The Neverending Story Trivia Quiz

Answer: Hesiod

A lot of what we know about Hesiod is found in the two surviving complete works that have been attributed to him: the "Theogony" and "Works and Days". Both of them are written in Epic Greek, a dialect based on Ionian, in dactylic hexameters - like the works attributed to his contemporary Homer. Hesiod is believed to have been born some time in the 8th century BC in the city of Cyme, in Aeolia (a part of Asia Minor), as hinted at by various references in his work. The "Theogony" ("birth of the gods"), considered the earliest of Hesiod's works (730-700 BC), contains a total of 1022 lines. It describes the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, with particular reference to the "Succession Myth", the overthrow of Uranus by Cronus, and of the Titans by Zeus and the other Olympians. The poem, written in the form of a hymn, begins with the creation of the world from primordial Chaos; it also contains the oldest account of the myth of Prometeus and his theft of fire on behalf of humankind.

"Works and Days" is a very different poem, didactic rather than epic in tone and content. Consisting of 828 lines, its main focus are the agricultural arts, in which Hesiod himself instructs his brother, Perses. However, like the "Theogony", it begins with an invocation to the Muses (one of the regular features of ancient epic poetry), and contains two important mythological references, related in some ways to the poem's main topic: the myth of Prometeus and Pandora, and the myth of the Five Ages.

Though attributed to Hesiod by ancient commentators, the 480-line "Shield of Heracles" (inspired by the description of Achilles' shield in Book XVIII of the "Iliad") is now widely believed to be have been written in the 6th century BC. Another famous poem that was thought to be Hesiod's work is the "Catalogue of Women", a fragment of a longer poem about the mortal women who became consorts of Olympian gods, and the offspring of these unions.

Euripides is known as an author of tragedies, while both Herodotus and Xenophon are historians; all three of them lived in the 5th century BC, the Golden Age of Greek culture.

Answer: Jason

Apollonius Rhodius served as a scholar and librarian at the famed Library of Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. As Homer's work was his main area of expertise, it is not surprising that he used the Homeric poems as a model for his own epic poem, the "Argonautica", based on the well-known myth of Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. The poem, however, differs greatly from its Homeric template, being influenced by the cultural milieu in which it developed. Rather than being a relatively straightforward narration, true to the spirit of Hellenistic eclecticism, the "Argonautica" includes digressions on scholarly and scientific topics such as geography, ethnography and comparative religion, as well as descriptions of marvels and oddities. The hero, Jason, is depicted in often anti-heroic terms, as are most of his companions, the Argonauts - sometimes to comic effect. The central element of the poem is Jason's love story with the sorceress Medea, described in Book III of the poem - so much that Apollonius has been called the inventor of the romance novel, a literary genre that flourished during the Hellenistic era. Another interesting feature of the poem is the author's identification with the thoughts and feelings of his characters - what in modern terms would be called interior monologue.

Divided into four books, for a total of 5836 lines, the "Argonautica" is considerably shorter than either the "Iliad" or the "Odyssey". Of the poems Apollonius Rhodius wrote on the foundation of various cities (including Alexandria itself), only sparse fragments remain. Other epic poems are known to have been written in the Hellenistic period (the three centuries between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the Battle of Actium in 31 BC), but only the "Argonautica" survived out of this presumably large production. The "Argonautica" had a huge influence on Latin poetry, and was one of the main sources of inspiration for Virgil's "Aeneid".

Answer: Krishna

With a whopping 200,000 lines, interspersed by extensive prose passages - for a total of about 1.8 million words - the "Māhabhārata" is the longest epic poem ever written, about ten times as long as the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" put together. At "only" 24,000 lines, the "Ramayana", the other major epic of the Sanskrit era, is considerably shorter. Based on real events, the poem is traditionally attributed to Vyasa, a legendary sage that also appears as a character in the poem, and is often identified with the god Vishnu himself. The importance of this monumental work of literature, written over a period of centuries (probably between the 3th century BC and the 3rd or 4th century AD, though some parts may be older) for Indian culture and the Hindu religion cannot be overstated: for its religious significance, the "Māhabhārata" has been called "the fifth Veda".

The poem consists of 18 books ("parvas"). Though the historic authenticity of the events related in it (a dynastic struggle fought by two groups of cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, culminating in the great battle of Kurukshetra) is still debated among scholars, the war is believed to have occurred between the 10th and the 8th century BC. Using the "story within a story" narrative device, the poem is framed as being narrated to a king who is a direct descendant of the Pandava prince Arjuna, and later narrated again by a professional storyteller. As can be expected by a work created by a process of accretion of different layers of text, rather than composed in linear fashion, the "Māhabhārata" may come across as chaotic, and in the past has been criticized as such by Western scholars.

One of the poem's major characters is Krishna, the eight avatar of Vishnu, whose life is narrated in the appendix to the "Mahabharata" called the "Harivamsa". Part of the poem's sixth book ("Bhishma Parva") consists of a 700-line scripture known as the "Bhagavad Gita" (often translated as "The Song of God"), a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna that takes place on the battlefield where the huge armies of the two warring factions have gathered. Aware of the death and destruction this battle of kin against kin will cause, Arjuna is filled with doubt and despair, and asks Krishna (his charioteer) for advice on the right thing to do. The ensuing dialogue between the prince and the god touch on a number of ethical and philosophical issues; Krishna advises Arjuna to perform his duty ("dharma") as a warrior by acting selflessly, regardless of the results.

Answer: Ovid

Though its sheer length (15 books for a total of 11,995 lines written in dactylic hexameters) definitely qualifies Ovid's "Metamorphoses" as an epic, this poem - which inspired a myriad of other literary works, as well as many masterpieces of art and music - is hard to pigeonhole. As its title suggests, this massive work deals with over 250 transformation myths, which Ovid adapted and reorganized from already existing sources. First published in 8 AD, during the reign of Augustus, the epic is organized chronologically, from the creation of the world to the deification of Julius Caesar. Many of the myths included in the work are well known from previous sources (like the quest for the Golden Fleece, the Trojan War, or the story of Daedalus and Icarus), while others are quite obscure. The overarching theme of the "Metamorphoses", as is the case of all of Ovid's poetic output, is love, personified as the god Amor (also known as Eros or Cupid), whose intervention can make fools of the gods themselves. Apollo, with his many unsuccessful love affairs, seems to be a particular target for the god of love. As various scholars have pointed out, the poem employs a wide range of tones, according to the material covered.

The first English translation of the "Metamorphoses" was produced in 1480 by William Caxton, the man who introduced the printing press in England. Ovid's influence was particularly significant from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance and the Baroque era: some episodes in Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" and William Shakespeare's plays were clearly inspired by the "Metamorphoses" , as were artists such as Titian and Bernini.

Cicero is not known as a poet, while both Virgil and Horace are counted among the major Latin poets.

Answer: Seamus Heaney

Written in the West Saxon dialect of Old English, "Beowulf" consists of 3,182 alliterative lines that tell the tale of the titular hero and his battles against several monsters. The poem's author is unknown, as is its date of composition, which is still disputed among scholars; the only surviving copy of the poem (which is not titled), included in the manuscript known as the Nowell Codex (housed in the British Library), was produced between 975 and 1025.

Beowulf's name, meaning "bee-wolf" or "bee-hunter", is probably a "kenning" (a metaphor-like compound word typical of Norse and Old English literature) for "bear". A warrior from the land of the Geats (modern southern Sweden), Beowulf comes to the court of the Danish king Hrothgar to free the king's hall from the threat of the monster Grendel and his mother. After slaying both monsters, he becomes king of his people, and fifty years later dies while fighting a dragon. The poem blends fictional and historic events, which are thought to have taken place in the 6th century; though composed in England, it features no English characters.

"Beowulf" has been translated many times into modern English, both in poetry and prose. Seamus Heaney's translation, on which the Irish poet worked for many years, was published a few years after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1995). Though generally very well-received, the translation was criticized by some Anglo-Saxon scholars for not being faithful enough to the original, and given the somewhat derogatory nickname of "Heaneywulf".

All the writers listed as incorrect answers are Irish Nobel Prize laureates. However, none of them was alive in 1999.

Answer: Siegfried

Though the character in Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle bears the German name of Siegfried, like the hero of the Middle German epic "Nibelungenlied", the story narrated in the four operas reflects the events of the Icelandic "Völsunga saga" (in turn inspired by some of the poems in the "Elder Edda"), where the hero is named Sigurd. The central element of the 13th-century "Völsunga saga" is Sigurd's slaying of Fafnir, an evil man turned into a dragon, and his taking of the latter's cursed treasure. Immediately afterwards, the hero meets the warrior maiden Brynhild, and frees her from the enchanted sleep in which the god Odin had plunged her. Sadly, the love of Sigurd and Brynhild is not meant to be: the hero marries another woman, Gudrun, and the quarrel between his wife and Brynhild eventually leads to his death.

Dating from the early 13th century, the Middle High German epic poem "Nibelungenlied" (The Song of the Nibelungs) frames Siegfried's tragic tale in the tradition of chivalric romance, concentrating on the love story between the hero and the beautiful Kriemhild, the sister of the king of Burgundy. However, the violence and bloodshed of the Norse sagas emerges in the poem's second part, where the bereaved Kriemhild unleashes her vengeance against her brothers and their vassal Hagen of Tronje, Siegfried's murderer. As in the Icelandic saga, the quarrel between Kriemhild and Brunhild, who marries the Burgundian king Gunther, causes the hero's death. Some important historical characters appear in the Sigurd/Siegfried stories - namely Attila the Hun (Atli/Etzel) and Theodoric the Great (Thidrek/Dietrich); Etzel marries the widowed Kriemhild, and the poem's final showdown (a veritable bloodbath) takes place at Etzel's palace on the Danube. Siegfried himself is believed to have been inspired by one or more historical characters, most likely the Frankish king Sigebert I, who was also assassinated on a woman's orders.

Consisting of about 2,400 four-line stanzas, the "Nibelungenlied" is divided into 39 chapters ("Aventiuren"); the name "Nibelungs" refers to the Burgundian royal house, while in Wagner's Ring Cycle it refers to the dwarf Alberich, the forger and owner of the titular ring. In 1876, two years after Wagner completed his Ring Cycle, English writer William Morris published his own retelling of the tale of Sigurd, a 10,000-line epic poem titled "Sigurd the Volsung".

The three incorrect choices are all protagonists of Wagnerian operas.

Answer: Roland

In the "Chanson de Roland" (Song of Roland), one of the finest examples of medieval "chanson de geste" (song of great deeds), Roland is the noblest of the Christian knights engaged in the fight against the invading Moors, and a nephew of King Charlemagne. This legendary figure, the epitome of medieval knightly virtues, is based on a real character - a military leader from Brittany who was indeed killed at the battle of Roncevaux Pass (778). However, the enemy force that ambushed Charlemagne's army in the high mountain pass in the Pyrenees consisted of rebellious Basques rather than "infidels". In the 11th-century epic - the oldest surviving work of French literature - Roland is betrayed by his stepfather, Ganelon, and dies blowing the olifant, his horn made from an elephant tusk, trying to summon the king; after his death, the angels take his soul to heaven. The poem, 4002 lines long, has been attributed to a poet named Turold; it is part of the cycle known as the "Matter of France", the French equivalent of the Arthurian cycle, dedicated to the deeds of Charlemagne and his knights (the paladins, or "palace knights").

Although nominally based on the "Matter of France", he two Italian Renaissance poems, Boiardo's "Orlando innamorato" ("Roland in Love", 1483-1495) and Ariosto's "Orlando furioso" ("Raging Roland", 1506-1532), are almost completely distanced from history. In these epic romances, the hero (named Orlando in Italian) is portrayed as a lovestruck man who fights to win the love of the beautiful Angelica, a princess of Cathay, rather than to defend the Christian faith. In Ariosto's poem, one of the undisputed masterpieces of Italian literature, Orlando is spurned by his beloved, and takes leave of his senses in a rather spectacular way - hence the poem's title. However, he is only one of a large cast of characters, comprising both Christians and Saracens, whose often fantastical adventures are narrated in a number of elaborate subplots. While the "Orlando innamorato" was left unfinished by Boiardo's death, the "Orlando furioso" - which takes up the story from where Boiardo left it - is very much complete, and with its 38,736 lines is one of the longest works of poetry in European literature.

Of the three incorrect answers, Gawain and Galahad are knights of the Arthurian cycle, while Oberon - though rooted in the French "chanson de geste" tradition - is better known as as the King of Fairies in William Shakespeare's comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Answer: Elizabeth I

Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" was conceived as an allegory of Queen Elizabeth I, written in a deliberately archaic style with the barely disguised intention of obtaining her favour. Indeed, when Spenser presented the first three books of the poem to the queen, she rewarded him with a pension for life (which at the time was a coveted achievement). Inspired by the major epic poems of antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance (in particular the work of Ludovico Ariosto, whom Spenser greatly admired), "The Faerie Queene" follows the adventures of six knights (one for each book), who embody the virtues of Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy. The knights and their adventures are rooted in Arthurian tradition, suggesting that the House of Tudor might be descended by King Arthur. The legendary king does indeed appear as one of the poem's characters, though in a very different role: he is the Knight of Magnificence, in love with the Faerie Queene Gloriana. The latter, together with the character of the virgin huntress Belphoebe, represents Queen Elizabeth. This elaborate tale also has a theological subtext, in which the Church of England (personified as Una) is portrayed as the only true faith, and the Catholic Church (personified as Duessa) is the epitome of falsehood; it also contains references to contemporary political issues, and emphasizes the connection between virtue and noble birth.

For his epic, Spenser invented a new verse form that was named the Spenserian stanza - eight lines in iambic pentameter, followed by a single line in iambic hexameter. The stanza was probably influenced by the "ottava rima" used by Ariosto and Torquato Tasso. Spenser initially intended his work to have twelve books, but he died before he could complete his project. As things are, "The Faerie Queen" contains 36,000 lines - almost as many as the "Iliad", the "Odyssey" and the "Aeneid" taken together.

Answer: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Published in 1855, "The Song of Hiawatha" is based on various legends that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had heard from his Native American friends and acquaintances, and especially on the writings of American ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. The titular Hiawatha is an Ojibwe warrior (named after a 16th-century Iroquois chief Schoolcraft wrote about) in love with Minnehaha, a woman of the Dakota tribe; the story is set on the southern shore of Lake Superior (called by its Ojibwe name of Gitche-Gumee, meaning "great sea"), in an area known as Pictured Rocks. Consisting of 22 chapters, for a total of 5,314 lines, the poem is written in trochaic tetrameter, the same metre as the "Kalevala", the much longer epic compiled by Elias Lönnrot from fragments of Finnish and Karelian folk poetry; Longfellow also employed poetic devices such as repetition and alliteration that frequently appear in the Finnish epic. Like the "Kalevala", "The Song of Hiawatha" opens with an introduction in which the poet illustrates the origin of his subject matter, followed by a creation myth; Hiawatha, fathered by the West Wind, is introduced in Chapter III. Nature also plays a prominent role in both poems.

Though regarded by some as the first truly American epic, free of European influence, "The Song of Hiawatha" is definitely a product of American Romanticism that presents a rather idealized picture of Native American history and culture. Even if criticized (and often parodied) at the time of publishing, "The Song of Hiawatha" was very successful in commercial terms, and by 1857 had sold 50,000 copies. The poem also proved influential for artists and musicians: among others, the third movement of Antonin Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" was reportedly inspired by it.

Longfellow wrote another epic poem with an American setting, as "Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" (1847), and was the first American who translated Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" (1867). All of the major 19th-century American authors listed as incorrect answers also tried their hand at writing epic poetry.

Answer: J.R.R. Tolkien

Though J.R.R. Tolkien owes most of his worldwide renown to his works of fantasy fiction set in the secondary world of Middle Earth, he was first and foremost a scholar of English philology and all things medieval - including epic literature, which influenced him as an author of fiction. Both published posthumously in 1985 as part of the volume "The Lays of Beleriand" (though composed much earlier), "The Lay of Leithian" and "The Lay of the Children of Húrin" are epic poems set in the First Age of Middle Earth, in the context of the tragic conflict between Elves and their allies and the evil Dark Lord Morgoth. However, Tolkien also tried his hand at producing his own versions of medieval epics and romances, such as the legend of King Arthur ("The Fall of Arthur") and the saga of the Nibelungs ("The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún"); both works are written in alliterative verse.

Tolkien also wrote "The Story of Kullervo", a prose narrative inspired by an episode of the "Kalevala", and produced a prose translation and commentary of "Beowulf" (see Q.5) - a text that he studied in depth and wrote about in his influential essay "Beowulf": The Monsters and the Critics". With the exception of the latter work of non-fiction, which was published in 1936, all the works previously mentioned were published posthumously by Tolkien's youngest son, Christopher (who passed away in January 2020), though most of them were written in the years between the two World Wars.