
Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings? (2017) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sight/why-doesnt-ancient-fiction-talk-about-feelings-rp
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woodruffw
Is this really the case?

The two archetypal Western ancient fictions, the Iliad and Odyssey, display
emotion front and center: Agammenon's greed and jealousy, the love between
Achilles and Patrocles (and the former's rage at the latter's death), and
Priam's mourning all come to mind. Similarly for the Odyssey, a story about
nostalgia in the most literal sense: the pain of Odysseus's estrangement from
his family, entangled with the pain of returning as a stranger. Homer even
refers to him epithetically as "many-pained" and of "many-sorrows."

That's a small sample size, but the same can be seen in Roman love poetry:
Horace does not hide the emotions of his subjects[1].

[1]:
[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Odes_(Horace)/Boo...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Odes_\(Horace\)/Book_I/5)

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freddie_mercury
I guess you are replying to the subject line instead of the actual article
because your post makes no sense in the context of the article.

As the article says, "In ancient literature, emotions were predictable
reactions to external actions or events."

All you've done is list people having predictable reactions to external
actions and events.... Just like the article says ancient literature did.

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coldtea
> _As the article says, "In ancient literature, emotions were predictable
> reactions to external actions or events."_

Ancient Greek tragedy has no more "predictable reactions" than a modern work
of fiction would have -- it goes into depth about the ambivalence of a
character's feelings for example.

Besides the article also says that people in ancient literature didn't openly
talk or display their emotions, except through action (tearing their hair,
etc). That's patently wrong even for the Iliad, and doubly so for Odyssey.

The article also bizarrely seems to restrict to literature after the fall of
Rome and up to the 15th century or so, as if that constitutes the whole of
being "ancient"...

Also, have the author read millennia old Greek, Chinese, etc poetry? They'll
find all kinds of inner monologues and discussions of feelings.

    
    
      My heart is no mere mirror
      That cannot comprehend.
      Brothers I have, but may not
      On brothers e’en depend.
      Tush! when I go complaining
      ’Tis only to offend.
      No stone this heart of mine is,
      That may be turned and rolled;
      No mat this heart of mine is,
      To fold or to unfold.
      Steadfast and strict my life is;
      Nought ’gainst it can be told.
      Yet here I sit in sorrow,
      Scorned by a rabble crew.
      My troubles have been many,
      My insults not a few.
      Calmly I think—then, starting,
      I beat my breast anew.
      O moon, why now the brighter?*
      O sun, why now dost wane?
      My heart wears grief as garments
      Inured to soil and stain.
      Calmly I think—then, starting,
      Would fly—but all in vain.
    

From "The Odes of Pei", several centuries B.C.

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jhedwards
I can't see a translation like that without attempting to provide a simpler,
more contemporary one myself:

My heart is not a mirror, it doesn't reflect accurately. Even though I have
brothers, I can't rely on them. If I tell them my opinion, I will meet with
their rage.

My heart is not a stone, it cannot be turned. My heart is not a mat, it can't
be rolled up. My character is excellent, there's nothing to nitpick.

My grieving heart is anxious, I am hated by the crowd of fools. I meet with
many tragedies, and receive many insults. Silently, I think about my
situation, startled awake I beat my breast.

The sun and the moon, why have you grown small? The sorrow in my heart, like
dirty laundry. Silently, I think about my situation. But there's no way to fly
away.

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lukev
This flows nicely, but I feel obligated to pick a few nits:

Unless you sourced the original Greek, that's technically not a translation --
it's an interpretation of a translation. Every time you rewrite something like
this (especially between languages) it's a "lossy" process and diverges
further from the content, sentiment and emotions of the original.

Secondly, the original clearly made efforts to preserve certain properties of
the original, such as its metrical structure. While it's a legitimate topic
for debate whether it's worth trying to preserve such things in a translation,
that IS something present in the original, present (however poorly) in the
translation, and absent from your reinterpretation.

Again, not that yours was bad, just pointing out that there are tradeoffs in
translation and that "reads better to the modern ear" is often in tension with
other advantages.

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joe_the_user
It seems like this sort of inquiry would connect with Julian Jaynes' The
Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. It is a
fascinating thesis, one what has been somewhat beyond science to test.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_\(psychology\))

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Latteland
Thanks for sharing that link. Jaynes' idea is interesting but I really think
we're no different than people in the past. I don't see how this change to
bicameral minds could have happened.

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tw1010
I don't think you can evaluate if that's true by reading books by people in
the past. There are a lot of different states of mind which are consistent
with the same output. I mean, just think about how many people with wildly
different states of mind (schizophrenic, autism) today who can write books
which are indistinguishable from books by "normal" people.

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akvadrako
I think you can assume most people write characters that think somewhat like
they do.

And is it true that schizophrenic and autistic authors do write the same?

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tw1010
There are a lot of people who don't think verbally, who nevertheless manage
(because they have to, because that's basically the only channel we have) to
share their ideas using language (in an indistinguishable way from people who
do think with words). Some people think with sounds, some are primarily visual
thinkers, some are informed by their emotions. I don't think it's infeasible
that there are other ways of thinking (or other states of consciousness),
which nevertheless have the capacity to produce the same type of output, in
terms of writing, as what we with our consciousness produce today.

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jonyt
Meh. First, the articles cited all have the same familiar problems of
statistical psychology studies - small sample size drawn from psychology
students.

Also, unrelatedly, I find ancient stories in many cases better than modern
ones because of modern literary fiction's obsession with recording the
minutiae of every character's thoughts. As the article notes, in one short
story David Foster Wallace takes 12 pages to record a boy walking to a pool
and jumping in. I can see the case for representing characters' inner states,
it's an important part of the story, but modern literary fiction takes it way
too far.

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yason
_I can see the case for representing characters ' inner states, it's an
important part of the story, but modern literary fiction takes it way too
far._

Considering how things are written now maybe the inner states are _the story_?
Maybe collectively we've shifted to being more interested in exploring human
thoughts and emotions and not so much the direct action anymore? And maybe in
a hundred years or so we'll shift our curiosity in some other part of the
interaction that is life.

Exploration always swings between taking it way too far and taking it way too
near.

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watwut
Most contemporary fiction is not like David Foster Wallace. Literary fiction
is special subset of fiction that moves its own way, have its own audience,
habits and so on.

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naasking
You could also argue improved technology allowed for more detailed narratives.
Hand copying scrolls and books means only the essential details of a narrative
would be recorded.

Hyper linking means you could now conceptually write a story from every
character's perspective and switch between them with a click.

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fjsolwmv
Why assume that feelings aren't essential details of a a narrative in some
stories?

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naasking
If they were, they'd be mentioned briefly as facts rather than a whole
narrative spent on justifying those feelings, like the Greek myths mentioned
in this thread that are about grief, jealousy, lust, etc.

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jacobwilliamroy

      So through the eyes love attains the heart
      For the eyes are the scouts of the heart
      And the eyes go reconnoitering
      For what it would please the heart to possess
      And when they are in full accord
      And firm, all three, in one resolve
      At that time, perfect love is born
      From what the eyes have made welcome to the heart.
      For as all true lovers know, love is perfect kindness
      Which is born, there is no doubt from the heart and eyes.*
      -Guiraut de Borneilh
    

>Tristan, you have drunk your death

>>If by my death you mean this agony of love, that is my life. If by my death
you mean the punishment [Iseult and I] are to suffer if discovered, I accept
that. But if by my death you mean eternal punishment in the fires of hell, I
accept that too.

What about the troubadours? It seems like their works had a common theme of
"My love for this person is an expression of who I am and what is happening
inside of me as an individual"

Everything I know about the troubadours I learned watching Joseph Campbell and
Bill Moyers on my TV, so I may be missing some important information.

~~~
Bayart
It's not long form fiction though, it's essentially song-writing. The success
of that genre, and it's exotic dimension, had a lot to do with its sentimental
overtones (and erotic undertones), which was at the time quite disruptive.
Socially it correlates with the rise of a new intelligentsia looking for more
than the epic fiction that were the literary bread and butter until then. It
colored the chivalric literature that came afterwards but even then the epic
form remained the framework of reference.

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jacobwilliamroy
Ah. Thanks for clarifying.

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aries1980
> The emergence of the novel in the 18th and 19th centuries introduced
> omniscient narrators who could penetrate their characters’ psyches, at times
> probing motives that were opaque to the characters themselves. And by the
> 20th century, many authors labored not just to describe, but to simulate the
> psychological experience of characters.

What about Scipio's Dream by Cicero?
[http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cicero_dream_of_scipio_02_...](http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cicero_dream_of_scipio_02_trans.htm)
One of the earliest psychoanalytical novel I know.

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JoeAltmaier
Didn't these old stories get acted out as they were told? Perhaps the emotion
was expected to appear on the stage, on the performers, not in the lines?

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fjsolwmv
The article is more about introspection of feeling than expressing emotion.

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ineedasername
I think they're reading the wrong things or overestimating the "inpredictable"
nature of emotions in modern lit. Oedipus is filled with emotions, and
certainly not all of any more or less "predictable" than something modern.
Actually it might be less predictable-- modern sensibilities woild not have us
respond the same way, leaving a baby to die, lillimg a stranger on the road
etc.

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scandox
Mimesis by Erich Auerbach is very good at tracing and considering these
developments purely by looking at the works and language.

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throwaway487548
Ramayana and Mahabharata do.

