All Shall Fade: Homer\u27s Foreshadowing of the End of the Heroic Age in The Iliad

Homer\u27s epic poems are filled with demi-gods and great heroes. However, in The Iliad, Homer undermines the triumph of these heroes by foreshadowing the end of their age and the forthcoming time of mortals. This essay examines how Achilleus\u27 shield, Nestor\u27s longevity, Paris\u27 effeminate nature, and Odysseus\u27 reliance on craftiness rather than physical prowess all indicate the rapid advance of the age of mortal men

Wordsworth's Aeneid and the influence of its eighteenth-century predecessors

William Wordsworth's attempt at translating Virgil's Aeneid reached as far as Book 4, and mostly survives in manuscript drafts. The literary influences behind it can be illuminated through the poet's correspondence, and analysed more fully by tracing verbal echoes and other resonances in his translation. Despite the hostility he expressed towards Dryden and Pope, the foremost translators of the previous age, Wordsworth followed them in using heroic couplets, and, as has previously been argued, his translation draws increasingly on Dryden's Aeneis the further he advanced with his project. But Wordsworth owes an equally large debt, hitherto unrecognized, to the eighteenth-century blank verse renderings by Joseph Trapp and others, who anticipated many of his supposed stylistic innovations

Book Review: Poetic Heroes: Literary Commemorations of Warriors and Warrior Culture in the Early Biblical World

Mark Smith’s Poetic Heroes: Literary Commemorations of Warriors and Warrior Culture in the Early Biblical World is a tour de force of philological commentary, comparative religion, and historical reconstruction that ultimately focuses its attention on the way warriors and their concerns appear in the Hebrew Bible. After an introduction posing the question of warrior poetry’s broad cultural appeal (1–12), Smith devotes part 1 to “the literary commemoration of warriors and warrior culture” (15–47), in which he lays out a glossary of heroic terminology and literary practice in the Hebrew Bible, highlighting the problem of finding cultural reality within literary representations. Part 2 (51–67) explores “three warrior pairs in Mesopotamia, Greece, and Israel” (i.e., Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Achilles and Patroklos, and David and Jonathan) and then “gender inversion in the poetry of heroic pairs” (68–95). Part 3 undertakes a detailed study of “human and divine warriors in the Ugaritic texts” (99– 208), focusing on the Aqhat and Baal epics as well as the Rephaim texts, and part 4 arrives at “Israelite warrior poetry in the early Iron Age” (211–332), where the focus is on Judges 5 and 2 Sam. 1:19–27. The book is replete with maximal citation to the secondary literature, featuring nearly 250 pages of endnotes (333–576) as well as a detailed set of indexes

Digital Competence and Literacy: Developing New Narrative Formats. The «Dragon Age: Origins» Videogame

The approach of this article is centered on the concepts of digital competence and new narrative formats. We aim to apply these dimensions to the videogame «Dragon Age Origins», winner of the 2009 videogame of the year award. Its features - plot, characters and interactivity – make it ideal reading material in other formats and are highly motivational for young people. The development of digital competence signifies new literacy, and it is necessary to find new stimulating resources that combine the fun and formative dimensions. Equally relevant are multimodal texts (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001), especially new narrative formats that imply social progress, as the ways of reading are different. The texts have acquired new formats with the same quality as books but they sometimes motivate users more. This is the case of «Dragon Age Origins», a dark heroic fantasy role-playing game set in a unique world containing a story to be read and experienced. Our analysis of the videogame discusses whether it should be considered a form of reading or not

Narrative Strategies in Benedikte Naubert's Neue Volksmarchen der Deutschen

No abstract available

The New Science of Virtues

Although Vico\u2019s New Science (NS) has been interpreted from the standpoint of practical philosophy, his treatment of moral virtues has largely been overlooked. I show the pivotal role they play in the NS, where the history of humankind is the story of how vices and virtues unfold, and the domain of free will is centered on the possibility of making virtues of the passions. This sheds new light on such notions as the \u201cheterogony of ends\u201d; the relationship between \u201cbestioni\u201d and humankind; and the threat of the \u201cbarbarism of reflection\u201d. Also, it allows us to focus on fictional, mythological and historical figures, which are exemplary for their virtues/vices and which provide an insight into the way virtues shape the stages of history. After presenting an overview of some of Vico\u2019s sources, I argue that he engages in a close dialogue with the Aristotelian tradition and interprets moral virtues as a historical framework and a hermeneutical tool, suitable for assessing the moral stages of human historical evolution on the route to and from civilisation