Classical and Pre-Renaissance Orientation

This is Unit Sixteen of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part one of two: the classical and pre-Renaissance band, the smallest on the paper, and the first orientation unit. Unit fifteen closed the craft units and said orientation is expectation held lightly. Here is this unit's governing idea, and it pays off on Pope's rhyming couplets: three of this band's four principal sources reach an English reader through a translator or a modernising editor, so what you read was shaped by someone other than the author, and the skill the band exists to build is separating what the translator supplied from what the original carries. The band is worth three to seven percent, where orientation pays and deep study does not. We begin with the test of an orientation fact and the translation problem. Then epic as the glossary defines it, with invocation, beginning in the middle, and the epithet, worked on Pope's Homer, where the metre is Pope's and the wrath is Homer's. Then Sophocles, where the tragedy terms began, and the Greek stage with its messenger. Last, Beowulf in Hall's translation, its alliteration preserved by choice, its kennings, and the editor's braces, and Chaucer, whose partial readability is the trap. By the end you will be able to apply the orientation test. To define epic and separate Pope from Homer. To identify a Greek play on sight. And to read Beowulf and Chaucer with the translator and the editor kept apart from the poem.

Three entries to start: the band's weight and what that implies, the test of an orientation fact, and the translation problem that is the band's central difficulty.

Three to seven percent, no more.

AIL 1501 The Smallest Band

Classical and pre-Renaissance writing carries three to seven percent of the exam, the smallest of the four period bands. A candidate might meet one passage from it or none. That makes it the band where the return on heavy study is lowest and on orientation highest; orientation pays and deep study does not.

Does it change the first sentence.

AIL 1502 What Orientation Is For

Unit fifteen settled it: enough period expectation to know what a passage is likely to be doing before reading it closely. Not dates, not biographies, not plots. The test of an orientation fact is whether it changes how you read a first sentence, and that is the whole test.

Someone stands between you and the author.

AIL 1503 The Translation Problem

Three of this band's four principal sources reach an English reader through a translator or a modernising editor. What you read was shaped by someone other than the author, and the exam will print one particular version. That is the band's central difficulty; the exam prints one version.

Nine entries on epic: the glossary's five-clause definition, the epic hero by contrast, invocation, Achilles' wrath in Pope, beginning in the middle, the epithet, Pope's couplets, whose form is on the page, and what the exam will print.

Long, serious, elevated, national.

AIL 1504 Epic, as the Anchor Defines It

The glossary gives epic as a genre of classical poetry: a long narrative on a serious subject in elevated style, focused on a hero or demi-god who represents the cultural values of a people, whose success or failure determines that people's fate. The hero carries a people's fate.

Embodies values, rather than falling.

AIL 1505 The Epic Hero

Unit thirteen's tragic-hero entry drew the contrast: the epic hero embodies his culture's values and appears in an epic poem, where the tragic hero is undone by a flaw. The glossary makes the comparison inside its tragic-hero entry rather than giving the epic hero its own; it is defined only by contrast.

The poet asks to be sung through.

AIL 1506 The Invocation

An epic conventionally opens by calling on a muse or goddess to sing the poem through the poet. The glossary has no headword for invocation. Recognising the convention tells you within two lines what kind of poem you are in, and two lines identify the genre.

Wrath named before the goddess.

AIL 1507 "Achilles' Wrath"

Pope's Homer opens that Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring of woes unnumbered, is what the heavenly goddess should sing. The subject is named first, the goddess is asked second, and the poem's whole action is compressed into one noun; one noun holds the whole action.

Nine years precede line one.

AIL 1508 Beginning in the Middle

In medias res means beginning in the middle of the action rather than at the start of the story. The glossary has no headword. Pope's argument notes the poem opens in the tenth year of the siege, so nine years have happened before the first line; the term is absent from the glossary.

A fixed phrase, repeated.

AIL 1509 The Epithet

An epithet is a fixed descriptive phrase attached to a name and repeated through a poem. The glossary has no headword. In oral composition the repetition served the performer; on the page it produces the formulaic texture readers recognise as epic, oral in origin and formulaic in effect.

The couplets are Pope's, not Homer's.

AIL 1510 Pope's Couplets

Pope renders Homer in rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines, the heroic couplet unit eight defined. Homer composed in Greek hexameters and did not rhyme. The form on the page is eighteenth-century English, and it belongs to Pope, because Homer did not rhyme.

Metre is Pope's; wrath is Homer's.

AIL 1511 Whose Form Is It

A question about the metre of that passage is a question about Pope. A question about the anger of Achilles is a question about Homer. Separating what the translator supplied from what the original carries is the skill this band exists to build; here the governing idea pays off.

Answer the words on the page.

AIL 1512 What the Exam Will Print

The board prints one translation and asks what its words do. That is answerable, because the words on the page are the evidence. A candidate need not know Greek; they need to avoid attributing an English form to a Greek poet, and never credit the form to the original.

Three entries on Greek drama: where the tragedy vocabulary began, the four features that identify a Greek play on sight, and the messenger's speech as narration inside a drama.

The tragedy terms begin here.

AIL 1513 Sophocles and Greek Tragedy

Unit thirteen worked Oedipus for dramatic irony and took the glossary's tragedy vocabulary from it: catharsis, hamartia, the tragic hero. Greek tragedy is where those terms originate, so the band's most examinable content has already been covered; unit thirteen already worked this.

Chorus, few actors, reported violence.

AIL 1514 What a Greek Play Looks Like

A chorus commenting between episodes, a small number of speaking actors, violence reported rather than shown, and a single location. Unit thirteen defined the chorus, the glossary having no headword. Those four features identify the form on sight; violence arrives as a messenger's report.

The worst events arrive as narration.

AIL 1515 The Messenger's Speech

Because violence happens offstage, a Greek play often gives its most dramatic events to someone describing them afterwards. That makes the messenger's report a set-piece of narration inside a drama, and unit ten's questions about a teller apply to it directly; unit ten's apparatus applies.

Six entries to close: Beowulf as always translated, alliterative verse, Hall's opening line, the kenning, the editor's braces, and Chaucer introduced with his partial readability.

Old English, always translated.

AIL 1516 Beowulf and Old English

Beowulf survives in a single manuscript in Old English, a language a modern reader cannot read without training. Every version a candidate meets is a translation, and this course reads Hall's. The text on disk opens by calling for attention to the Spear-Danes' glory; no modern reader reads it untranslated.

Stresses alliterate across the line.

AIL 1517 Alliterative Verse

Old English verse is built on stressed syllables sharing an opening consonant across a line, with a pause at the line's middle. The glossary has no headword for alliterative verse or for that pause. Unit six defined alliteration and caesura separately, and a pause divides each line.

The alliteration is preserved by choice.

AIL 1518 Hall's Line

Hall's translation opens that the Spear-Danes' glory through splendid achievements, the folk-kings' former fame, we have heard of. Splendid and Spear-Danes alliterate, folk-kings and former do too. The translator has kept the device, and keeping it was a choice, a translator's decision and not a given.

A compound standing for a noun.

AIL 1519 The Kenning

A kenning is a compressed compound standing in for a plainer noun, such as whale-road for the sea. The glossary has no headword. Hall's prowess-in-battle and folk-kings show the pattern, and a translator who preserves kennings preserves the poem's texture; whale-road for the sea.

The braces are the editor's summaries.

AIL 1520 The Braces in the Beowulf Text

The text on disk prints summaries in braces above passages, explaining who Scyld was and how he relates to Hrothgar. Those are the editor's, not the poem's. Amendment V-9 applies and they are never a teaching point, though they are useful to a reader; useful, and never the teaching point.

Partly readable, and that is the trap.

AIL 1521 Chaucer and Middle English

Chaucer wrote in Middle English, which a modern reader can partly follow. That partial readability is the difficulty: the text looks approachable and contains words that have moved or vanished. Unit three's whole procedure was built for exactly this situation, and unit three was built for this.

That is the smallest band, epic in Pope's Homer, the Greek stage, Beowulf in Hall, and Chaucer introduced, with the governing idea paid off on whose form is on the page. You can say the band is three to seven percent where orientation pays, test an orientation fact by whether it changes a first sentence, and name the translation problem as someone standing between you and the author. You can define epic by its five clauses and the epic hero by contrast, recognise an invocation in two lines, read Achilles' wrath as one noun holding the action, know nine years precede line one, spot the epithet, and separate Pope's couplets from Homer's unrhymed hexameters, answering the words on the page without crediting the form to the original. You can place the tragedy terms in Sophocles, identify a Greek play by chorus, few actors, reported violence and one location, and read the messenger's speech with unit ten's apparatus. And you can read Beowulf as always translated, define alliterative verse and the kenning, see Hall's alliteration as a choice, leave the braces to the editor, and meet Chaucer knowing the trap is that he is partly readable. Part two parses his opening.