Reading Affects in Epic
from Part V - Epic Feelings
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2024
This chapter focuses on emotions and affects in Greek epic. Leven demarcates the difference between emotion and affect in this context: emotions are defined as complex phenomena that involve embodied minds, gendered individuals and their societies, as well as instincts, cognition and values; and affects are understood as more ineffable feelings, which lie ‘beneath’ the surface: the innumerable microevents that bodies and selves undergo in their experience of the world around them, rarely indexed in conventional language. The chapter then starts by outlining the main questions that have divided scholarship on ancient emotions in general, and epic emotions in particular, with special focus on two cases, anger and fear. It then turns to episodes featuring what Leven calls ‘scenes of affect’ and argues, first, that epic is not in fact solely dominated by ‘big emotions’ but is rather shaped by a multitude of affects. Focusing on representative passages of the Odyssey, the Argonautica, and the Posthomerica, the chapter ultimately shows that epic provides its own tools to conceptualise these affects.
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