Skip to main content

Creative Writing 101 with Virgil and Homer // Abigale Bell


As I was reading Virgil's Aneid, I couldn't help but compare the story to the Iliad. Here we have two great epics that recount the actions of the gods and the actions of humans in relation to the gods. I was interested to see the differences in how the authors depicted their gods. Instead of focusing on the details of the story itself, I took a step back and looked at the big picture.

One of the main differences I noticed between Virgil's and Homer's works is the style of storytelling. Homer throws the reader right into the action of the story. One is immediately caught up in the middle of the events. There seemed to be a presupposition that Homer's readers would know the background of the story. Virgil's writing is different. In the Aeneid, the reader is not immediately thrown into the middle of the story, instead, they are led into it by an introduction of sorts. This introduction gives the reader a window into the background of the story, but it also builds the stage for the main character who comes in to tell the story from his perspective. 

Something else I noticed when considering the Aeneid in light of the Iliad, was the difference in the voices of the authors. Homer's account of the gods and their involvement with humans was very dramatic. He describes scenes so magnificently that the reader (or listener) is not able to experience the story. Virgil takes a milder approach in his descriptive language of the gods, but he is very realistic when describing events. He tells the story like great fiction as if the listener could actually be in the moment experiencing what the character experiences. 

Commented on Hailey's and Jamie's posts.

Comments

  1. Lily CaswellNovember 12, 2020 at 6:55 AM

    Abigail, I though it was interesting how Virgil kind of led up to the events in the Aeneid. It’s like he assumed his audience wouldn’t have been familiar with the major events in the Iliad and just did a basic review of them. I also noticed the difference about Homer and Virgil talking about the gods and maybe that’s a representation of their cultures. The Roman gods were very much not involved in the every day life of Romans while the Greek gods were everywhere.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haylee LyndNovember 12, 2020 at 8:10 AM

    Something I found interesting as well was the invocation of the muse. The Greek poets did it at the beginning of almost all their stories. The Illiad calls the muse in the first line, but Virgil begins the Aneid by saying "I sing..." and waits several lines before saying his invocation, as though he does it out of obligation rather than a true belief in divine inspiration.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Word Painting in Vesta—Lily Caswell

  Word painting in Weelkes’s As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill Descending is quite interesting. And because that is a really long title, I’m calling it Vesta from now on. Word painting is basically when the melody matches up with the lyrics. So in Vesta, when it says “ascending” and “descending”, there are obviously scales going up and down. The madrigal was written for six voices to sing unaccompanied, so when they start to come together, it matches with the lyrics; so if the lyric says “two by two”, there are only two voices; “three by three” there is another voice added, and so forth. All the parts combine in exclamation before Vesta before it is left “all alone” to the highest soprano. All the way to the end of the piece, word painting continues when shouts of “Long live fair Oriana” with the bass sustaining long notes. Word painting in and of itself is a highly interesting topic because a musician takes the words of a poem or a sonnet and writes a melody line that pertains to cer...
4 comments
Read more

Welcome to Honors! (Please Read This)

     Welcome to Honors! My name is Abbie Hedden and I serve as President of Honors. Jamie Peters is our Vice President, and Caroline Tucker is our Secretary. I look forward to getting to know all of you in class during this upcoming year! There are a few things you need to know about Honors.      There are no quizzes or tests in Honors. Grades are provided based on attendance/class participation, blogs, explication papers, and the research paper. The papers will be addressed at a later date, as they aren't due until later in the semester. However, there is a blog post due every week. Bearing that in mind, here are the requirements! Criteria Blog posts are due Monday at 11:59PM , and comments are due Tuesday at 9:29AM . DO NOT BE LATE ON ASSIGNMENTS. Points WILL be deducted from late assignments! Be sure to have your name in your Blogger profile Blog posts should include at least one to two paragraphs on that week’s reading assignment.  Blog posts shoul...
Post a Comment
Read more

Topsy Turvy Day—Lily Caswell

  I cannot remember how old I was when I watched T he Hunchback of Notre Dame  but I was at least 8 or 9. I didn’t realize until probably a couple of years ago that the song  “Topsy Turvy” and the corresponding event was actually based on a real festival. The Feast of Fools was usually held on January 1 though it could have also been held on the 6 th  or the 13 th  of January. It was portrayed as a parody of Catholic feasts. Church bells were rung improperly, songs were sung out of tune, and the celebrants “wore strange garments and masks, and used puddings, sausages, and old shoes as censers.” (Seaton, p 77) In the song “Topsy Turvy”, it says “It’s the day the devil in us gets released / It’s the day we mock the prig and shock the priest / Everything is Topsy Turvy at the Feast of Fools… And it’s the day we do the things that we deplore ‘ On the other three hundred and sixty-four.”  I commented on Haylee Lynd’s and Jamie’s posts. Sources: https://www.brita...
1 comment
Read more