Poetic form and narrative theme in early Greek and Akkadian epic

This paper compares the narrative techniques of early Greek and Akkadian epic. My argument is developed in two parts. Starting with the seemingly unbridgeable divide between oral and literate poetry I ask, first, whether the art of the Greek bard can in any sense be compared to that of the Akkadian scribe. My answer is a cautious "yes": while there are undoubted differences, Akkadian epic uses many of the forms and techniques that are also found in Greek epic, including ring composition, catalogues, traditional themes, type-scenes and formulae. The second half of my paper starts not from the differences between Greek and Akkadian epic but from their shared background in the narrative culture of the ancient Mediterranean and the Near East. I argue that Greek and Akkadian epic can be seen as local offshoots of a much wider tradition of storytelling about the history of gods and men. Both focus on the point in that history where attention shifts from the divine to the human plane. I argue that this has implications at the level of narrative form as well as theme. Thus, we see the double arc that is so characteristic of Babylonian epic narrative extended in the Epic of Gilgamesh (or just Gilgamesh) to allow for a third, properly human, chapter in the protagonist's story. Likewise, Homer reworks standard narrative patterns of conflict and resolution among the gods to articulate a larger shift from a divine to a human perspective. I end by considering direct speech as, perhaps, the most important feature of epic storytelling in Homer and Gilgamesh. I argue that its prominence and specific use in these texts has nothing to do with oral or literate composition and everything with the shared project of telling the story of man in a world - and a literary genre - that is fundamentally dominated by the gods.