Cheers Candice. I'm glad you weren't deterred by my dodgy translations. Your
comments have got my brain going: I wonder if the epic eschews the personal by
definition. Or is that the extroverted oral Homeric heritage - made for public
performance. When I think about recent ( all written for page) examples - narratives
like Coral Hull's 'Broken Land', 'authentic' epics like Alice Notely's 'Descent of
Alette', long poems like Alison's 'Quickning' - I find the personal as resonant a
component as in de Pisan's Ditie. Is that what happens when the pen replaces the
voice? Is that the direction for the epos after the death of Walter Benjamin's
Storyteller?
Ali
---- Original Message ----
From: Candice Ward
Date: Wed 10/31/01 8:06
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: the new TEXT - epic
Thanks very much for posting this link, Ali. I hadn't seen TEXT before and
found much of interest in the current issue: Alan Sondheim's inside account
of "Writing Online," Steve Evans's review of M.T.C. Cronin's _Bestseller_
(with its attractive notion of philosophical poetry that's "to some degree
attached"), and your own smart review of Alan Wearne's remarkable
(sub)urban/urbane verse-novel, _The Lovemakers_ (one of the pleasures of
which for me was renewing my brief acquaintance with the streets of
Melbourne).
And of course I found your article on Christine de Pisan's _Ditie de Jehanne
d'Arc_ fascinating, old meadevilist as I am. What a wonderful story it
is--and how well you tell it--of Christine's awakening to life and laughter
on hearing of the arrival of the prophesied _pucelle_, the virgin messiah of
medieval lore, in the person of a devout peasant girl whose military
competence seemed the greatest irony of all to the worldly Court poet living
penitentially under a self-imposed silence for the past eleven years in her
solitary abbey cell. The _Ditie_ resounds with personality even in its worst
translations, I've always thought, and thereby stands as testimony against
the conventional notion of epic as eschewing the personal--which makes me
very appreciative of your approach to it, including your emphases on voice
as a key element of epic (as well as lyric) poetics and on each woman's
unusual degree of competence in her sphere (_techne_ as a poetics of
personal life?).
The way you tease out Christine's _experience_ of Joan--as a radiance that
revived everything from the seasons in all their fineness to song as the
herald of a resurrected French sun (itself the portent of France shining
into nationhood)--makes Joan's words all the more moving (and resplendent)
when she finally speaks, a year after Christine's death and not long before
her own, of the voice she has been hearing since the age of 13--and
"rarely...without a brightness."
Thanks again for sharing this work of yours--Candice
> dear all
>
> some of you may remember the posts about the epic earlier on in the year. i
> kept
> flicking through them whilst writing the paper in the current issue of TEXT
> at:
>
> http://www.gu.edu.au/school/art/text/
>
> i'm preparing another one for the AAWP in november called 'epic situations of
> the
> contemporary narrative verse'.
>
> any feedback, positive or negative, is appreciated.
>
> Ali
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