| Epic offers non-Freudian formations of family, parenthood, and identity. The Iliad and the Comedy provide normative, even prescriptive models of family. The Iliad disapproves of improper forms of parenthood and failure to respect the parent-child bond (both exhibited by Agememnon), and revises its material to decrease conflicts between parents and children. Dante sees the parent-child relationship as morally useful, because parents should nurture and educate children into Christianity, and children should care for aged parents, since all family activities operate to help the individual reach salvation. Vergil's treatment of families is not didactic but illustrative. He takes devoted Homeric parents for granted and shows what can happen when politics enter into family life.;The Iliad's parents depend on adult children for protection and support in old age, a change at immortalized memory, and even their own identities: see Odysseus' self-descriptions as "the father of Telemachus." Their children want to return home to reciprocate the nurture their parents gave them. Even gods, who need no physical support for human memorials, love their mortal children: witness Zeus' grief at the death of Sarpedon. Children bring meaning and purpose to the lives of their parents, who are unwilling to live without them.;Vergil shows the devoted parents of Homeric epic as outdated; in the Aeneid, close family ties are one of the few stable and meaningful elements in a deceptive and often violent world, but they receive none of the special privileges granted them in the Homeric world. Aeneas' family demonstrates the potential future of the family in the Roman Empire: separated by distance, fate, and state-oriented pietas, which can interfere with the private lives of families.;Dante adapts the families of ancient myth and history to Christian purposes, and limits parent-child ties because they can interfere with the individual's relationship to God, the true Father. He offers Farinata, Ugolino, and Ulisse as negative models of parenthood, and Abraham and Mary as positive models, and privileges adoptive parent-child relationships (including poetic ones) over biological ties, because they are less vulnerable to the dangers of emotions. |
