I think it may be a comparison that's been made very many times before, but the Western film makes a good modern counterpart to epic. The Western, being a well-trodden path, is a comparably well defined genre and is similarly "hero-centric". There's quite a lot of dialogue on "morality"/"honour" etc.. At the risk of pushing the analogy too far, it's possible that the contrast between Homer and the more self-conscious Aeneid can be paralleled by the difference between John Wayne's and Clint Eastwood's oeuvre. Something on the hell on earth bit in "Pale Rider" compared to Book VI of the Aeneid?
The gangster/mafia genre might also be a fruitful alley. Adrian Pay 70 Dalling Road Hammersmith London W6 0JA 0181 846 9355 (Home) 07801 342 182 (Mobile) [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: M W Hughes [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 03, 1999 1:31 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: VIRGIL: (no subject) I keep on thinking that the 'epic energy' of these days has been transferred, for good or ill, to films. There may be some point in examining modern conceptions of political heroism in the Star Wars or James Bond cycles. Not that I can think of a modern fictional character, depicted in any medium, who operates in a political world and really matches the complexity and humanity of Odysseus or Aeneas. I think that some such characters, heroes constantly in danger of becoming antiheroes, do emerge in the film noir genre - and presumably in the underlying 'serie noire' novels. These stories tend to be full of political allegory but to be set against an overtly unpolitical background of 'mean streets'. Perhaps they are our version of minor epic, 'epyllion', able to explore a flawed character who is not a political leader but belongs in the ordinary world, like V's Aristaeus. He (much less often she) is able to visit extraordinary places, find some inner resources and have a chance of doing some good. - Martin Hughes On Mon, 3 May 1999, Betty Gabriel-Jones wrote: > At 21:09 2/05/99 EDT, you wrote: > > I was trying to make a modern day comparison with a writer/poet to > >Virgil. I am having difficulty. > > If it is epic that you are interested in look at any of the modern epic > writers, from Tolkien to Eddings. Look at the way that the common themes > of the epic recur - the journey, the temptations to be overcome, the > relationship with the gods or supernatural (reduced to a vague mysticism in > some cases) the magic or holy artifacts - Virgil's shield, Bilbo' ring - > and the culminating gathering of the forces of good and evil in a final > battle. Poets are harder, and it depends on what you call modern - there's > Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur, but thats C19th. > >----------------------------------------------------------------------- > >To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. > >Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message > >"unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You > >can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub > > > > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. > Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message > "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You > can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
