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1 results

  • 15 - Humour in Greek Epic

  • from Part V - Epic Feelings
  • Edited by Emma Greensmith, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic
    Published online:
    04 December 2024
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024, pp 318-333

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the elusive notion of humour in Greek epic. According to Aristotle (Poetics 1448b24) it was Homer who, along with founding most other genres of literature, established ‘the schema of comedy’. Hosty begins by surveying our limited evidence for Homeric humour – both within the Iliad and Odyssey and in mysterious works like the Margites – and proceeds to examine the relationship between Greek epic and the humorous, analysing the potentially whimsical elements of the Epic Cycle, the wry domestic detail of Callimachus’ Hecale, the determinedly straight-faced pastiche of the Batrachomyomachia, and the gleeful absurdity of Lucian’s ‘prose epic’ the True Histories.