2 - Epic and Lyric

Summary

This chapter explores the complex relationship between epic and the tricky genre of lyric. Spelman begins with brief historical orientation and then focuses on broader and more theoretical questions of genre, which have been given new impetus by Culler’s Theory of the Lyric. Taking ‘lyric’ in a broad sense to include iambos and elegy as well as melic poetry, Spelman considers some of the most famous and important lyric passages (especially drawing from Pindar and Sappho) that engage with Homeric epic, the Homeric Hymns and the Epic Cycle. Spelman ultimately examines how and whether lyric works out a definition for itself in contradistinction to epic—and whether such a definition can offer us a more nuanced understanding of what epic itself is.