongly turned, witty aphorisms of
pupils throughout Europe. Thomas More’s and Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and Dorothy Parker.
Étienne Pasquier’s Neo-Lat. epigrams exem- W. S. Landor is a notable epigrammatist, and
plify the international humanist culture that epigram is the building block of Lord Byron’s
remained vibrant through the th c. mock epic Don Juan. Antonio Machado and
In Eng., notable th-c. epigrammatists in- Fernando Pessoa make an epigrammatic mode
clude John Heywood, John Harington, and available as a stance or perspective.
John Davies. The mature flowering of the Eng. American poetry has fostered a brilliant epi-
epigram came in the th c. with Ben Jonson, gram trad. Emily Dickinson’s aphoristic, gath-
Martial’s most influential Eng. imitator. His ered poems are epigrams. Ezra Pound’s imagis-
epigrams combine cl. learning with dramatic tic “In a Station of the Metro” attempts to fuse
accuracy; they range from miniature portraits epigram and haiku; H.D., Wallace Stevens, and
of city and court denizens (“To My Lord Ig- W. C. Williams used the epigrammatic mode
norant”: “Thou call’st me Poet, as a terme of to capture direct address and strong imagery;
shame: / But I have my revenge made, in thy J. V. Cunningham’s epigrams are explicitly cl.
name”), to epideictic epigrams of named per- Because of its ling. compression, strong turn,
sonages and touching epitaphs such as “On My and use of rhyme for point, epigram continues
First Son.” Emblems, most famously Francis to be a dominant form in contemp. lyric poetry.
Quarles’s, yoked epigrams with images. George ! T. K. Whipple, Martial and the English
Herbert wrote Lat. epigrams, and not only his Epigram from Sir Thomas Wyatt to Ben Jonson
Eng. poetry but his very conception of The (); J. Hutton, The Greek Anthology in Italy
Temple as a linked poetic book is indebted to () and The Greek Anthology in France and the
the epigram trad. Richard Crashaw’s divine Latin Writers in the Netherlands (); H. H.
epigrams are shockingly physical performances Hudson, The Epigram in the English Renaissance
of baroque compression. Robert Herrick ex- (); I. P. Rothberg, “Hurtado de Mendoza
perimented with *tone and subject; Hesperides and the Greek Epigrams,” Hispanic Review
includes hundreds of epigrams ranging from  (); B. H. Smith, Poetic Closure ();
versified maxims to social satire, Catullan G. Hartman, Beyond Formalism (); R. L.
love lyrics, and epitaphs for flowers, pets, and Colie, The Resources of Kind: Genre-Theory in the
himself. While Andrew Marvell also wrote dis- Renaissance (); A. Fowler, Kinds of Literature
crete epigrams, “Upon Appleton House,” with (); A. Cameron, The Greek Anthology: From
its tight, allusive stanzas, is one of the great Meleager to Planudes (); D. Russell, “The
achievements of the epigram trad. Genres of Epigram and Emblem,” CHLC, v. ,
At different historical moments, the two epi- ed. G. P. Norton (); Oxford Classical Dic-
grammatic strains (brief lyrics, on the one hand, tionary, ed. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, d
pointed aphorisms or satires, on the other) can ed. (); A. W. Taylor, “Between Surrey and
114 EPITAPH

Marot: Nicolas Bourbon and the Artful Transla- on med. to th-c. gravestones. Numerous Ren.
tion of the Epigram,” Translation and Literature epigrammatists, by contrast, recall cl. accents of
 (); W. Fitzgerald, Martial: The World of restrained grief or praise of individual achieve-
the Epigram (); Brill’s Companion to Helle- ment, such as the th-c. Neo-Lat. poet Michele
nistic Epigram, ed. P. Bing and J. Bruss (). Marullo: “Here I, Alcino, lie: my mourning
A. B. COIRO parents buried me. / That is life’s and child-
birth’s reward”; “His ancestry if you are told,
EPITAPH (Gr., “writing on a tomb”). A fu- you will feel contempt, but you will admire his
nerary inscription or a literary composition deeds. / The former derives from fortune, the
imitating such an inscription. Literate cultures latter from character.” Giovanni Pontano’s De
have often commemorated the dead in artful tumulis (Of Grave Mounds, ) combines
epitaphs: e.g., laudatory epitaphs combining cl. and Christian motifs in epitaphs on family
ornate prose and verse were an important pre- and friends. Seventeenth-c. Eng. epigramma-
mod. Chinese literary genre, while cl. Ar. in- tists produce memorable epitaphs. Ben Jonson’s
scriptions combined prose biography with verse “On My First Daughter” describes the mourn-
warnings of divine judgment. ing parents with third-person restraint; depicts
In the West, pithy Gr. verse grave inscrip- the daughter Mary in a feminized heaven; ten-
tions, most influentially in elegiac couplets, derly plays (as is common in epitaphs) with her
arose in the th c. BCE. Epigrammatists through name; and closes with Roman solicitude for her
the Hellenistic period composed both inscrip- earthly remains. “On My First Son” laments be-
tional and pseudoinscriptional epitaphs, some fore deploying epitaphic formulas and a Martial
ribald and satiric. Many appear in book  of echo to express Jonson’s paternal pride tem-
the Greek Anthology. With expressive brevity pered by a wish henceforth not to be attached
epitaphs lament, beg remembrance, proclaim “too much” to what he loves. Jonson’s disciple
fame, warn of death’s inevitability, and bid Robert Herrick writes self-consciously modest
the passerby enjoy life or imitate the deceased. epitaphic tributes to humble creatures (infants,
The dead sometimes “speak” (imperiously or his maid, his dog ) as well as to himself.
imploringly) to the visitor, as in Simonides’ fa- Eighteenth- and th-c. inscriptions for the
mous *elegiac distich on the Spartans at Ther- social elite were often verbose, bombastic pan-
mopylae (“Go, stranger, tell the Spartans / That egyrics; critics lambasted “sepulchral lies” (Al-
here obedient to their laws we lie”). exander Pope). In his essay on epitaphs, Samuel
Poets of Augustan Rome adapt the epitaphic Johnson warned against falsehood but approved
voice of the dead for highly original fictional omitting faults. Yet poets continued to write
epitaphs (e.g., Horace’s Odes ., Propertius’s epigrammatic epitaphs both for panegyric, as
Elegies .). They also influentially provide in Pope’s heroic couplet on Isaac Newton (“Na-
pithy epitaphic self-descriptions: an elegiac ture, and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night. / God
distich ancient biographers ascribe to Virgil en- said, Let Newton be ! And all was Light”), and
capsulates his life and achievement, Propertius *satire. Alexis Piron mocked the Fr. Academy
and Tibullus incorporate two-line epitaphs on that had rejected him: “Ci-gît Piron, qui ne fut
themselves in their love elegies, and Ovid pro- rien, / Pas même académicien” (Here lies Piron,
vides a two-couplet epitaph imploring fellow who was nothing, / Not even a member of the
lovers to wish his bones lie soft (a traditional Academy). With a terse somberness recalling
formula) in Tristia .. Virgil’s Eclogues  and Gr. epitaphs, by contrast, Herman Melville’s
Ovid’s Amores . also influentially conclude Civil War epitaphs commemorate unnamed
lengthy *laments with brief panegyric epitaphs soldiers’ tragic honor.
providing forceful closure and the consolation Late th- and th-c. poets also treat the
of fame. The Silver Lat. epigrammatist Martial epitaph as spur to *lyric. Thomas Gray’s “Elegy
writes much-admired satiric epitaphs and ten- Written in a Country Churchyard” influentially
der ones on beloved slave boys and pets. meditates on people’s desire for remembrance,
Early Christian and med. epitaphs combined exemplified by humble churchyard epitaphs,
commemoration with memento mori verses, before concluding with the poet’s own epitaph.
proclamations of the afterlife, and requests for William Wordsworth, the author of three es-
prayers. Lat. and then vernacular formulas like says on the genre, composed epitaphs, lyrical
the grimly chiastic “As you are now, so once was responses to epitaphs, and poems such as “The
I, / As I am now, soon you must be” appear Solitary Reaper” adapting motifs such as the
 EPITHALAMIUM 115

address to the passerby. Walt Whitman’s “As K. Mills-Court, Poetry as Epitaph: Representation
Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods” incor- and Poetic Language (); J. Scodel, The Eng-
porates a “rude” one-line Civil War inscription lish Poetic Epitaph: Commemoration and Conflict
as its insistent refrain. from Jonson to Wordsworth (); A. Schotten-
In the th-c. West, grave inscriptions largely hammer, “Characteristics of Song Epitaphs,”
disappeared as a serious poetic form with the de- Burial in Song China, ed. D. Kuhn ();
cline of the living’s contact with the buried dead. A. Petrucci, Writing the Dead: Death and Writing
Poets have continued to write comic, satiric, Strategies in the Western Tradition, trans. M. Sulli-
and fictional epitaphs (such as Thomas Hardy’s van (); K. S. Guthke, Epitaph Culture in the
Gr.-indebted epitaphs on cynics and pessimists West (); W. Waters, Poetry’s Touch: On Lyric
and those on an imaginary Midwestern town’s Address (); W. Diem and M. Schöller, The
inhabitants in Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Living and the Dead in Islam: Studies in Arabic
Anthology, ). Poetic epitaphs on soldiers and Epitaphs,  v. ().
victims of war have been the most common type J. SCODEL
of serious epitaph, such as Rudyard Kipling’s and
A. E. Housman’s World War I compositions. EPITHALAMIUM (Gr., “in front of the wed-
Otherwise, poets composing epitaphs have self- ding chamber”). The term epithalamion (Lat.
consciously revised the tropes of a genre whose epithalamium) categorizes texts concerning
anachronism is part of the point. R. M. Rilke’s marriage, but epithalamia are as varied in their
epitaph on himself, “Rose, oh pure contradic- structures and tonalities as the occasions they
tion, delight / in being nobody’s sleep under so commemorate. They range from poems that
many / eyelids,” hermetically addresses the rose, a sedulously engage with norms established by
symbol of poetry itself, rather than the reader. W. earlier participants in the genre to ones linked
B. Yeats’s self-epitaph from “Under Ben Bulben,” to their predecessors merely by their subject
“Cast a cold eye / On life, on death. / Horse- matter. Some are unambiguously and joyously
man, pass by,” substitutes for the cl. pedestrian celebratory; others, such as John Suckling’s
wayfarer an equestrian evoking antiquated Ir. “Ballade, Upon a Wedding,” parody the par-
nobility and deploys cl. pithiness to demand not ticipants, the event, and the convention, while
respect or pity for the dead but heroic disdain for yet other texts uneasily occupy shifting posi-
the mortal. Anne Carson’s Men in the Off Hours tions on that spectrum. Similarly, the genre
() contains pithy, highly enigmatic “Epi- encompasses everything from poems erotic
taphs” on “Evil,” “Europe,” and “Thaw,” evok- enough to court the label of pornography, no-
ing cl. epitaphs’ elegiac couplets but written as tably the work of the Neo-Lat. writer Johannes
if they were partially comprehensible fragments Secundus, to some that virtually ignore sex.
from bygone civilizations. Carson also discovers Different though epithalamia are in these and
in ms. crossouts a new form of epitaph, where other ways, they typically offer a particularly
“all is lost, yet still there.” valuable occasion for studying the interaction
See ELEGY, EPIGRAM. of literary conventions and social practices and
! P. Friedländer, Epigrammata: Greek Inscrip- pressures on issues ranging from gender to pol-
tions in Verse from the Beginnings to the Persian itics to spatiality.
War (); W. Peek, Griechische Grabgedichte Reflected in the name of the genre, the folk
(); R. Lattimore, Themes in Greek and practice of singing outside the room where the
Latin Epitaphs (); E. Bernhardt-Kabisch, marriage is consummated lies behind later ver-
“Wordsworth: The Monumental Poet,” PQ  sions of the epithalamium. The Song of Solo-
(); G. Hartman, “Wordsworth, Inscrip- mon and Psalm  offer scriptural antecedents.
tions, and Romantic Nature Poetry,” From Many Gr. and Lat. poems, notably Theocritus’s
Sensibility to Romanticism, ed. F. W. Hilles Idyll , describe weddings; but by far the most
and H. Bloom (); L’Epigramme Grecque, influential cl. contributions are three poems by
ed. A. E. Raubitschek (); G. Grigson, The the Roman poet Catullus: , , and . The
Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs (); imitation of these earlier models common in
E. Bernhardt-Kabisch, “The Epitaph and the later poems mirrors the concern for lineage the-
Romantic Poets: A Survey,” Huntington Library matized in the poems themselves.
Quarterly  (); P. Ariès, The Hour of Our Although the Middle Ages witnessed the
Death, trans. H. Weaver (); D. Fried, “Rep- use of epithalamic lang. in descriptions of
etition, Refrain, and Epitaph,” ELH  (); mystical spiritual marriages, the genre did
116 EPITHET

not enjoy a vogue until the Ren. That period other poets, the genre of marriage often effects
saw numerous Neo-Lat. epithalamia, as well its own flirtations or marriages with and di-
as an extensive discussion of both literary and vorces from many other poetic genres. *Pasto-
folk versions of this mode in the monumental ral elements are common. The epithalamium
Lat. text by J. C. Scaliger, Poetices libri septem borrows from Petrarchan love poetry and often
(Seven Books of Poetics, ). The Fr. poets also offers a countervailing vision in which
participating in the genre include Clément conjugal happiness replaces the frustrations
Marot and Pierre de Ronsard. Contributions often though not invariably associated with
from the Sp. Golden Age often incorporate the Petrarchism. Epithalamia within masques, a
allegorical figure of Fame; indeed, many epi- number of which celebrate weddings, gesture
thalamia in the early mod. era, incl. Edmund toward an affinity between those modes that
Spenser’s Prothalamion (), court patron- encapsulate recurrent characteristics of wed-
age through eulogistic tributes to the partici- ding poetry: both that genre and masques are
pants in a royal or aristocratic wedding. By far concerned to acknowledge but contain threats,
the most influential Eng. instance, however, esp. to communal order, and both emphasize
is Spenser’s Epithalamion (), written for the relationship between individuals and the
his own wedding. The popularity of the genre community. Esp. intriguing is the link be-
soared in the th c., with John Donne, Ben tween the paraclausithyron, a convention that
Jonson, and Robert Herrick, among others, portrays a lover attempting to gain admission
writing such lyrics. Epithalamia also appeared to the house of the beloved, and the epitha-
in th- and th-c. plays and in masques. lamium: on one level, the wedding poem is a
Versions arise in many other cultures and potential sequel or alternative to this sort of
eras as well. Asian trads., e.g., include ancient “closed-door poem,” while spatially it reverses
poems praising members of the couple. Alfred, positions, placing the lover within an enclosed
Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam () ends on space suggested by its title and the rest of the
verses about a wedding, an example of the ele- community outside.
giac elements so common in wedding poetry See BLASON.
(perhaps encouraged by the tale of the fatal ! English Epithalamies, ed. R. Case ();
events at the marriage of the mythological poet J. McPeek, Catullus in Strange and Distant Brit-
Orpheus). Among the many th-c. epithala- ain (); T. M. Greene, “Spenser and the Epitha-
mia are wedding poetry by W. H. Auden, James lamic Convention,” CL  (); A. Hieatt, Short
Merrill, and Gertrude Stein. Time’s Endless Monument (); V. Tufte, The
Common conventions of the Eng. and con- Poetry of Marriage (); High Wedlock Then
tinental trads. include praise of the couple; in- Be Honored, ed. V. Tufte (); J. Loewen-
vocations of the mythological figure associated stein, “Echo’s Ring: Orpheus and Spenser’s Ca-
with marriages, Hymen; prayers for children; reer,” English Literary Renaissance  (); C.
allusions to dangers that must be avoided; and Schenck, Mourning and Panegyric (); T. De-
references to houses and thresholds. Often the veny, “Poets and Patrons: Literary Adulation in
poet assumes the role of master of ceremonies. the Epithalamium of the Spanish Golden Age,”
*Refrains frequently appear, as do images of South Atlantic Review  (); H. Dubrow, A
nature and warfare, as well as references to po- Happier Eden (); J. Owens, “The Poetics of
litical events, the latter exemplifying the social Accommodation in Spenser’s ‘Epithalamion,’”
and public orientation of many epithalamia. SEL  (); B. Boehrer, “‘Lycidas’: The Pas-
Critics often divide the genre into two types: toral Elegy as Same-Sex Epithalamium,” PMLA
the so-called lyric epithalamium, which gener-  ().
ally describes the events of the wedding day in H. DUBROW
chronological form, as Catullus  does; and
the epic epithalamium, exemplified by Catullus EPITHET. A modifier specifying an essen-
, which recounts a mythological story con- tial characteristic and appearing with a noun
nected with a marriage. Other scholars have, or a proper name to form a phrase. The word
however, challenged this binary categorization, derives from the Gr. epitheton (attributed,
stressing that some poems fit imperfectly and added), which Lat. grammarians considered to
many others not at all. be equivalent to “adjective.” Isidore of Seville
In addition to the elegiac propensities ex- writes that epithets “are called either adjec-
emplified by the work of Tennyson and many tives (adiectivus) or additions, because they are