The Trojan ass : Asinarius as mock epic

The medieval narrative poem Asinarius (late 12th early 13th c.) has commonly been considered a fairy tale ante litteram, predating the self-conscious development of the literary genre from early modem times onward. Under influence of the deeply rooted notion that fairy tales have their origins in oral-folkloric traditions, scholars who have studied this text have tended to do so in terms of its supposed indebtedness to folktales, possibly even derived from Indian mythology. Meanwhile, its essential nature as a piece of Latin literature has been largely neglected. This article proposes a literary contextualizing of the text, situating it within the broader field of Latin literature. More specifically, it argues that the Asinarius poet playfully engages with epic texts, both ancient and contemporary, dealing with the matter of Troy. Thus, the reader is invited to a mock-epic reading of the poem, all too easily obfuscated today by an anachronistic "Grimmian" perspective

Text and Music in Romanian Oral Epic

Margaret Hiebert Beissinger received her Ph.D. in Folklore and Mythology, with a specialty in Romanian and South Slavic, from Harvard University in 1984. She has carried on field research in Romania, both collecting her own materials and consulting archival holdings in Bucharest. She is presently working on a book treating epic poetry among the Romanian gypsies

The K2 Ecliptic Plane Input Catalog (EPIC) and Stellar Classifications of 138,600 Targets in Campaigns 1-8

The K2 Mission uses the Kepler spacecraft to obtain high-precision photometry over ~80 day campaigns in the ecliptic plane. The Ecliptic Plane Input Catalog (EPIC) provides coordinates, photometry and kinematics based on a federation of all-sky catalogs to support target selection and target management for the K2 mission. We describe the construction of the EPIC, as well as modifications and shortcomings of the catalog. Kepler magnitudes (Kp) are shown to be accurate to ~0.1 mag for the Kepler field, and the EPIC is typically complete to Kp~17 (Kp~19 for campaigns covered by SDSS). We furthermore classify 138,600 targets in Campaigns 1-8 (~88% of the full target sample) using colors, proper motions, spectroscopy, parallaxes, and galactic population synthesis models, with typical uncertainties for G-type stars of ~3% in Teff, ~0.3 dex in log(g), ~40% in radius, ~10% in mass, and ~40% in distance. Our results show that stars targeted by K2 are dominated by K-M dwarfs (~41% of all selected targets), F-G dwarfs (~36%) and K giants (~21%), consistent with key K2 science programs to search for transiting exoplanets and galactic archeology studies using oscillating red giants. However, we find a significant variation of the fraction of cool dwarfs with galactic latitude, indicating a target selection bias due to interstellar reddening and the increased contamination by giant stars near the galactic plane. We discuss possible systematic errors in the derived stellar properties, and differences to published classifications for K2 exoplanet host stars. The EPIC is hosted at the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST): http://archive.stsci.edu/k2/epic/search.php.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in ApJS. An electronic version of Table 5 is available as an ancillary file (sidebar on the right), and source codes are available at https://github.com/danxhuber/k2epic and https://github.com/danxhuber/galclassify v3: minor text changes and updated uncertainties in Table 5; v4: minor text changes to match published versio

The creation of the Ancient Greek epic cycle

Todorov's description of textual interdependence represents a fictional construct or web of narrative that certain critics attempt to identify and analyze.1 In a sense, this type of critic involves herself or himself in a constant pursuit of the lost paradise of a pure and unified text. Ancient Greek literature, however, provides us with access to a narrative tradition that approximates this single text: the oral tradition of which the Iliad and the Odyssey are the most prominent remains. We also possess in much more fragmentary form other narratives that belonged to the oral epic tradition; these comprise the epic cycle. In this paper I will examine the fall from narrative grace that the creation of the fixed texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey imposed upon the unified and universalizing oral tradition of the epic cycle.Not

XXZ chain with a boundary

The \XXZ spin chain with a boundary magnetic field $h$ is considered, using the vertex operator approach to diagonalize the Hamiltonian. We find explicit bosonic formulas for the two vacuum vectors with zero particle content. There are three distinct regions when $h\geq0$, in which the structure of the vacuum states is different. Excited states are given by the action of vertex operators on the vacuum states. We derive the boundary $S$-matrix and present an integral formula for the correlation functions. The boundary magnetization exhibits boundary hysteresis. We also discuss the rational limit, the \XXX model.Comment: LaTeX 38 pages, 3 figures; epsf, epic, eepic. (Minor changes in text, and references added

Voce voco. Some text linguistic observations on Ovid Heroides 10

In his article ‘Voce voco. Ariadne in Ovids Heroides und die ‘weibliche Stimme’ ’ (Mnemosyne vol. LXV, 2012), Christoph Pieper proposes a metapoetic interpretation of Ovid Heroides 10 in terms of a gradual awakening (and subsequent faltering) of a female (Ariadne’s) literary voice. The present contribution serves as a supplement to this article, in that it provides some text linguistic support for this metapoetic reading. In a linguistically and narratologically oriented discussion of the structure of Heroides 10, it is shown how epic and elegy literally merge in this poem, for instance by means of an ingenious mixing of discourse modes and time frames, and a subtle play with the inherent ambiguity of the present tense. The analysis reveals by which formal means the poet manages to reconcile all of Ariadne’s different roles and perspectives in the poem (epistolary speaker, epic speaker, elegiac speaker, narrative character), and integrate them, by way of literary experiment, in one coherent text. Keywords Ovid, Heroides, text linguistics, narrative techniques, metapoetic

The Epic of Pabuji ki par in Performance

Dr Wickett is an independent scholar and filmmaker specialising in the study of oral traditions, folk epics and belief systems in Upper Egypt from the perspective of the ethnography of speaking, poetics and gender. A fervent advocate of the importance of visual documentation for the analysis of oral text, Dr Wickett has produced several 'anthro docs', including For Those Who Sail to Heaven, a film that examines cultural legacy, beliefs and tradition at the festival of Luxor's patron saint, also accompanied by a monograph, published by the American Research Centre in Egypt. Dr Wickett's doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania on funerary lamentation is published by IB Tauris with the title For the Living and the Dead: The Funerary Laments of Upper Egypt, Ancient and Modern (2010), and future projects include a new compendium of Luxor legends and oral epics that will examine the enduring influence of ancient motifs on Egyptian folk memory.In the spectacular performance tradition of Pabuji ki par, duos known as bhopas and bhopis, members of an indigenous musician caste of Rajasthan, sing the epic of Pabuji to nomadic communities in honour of their patron deity, a fourteenth-century hero, at venues across the Thar desert. Standing in front of a resplendent painted scroll called a phad, the husband bhopa strums his fiddle-like ravanhatta, providing lead rhythm and melody while his wife, the bhopi, veiled and normally silent, dominates the performance with her high-pitched, emotionally charged vocal power. The bhopas' livelihoods are now under threat. Their main patrons, nomadic herders, still believe in Pabuji's divine ability to cure animals and bring rain to Thar desert dwellers, but pasture and water sources have been encroached upon and their survival is in jeopardy. This study comprises two distinct parts. The first explores the aesthetic, religious and historical roots to this pictorial narrative tradition, how the phad functions as a sacred temple to its devotees for healing rituals and considers how the performance of Pabuji's epic had become a vehicle for social critique by the disempowered. The significant role of the bhopi in articulating the woman's voice, the reincarnation and incorporation of famous revered characters from the Ramayana in the epic of Pabuji and its socio-cultural transformations post Indian independence are considered in the wider context of Indian epics. The second part provides summaries of four live performances of the epic, illustrating its stylistic and textual diversity.World Oral Literature Projec