Heroic Age (literary theory)
Encyclopedia
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).
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
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:
- Maurice BowraMaurice BowraSir Cecil Maurice Bowra was an English classical scholar and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1951 to 1954.-Birth and boyhood:...
- Hector Munro ChadwickHector Munro ChadwickHector Munro Chadwick was an English philologist and historian, professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Cambridge . He helped develop an integral approach to Old English studies. With his wife, Nora Kershaw Chadwick, he compiled a multi-volume survey of oral traditions and oral poetry,...
and Nora Kershaw ChadwickNora Kershaw ChadwickNora Kershaw Chadwick , CBE, was a noted medievalist.-Background:Chadwick was born in Lancashire in 1891. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge and lectured at St Andrews during World War I. She returned to Cambridge in 1919 to study Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse under...
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
Cantar de Mio Cid
El Cantar de Myo Çid , also known in English as The Lay of the Cid and The Poem of the Cid is the oldest preserved Spanish epic poem...
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).