"Batrachomyomachia"

Analytical Essay # 114556

English > Analysis
Literature > Greek and Roman

"Batrachomyomachia"

A literary analysis of the "Batrachomyomachia", the ancient Greek parody of battle narrative.

2,548 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2009 Canada

Paper Summary:

The paper examines the "Batrachomyomachia" or "Battle of Frogs and Mice" demonstrating how the author manipulates Homeric conventions, ideas, values, and narrative techniques to produce an epic parody of battle narrative.

From the Paper:

"Parody is a type of literary imitation that retains the form or stylistic make-up of the primary work, but substitutes unfamiliar subject matter or content. The parodist closely mirrors the formal conventions of the work or works being parodied in terms of style, diction, meter, rhythm, vocabulary, and other elements to be found under the term "form." Additionally, the parodist substitutes content that is considered extremely out of place with the supplied form, "establish[ing] a jarring incongruity between form and content." Finally, as Lawrence Bliquez points out, parody, and the Batrachomyomachia in particular, is meant to be comic."

Sample of Sources Used:

Bliquez, Lawrence, J. "Frogs and Mice and Athens." Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), Vol. 107. (1977), pp. 11-25.
Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Classics, 1998.
Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
Kiremidjian, G.D. "The Aesthetics of Parody." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 28, No. 2. (Winter, 1969), pp. 221-242.
The Battle of Frogs and Mice (Batrachomyomachia). Retrieved May 20, 09 from http://omacl.org/Hesiod/frogmice.html.