Heroic Age (literary theory)
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- For other uses, see Heroic Age (disambiguation).
In 20th century studies of oral poetry and traditional literature, the Heroic Age was postulated as a stage in the development of human societies likely to give rise to legends about heroic deeds. According to some theorists, oral epic poetry would be created at the same period, and would be transmitted, by singers who displayed less creativity, through later periods. Scholars who adopted the theory of a heroic age include:
A widely shared view was that each society would pass through a heroic age only once. This apparently explains why, in the Chadwicks' world survey of oral and traditional poetry, The Growth of Literature, medieval European epics such as the French Chansons de geste and the Spanish Cantar de Mio Cid are omitted: those societies are taken to have passed through a heroic age earlier.
Bryan Hainsworth has suggested that in the various so-called Heroic Ages named by modern scholars "what is described is a by-product ... of the tendency of heroic poetry to congeal into cycles, often ... around a signal event" (1993, p. 40).
[edit] Bibliography
- C. M. Bowra, Heroic poetry. London: Macmillan, 1952.
- H. M. Chadwick, The Heroic Age. London, 1912.
- H. Munro Chadwick, N. Kershaw Chadwick, The growth of literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932-40.
- J. B. Hainsworth, The Iliad: a commentary. Vol. 3: books 9-12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
