Epic narrative organizes myth but dissolves it through rational order.
Evidence
Philosophical criticism shows that the usual identification of epic and myth (refuted, in any case, by modern classical philologists) is wholly illusive. Epos and mythos are two distinct concepts, and indicate two stages in an historical process which can still be discerned where the disparate elements of the Odyssey have been editorially reconciled. If it does not already presuppose a universality of language, the Homeric narrative effects one; by using an exoteric form of representation, it dissolves the hierarchical order of society in the very process of glorifying it. To celebrate the anger of Achilles and the wanderings of Odysseus is already a wistful stylization of what can no longer be celebrated; and the hero of the adventures shows himself to be a prototype of the bourgeois individual, a notion originating in the consistent self-affirmation which has its ancient pattern in the figure of the protagonist compelled to wander. The epic is the historico-philosophic counterpart to the novel, and eventually displays features approximating those characteristic of the novel. The venerable cosmos of the meaningful Homeric world is shown to be the achievement of regulative reason, which destroys myth by virtue of the same rational order in which it reflects it. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 54
Categorization
- DEFINE: Establishes the epos/mythos distinction and epic-vs-novel relationship that anchors the excursion’s argument.
- XREF: Directly anchors the culture-industry thesis: this is the same rational order that later industrializes art into pacification. — connects to: Modernist mythic method orders chaotic contemporary history into form; Mythic figures are compulsive repetitions where curse, crime, and guilt form a closed cycle.; Myth is what consciousness must overcome to become human. (+1 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Modernist mythic method orders chaotic contemporary history into form; Mythic figures are compulsive repetitions where curse, crime, and guilt form a closed cycle.; Myth is what consciousness must overcome to become human. (+1 more)