CROSSING DREAMS: THE NEGLECTED DREAMS OF THE HOMERIC POEMS AND THE POETICS OF EPIC

👤Author

Name: Dorin Garofeanu
Affiliation: Cercetător Științific III, Institutul de Istorie și Teorie Literară „G. Călinescu”
Contact: corina.soare63@gmail.com

📄Article

Citation Recommendation: GAROFEANU, Dorin. „Crossing Dreams: the Neglected Dreams of the Homeric Poems and the Poetics of Epic”. RITL, New Series, XVIII, 2024, 240–254. doi: 10.59277/ritl.2024.18.21
Title: CROSSING DREAMS: THE NEGLECTED DREAMS OF THE HOMERIC POEMS AND THE POETICS OF EPIC
Pages: 240–254
Language: English
URL: https://ritl.ro/pdf/2024/21_D_Garofeanu.pdf
DOI: 10.59277/ritl.2024.18.21

Abstract: This article explores the status of dreams in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.Dreams serve many different purposes in the epic; they also continuously elude all attempts to define or categorize them in a single, conclusive way. Stubbornly, they resist any model that would force them to conform to a single interpretation. I argue that there is a “subver­sive” side of dreams under(mining) the epic conventionality, a side that seems to question the epic itself but, at the same time, to originate it and I suggest that the poetics of the Homeric epics may be based precisely on a subterranean merging between the “awake” story of the epic and its dreams. The dreams of the Homeric poems seem to yield both epiphanies and the epic song; they are situated as an intermediary realm both between men and gods, and between men and their stories.

Keywords: Homer, epic, dream, poetics

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