Summation

All of the texts we covered this semester have some features of epic that we have discussed - they read and interpret a mythical past to say something about the present, the search for origins, multiple points of view, and a community under threat and its salvation or destruction. But this course could just have easily been titled "War and Literature in the Ancient and Medieval World" - for though all of these texts share these features we have identified, we have said little about the elephant in the room before us: their pre-occupation with wars offensive, defensive and civil. Are epic and warfare inevitably tied together? The Odyssey tells of the aftermath of war, and the return home of one of its veterans, and the new conflicts he faces on his return, his attempt to reintegrate himself into his society. Beowulf I think asks its audience to re-evaluate its own heroic past in the light not only of Christian morality, but in the context of a newly united England and Scandinavia, which would soon face its end in an invasion by a Norman conqueror who had claims to the throne that could not be dismissed easily. The Arthurian texts have as their constant looming horizon the inevitable fall and defeat of Arthur and the destruction of the society he and his fellow knights built. It is as if epic would tell us that no peace is permanent, and all victories are fleeting. Identities both individual and collective are shaped in the long, dreary years of continual warfare and conflict, but also in the heated moments on the battlefield, and in some ways the stories of epic tradition are meant to point to gloriously bloody campaigns, old wounds, and dimly recalled feuds as collective signposts for their intended audiences. These patriotic indices are often lost on us modern readers; the ancient grievances of Rome and Carthage are dry historical facts for which we have only dimly understood reference points in the present day.

Chris Hedges, a longtime war correspondent who now chronicles the effect of war on the human psyche notes the connection between myths of the past - of ethnic, religious, and national conflict - and their use in the present day to justify conflicts in the Middle East, Kosova and other war-torn regions. He notes in War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that
"Most national myths, at their core, are racist . . . By finding our identity and meaning in separateness the myth serves another important function: It makes communication with our opponents impossible" (24). That is, the myths that underwrite warfare ask that we ignore our common humanity. He also quotes Simone Weil, who wrote about the nature of violence in the Iliad: "Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, . . . as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates" (21). The heady narcotic of wielding force unmakes a million years of evolution in a single instant, and turns the most peaceful, ordinary setting - a city park, a busy street, a college campus -- into a place of slaughter.
But I would also point out that epic in its most interesting and finest moments points the utter sameness of opposed forces and cultures, even as it seems to revel in bloodshed. The sins of the protagonist are often revisited and reborn in the enemy -- if the enemy is not identical with the protagonists themselves. Beowulf's enemies are as human as they are monstrous, and so our own monstrosity is inextricably bound with our humanity. Priam and Achilles find their common humanity in perhaps the only two cultural universals: food, and grief for the dead. If you find value in the epics of the ancient and medieval worlds, that value is bound to be idiosyncratic and different for each of you. But I would ask you to consider what ethical demands these texts make on us: do they ask us to accept the hero uncritically, the cause for war without question, the results without mourning?

Comments

[lynda]

I don't know if the authors we read meant to write coded anti-war epics, but my intuit goes to The Aenied and Beowulf and maybe a hint of suspicion with The Iliad and D'Arthur. My sympathy goes to the heros who are killers, as well to those who are victims. Both are painted into the cyclical trope of violence stemming from revenge/pride/stupidity etc...that faced the young and brave and the old and wise. Human nature informs these stories, which is our history and fate.