Reason #982467 I love my major
Sep. 17th, 2009 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cygna_himeI have no trouble finding a conversation about Ursula LeGuin's comment on Virgil understanding women which segues quickly into whether or not Virgil really does *characters* at all, as compared particularly to Homer. And I can talk about this to other people who will be interested and have different perspectives! One of whom is writing a paper about classical mythology vis-a-vis the YA series Perry (?Percy?) Jackson and the Olympians!
Sometimes I forget that one can have rewarding conversations in meatspace too.
My opinion, of course, is that I find the Aeneid entirely too Because Destiny Says So. The Iliad has a fair amount of destiny, yes, but it's rarely something known explicitly by the people bringing it about. Aeneas knows a great deal about his destiny, and when he is informed what Fate says he should do next, he goes off and does it, Because Destiny Says So. Whereas fate in the Iliad tends to be something discussed only in narration, shared by the audience but not by the characters--except, notably, for Achilles, who is aware...that he has two equally likely destinies. He could always have gone home. He didn't, and after a certain point he couldn't without being horrifically OOC, but he could have. The Iliad is driven by characters: Agamemnon takes Chryseis as a slave, so her dad calls on Apollo, so Apollo send plague, so the Akhaians ask how they can lift the plague, so Calchas says Chryseis must go home, so Agamemnon says... The Aeneid on the other hand is driven by prophecies and divine intervention almost exclusively. It's the ultimate in plot-driven storytelling. Me, I am all about the character-driven.
Sometimes I forget that one can have rewarding conversations in meatspace too.
My opinion, of course, is that I find the Aeneid entirely too Because Destiny Says So. The Iliad has a fair amount of destiny, yes, but it's rarely something known explicitly by the people bringing it about. Aeneas knows a great deal about his destiny, and when he is informed what Fate says he should do next, he goes off and does it, Because Destiny Says So. Whereas fate in the Iliad tends to be something discussed only in narration, shared by the audience but not by the characters--except, notably, for Achilles, who is aware...that he has two equally likely destinies. He could always have gone home. He didn't, and after a certain point he couldn't without being horrifically OOC, but he could have. The Iliad is driven by characters: Agamemnon takes Chryseis as a slave, so her dad calls on Apollo, so Apollo send plague, so the Akhaians ask how they can lift the plague, so Calchas says Chryseis must go home, so Agamemnon says... The Aeneid on the other hand is driven by prophecies and divine intervention almost exclusively. It's the ultimate in plot-driven storytelling. Me, I am all about the character-driven.