Arrêt sur image et premier plan absolu dans les poèmes homériques de Michael Longley

This article aims at analysing the ways in which Michael Longley, in his poems inspired from the Odyssey, freeze frames the Homeric narrative and replaces it with a present out of time, extracted from the epic sweep. By frequently choosing scenes of recognition, as in the poems “Anticleia”, “Eurycle...

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Main Author: Melanie White
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses universitaires de Rennes 2014-06-01
Series:Revue LISA
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/6001
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author Melanie White
author_facet Melanie White
author_sort Melanie White
collection DOAJ
description This article aims at analysing the ways in which Michael Longley, in his poems inspired from the Odyssey, freeze frames the Homeric narrative and replaces it with a present out of time, extracted from the epic sweep. By frequently choosing scenes of recognition, as in the poems “Anticleia”, “Eurycleia” and “Laertes”, Longley encapsulates the reader’s attention within a lyric moment that is taken out of one of the key stages of the epic plot. Severed from all chronological and narrative perspective, this episode becomes an independent fragment. He explains his creative process thus: “From the outset, in my Homeric poems I pushed against the narrative momentum and ‘freeze-framed’ passages to release their lyric potential.” This freeze-framing creates a magnifying effect, which places each action accomplished by the epic protagonist on an absolute foreground without any wider perspective, as if each of these actions took place before the reader’s eyes, in a form of immediacy which reinforces the characteristics of the Homeric present as defined by Erich Auerbach in Mimesis. Similarly, the syntactical unity of these poems, which are often composed of one single sentence, reinforces this sense of present tense. Using diverse processes between translation and creation, Michael Longley proposes a variation on epic simultaneity by superposing different planes of reality, most remarkably thanks to the use of clauses linked by “as”, which end up being blurred into a single perspective. In this freeze-framed viewpoint, an emerging poetic consciousness is being shaped.
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spelling doaj-art-d4f4cdfdf6784689a8f41fba41c7560d2025-01-06T09:02:45ZengPresses universitaires de RennesRevue LISA1762-61532014-06-0112310.4000/lisa.6001Arrêt sur image et premier plan absolu dans les poèmes homériques de Michael LongleyMelanie WhiteThis article aims at analysing the ways in which Michael Longley, in his poems inspired from the Odyssey, freeze frames the Homeric narrative and replaces it with a present out of time, extracted from the epic sweep. By frequently choosing scenes of recognition, as in the poems “Anticleia”, “Eurycleia” and “Laertes”, Longley encapsulates the reader’s attention within a lyric moment that is taken out of one of the key stages of the epic plot. Severed from all chronological and narrative perspective, this episode becomes an independent fragment. He explains his creative process thus: “From the outset, in my Homeric poems I pushed against the narrative momentum and ‘freeze-framed’ passages to release their lyric potential.” This freeze-framing creates a magnifying effect, which places each action accomplished by the epic protagonist on an absolute foreground without any wider perspective, as if each of these actions took place before the reader’s eyes, in a form of immediacy which reinforces the characteristics of the Homeric present as defined by Erich Auerbach in Mimesis. Similarly, the syntactical unity of these poems, which are often composed of one single sentence, reinforces this sense of present tense. Using diverse processes between translation and creation, Michael Longley proposes a variation on epic simultaneity by superposing different planes of reality, most remarkably thanks to the use of clauses linked by “as”, which end up being blurred into a single perspective. In this freeze-framed viewpoint, an emerging poetic consciousness is being shaped.https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/6001epic poetryLongley MichaelHomer
spellingShingle Melanie White
Arrêt sur image et premier plan absolu dans les poèmes homériques de Michael Longley
Revue LISA
epic poetry
Longley Michael
Homer
title Arrêt sur image et premier plan absolu dans les poèmes homériques de Michael Longley
title_full Arrêt sur image et premier plan absolu dans les poèmes homériques de Michael Longley
title_fullStr Arrêt sur image et premier plan absolu dans les poèmes homériques de Michael Longley
title_full_unstemmed Arrêt sur image et premier plan absolu dans les poèmes homériques de Michael Longley
title_short Arrêt sur image et premier plan absolu dans les poèmes homériques de Michael Longley
title_sort arret sur image et premier plan absolu dans les poemes homeriques de michael longley
topic epic poetry
Longley Michael
Homer
url https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/6001
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