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The Iliad and the Odyssey are usually not considered part of the Epic Cycle. See the Griffin article in the references section, and Jonathan Burgess, The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle (Johns Hopkins, 1996). The poems of the Cycle are often considered post-Homeric, and to have been composed to tell the parts of the story of the war that Homer did not. Recently, Burgess and others have argued that the cyclic poems preserve traditions of the Trojan War that are as old as the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Some scholars include the Homeric poems with the Kypria, etc. as part of the cycle, but most scholars draw a contrast between the Homeric poems and the other Trojan War epics. --Akhilleus ( talk) 03:48, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't know much about the "cyclic" versions of the Iliad/Odyssey, but I thought it was just a matter of the beginning and ending being different. Are there more extensive variants?
Anyway, I think it would be valuable to say a bit more about how the cyclic epics were composed to fit around the Iliad/Odyssey, and the alternate ending of the Iliad that links it to the Aithiopis. A few more sentences about Neoanalysis might be useful as well.
I agree that we shouldn't assume that the Cycle was inferior to Homer, but it might be nice to quote Aristotle's judgment on the matter. If I remember right Burgess echoes the text that you wrote, that "the Iliad and especially the Odyssey could sound just as fantastic if only brief summaries of them survived"--I'll look, and add a citation if that's true. The Iliad has talking horses and single combat between a man and a river, after all. --Akhilleus ( talk) 05:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Spurious recent edit summaries aside, this article has used the BCE/CE convention consistently since the article was first expanded, 20:06, 22 June 2005. Editors with this on their Watchlist should ensure that "BC/AD" isn't forcibly intruded, contrary to Wikipedia MoS and common courtesy.-- Wetman ( talk) 12:57, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
-- Wetman ( talk) 13:15, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
"In more recent times it has been argued that the fantastic and magical content of the non-Homeric epics mark them as inferior."
That's the full current content of the section entitled "Reception."
It is supported by a single reference to a 1977 article. If that's what the article said, it would be ridiculous, and should not be used. For, let's not forget, the Cyclops, the Sirens, the visit to the land of the dead, all in The Odyssey. But the article doesn't say that. It makes a claim that The Iliad is unique in that it avoids the more supernatural explanations and tries to downplay the fantastic in The Odyssey (by arguing that a shape-shifting Thetis (Odyssey Bk 4) is more "appropriate" than a shape-shifting Nemesis (p. 41), but there is no attempt to say the Homeric poems are "superior" because they eschew the fantastic.
Even if the article did say that, why is this single article the only content which purports to cover the nearly 3 millennia since the "composition" of the Epic Cycle? If there is no there there, shouldn't the section be eliminated? Of course there is much more than this article. In fact in the first paragraph of the article is a quote: "enough and too much has been written about the Epic Cycle." If no one is willing to research what is available, this section, which purports to be part of an encyclopedic article should be jettisoned. AnthroMimus ( talk) 04:11, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
![]() | A fact from Epic Cycle appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 18 June 2004. The text of the entry was as follows:
| ![]() |
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Iliad and the Odyssey are usually not considered part of the Epic Cycle. See the Griffin article in the references section, and Jonathan Burgess, The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle (Johns Hopkins, 1996). The poems of the Cycle are often considered post-Homeric, and to have been composed to tell the parts of the story of the war that Homer did not. Recently, Burgess and others have argued that the cyclic poems preserve traditions of the Trojan War that are as old as the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Some scholars include the Homeric poems with the Kypria, etc. as part of the cycle, but most scholars draw a contrast between the Homeric poems and the other Trojan War epics. --Akhilleus ( talk) 03:48, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't know much about the "cyclic" versions of the Iliad/Odyssey, but I thought it was just a matter of the beginning and ending being different. Are there more extensive variants?
Anyway, I think it would be valuable to say a bit more about how the cyclic epics were composed to fit around the Iliad/Odyssey, and the alternate ending of the Iliad that links it to the Aithiopis. A few more sentences about Neoanalysis might be useful as well.
I agree that we shouldn't assume that the Cycle was inferior to Homer, but it might be nice to quote Aristotle's judgment on the matter. If I remember right Burgess echoes the text that you wrote, that "the Iliad and especially the Odyssey could sound just as fantastic if only brief summaries of them survived"--I'll look, and add a citation if that's true. The Iliad has talking horses and single combat between a man and a river, after all. --Akhilleus ( talk) 05:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Spurious recent edit summaries aside, this article has used the BCE/CE convention consistently since the article was first expanded, 20:06, 22 June 2005. Editors with this on their Watchlist should ensure that "BC/AD" isn't forcibly intruded, contrary to Wikipedia MoS and common courtesy.-- Wetman ( talk) 12:57, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
-- Wetman ( talk) 13:15, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
"In more recent times it has been argued that the fantastic and magical content of the non-Homeric epics mark them as inferior."
That's the full current content of the section entitled "Reception."
It is supported by a single reference to a 1977 article. If that's what the article said, it would be ridiculous, and should not be used. For, let's not forget, the Cyclops, the Sirens, the visit to the land of the dead, all in The Odyssey. But the article doesn't say that. It makes a claim that The Iliad is unique in that it avoids the more supernatural explanations and tries to downplay the fantastic in The Odyssey (by arguing that a shape-shifting Thetis (Odyssey Bk 4) is more "appropriate" than a shape-shifting Nemesis (p. 41), but there is no attempt to say the Homeric poems are "superior" because they eschew the fantastic.
Even if the article did say that, why is this single article the only content which purports to cover the nearly 3 millennia since the "composition" of the Epic Cycle? If there is no there there, shouldn't the section be eliminated? Of course there is much more than this article. In fact in the first paragraph of the article is a quote: "enough and too much has been written about the Epic Cycle." If no one is willing to research what is available, this section, which purports to be part of an encyclopedic article should be jettisoned. AnthroMimus ( talk) 04:11, 30 July 2018 (UTC)