Choosing what I wanted to Research was undoubtedly the easiest part of my corpus creation. I have always been interested in ancient civilizations so having the chance to look at their texts and see how they may have reflected their society intrigued me. I tried to pick texts that represented both different areas and different periods of time so that I would have a vast range of contexts from which to draw conclusions. I decided on The Aeneid which is the story of Aeneas and his travels, leading to the foundation of what later became Rome; The Odyssey which is the story of Odysseus and the trials and tribulations he went through on his return home after the Trojan War; The Iliad which is the story of war that follows Achilles and his efforts in the Trojan war; and The Argonautica which is the Story of Jason and his journey to recover the golden fleece with his crew of Argonauts. These choices cover hundreds of years as well as a few different locations. The Odyssey and Iliad were from the dark ages of Greece (1100-800 BCE). The Argonautica was from Hellenistic Greece (323-146 BCE). The Aeneid was from Imperial rome (27 BCE-476 CE). I think in using these four works (and later hoping to add Gilgamesh) I accomplished my goal of diversifying complex. After choosing my corpus I came up with a question:
What is the importance of legacy, and lineage (especially through sons) in ancient epic, and how does that reflect on the society in which they were written?
I believed that this question would allow me to a) dive deeply into my chosen works and b) understand a significant portion of their respective societies, then allowing me to compare and contrast those societies with evidence to back it up.
I chose to use translations that were made up of Shakespearian english. We talked a lot about the idea of defamiliarizing ourselves from our Corpi (spelling?) and I figured that since I had read 3 of the 4 the best way to do that, short of reading them in a different language (which would not even be completely effective considering I have read and been tested on the Aeneid in Latin), would be to read them in a different dialect. I understand that that introduces a new level of biases but I thought it was a risk worth taking for the possible rewards.
I enjoyed using all of the different digital tools that we used to analyze or Corpi, and had major success with 2 of the 3. However Jigsaw gave me a lot of problems because of my texts being to large. I talked to a few of my classics professors about ways that I could further split up books but I never found a way that would be beneficial to my thoughts and my question.
Looking to the future as I have said I hope to add Gilgamesh to get an even more variable swab of information when I choose to draw conclusions. As for questions I have answered, I have not fully answered any of them. I have made a few good first steps, such as discovering that The phrase “Son of” appears in all of the epics, pointing to the importance of lineage and who your father was. Aside from that I don’t yet feel comfortable drawing any sweeping conclusions.
SORRY I FORGOT TO POST THIS!