Nur eine erste, vorläufige Überlegung:
indulge ordinibus; nec setius omnis in unguem
arboribus positis secto uia limite quadret:
ut saepe ingenti bello cum longa cohortis
explicuit legio et campo stetit agmen aperto, 280
derectaeque acies ac late fluctuat omnis
aere renidenti tellus, necdum horrida miscent
proelia, sed dubius mediis Mars errat in armis.
omnia sint paribus numeris dimensa uiarum,
non animum modo uti pascat prospectus inanem, 285
sed quia non aliter uiris dabit omnibus aequas
terra, neque in uacuum poterunt se extendere rami.
(G. 2.277–287)
Ein epischer Vergleich steht wohl terminologisch nahe beim Gleichnis, fast eine Art Mini-Erzählung ("episch") mit einer gewissen Statik, weil fast eine Art Bild gezeichnet wird, in dem die "Handlung" aufgehoben wird. Man vergleiche hier Lennards Anmerkungen zu Milton...
PIPE the | SWEET BIRDS | in IG-| norant CA-| dence—
is logical, moving from a trochee, through a spondee, to an iamb and anapæst; it isolates “Sweet Birds” as a spondee and plays the shift from falling to rising rhythm against “ignorant”, and the cadence of “Cadence” against lengthening rising rhythm. But ‘The Sweet Birds Pipe …’ would be two iambs, or iamb + spondee, and either way metre would weaken. The syntactical oddity of Dickinson’s overwhelming preference for the dash is considered with “I heard a Fly buzz” (p. 145), but one consequence of her technique is that most of her poems are short, for such sequentially itemising syntax cannot be long extended without becoming self-defeating, nothing—more—important—because—everything—is—equally—stressed. A version of the problem mars Shelley’s ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’ (N864), the tendency of which to gush (or mush) is related to its 21 dashes and slipshod syntax. Conversely, the epic catalogue and epic simile deliberately create an overwhelming list or extended comparison, within which syntax of individual clauses, cola, and sentences is clear but the whole invokes the unimaginable or unknowable. Homer devoted 300 lines in book II of the Iliad to itemising commanders, identities, and ship-strengths of units comprising the Greek forces at Troy, embodying massive force in verbal extent, and Milton followed suit : the first colon of the Miltonic period on p. 118 combines catalogue and multiple (negative) similes to insist on the eternal tragedy of Satan’s arrival in Eden, and the opening of book IX on p. 268 repeatedly deploys catalogues (count ‘and’s) to beef up its sombre turning of attention to the Fall. Much as the sublime is supposed to be more than one can take in, so epic catalogues and similes push syntax to the boundaries of comprehension, and their real test (beyond the awe and wonder they should induce) is in regathering the syntactical thread once an epic digression is over. In corresponding mock-epic forms, the conclusion/return may also be the point of detonation, where an inflated comparison bursts and some kind of ‘common sense’ returns with a less grandiloquent and typically more muscular syntax.
John Lennard: The Poetry Handbook. A Guide to Reading Poetry
for Pleasure and Practical Criticism.Oxford 2005; S.270
Fokussiert aufs Simile:
The most revered form of simile is the epic simile, a lengthy comparison between two highly complex objects, actions, or relations. Homer is credited with inaugurating the epic simile, there being no known simile before the Iliad of such length or sophistication as the following: As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but
the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring
returning. So one generation of men will grow while another dies.
While the epic simile may be used by Homer for contrast, digression, or thematic amplification, subsequent poets such as Virgil, Dante, Ludovico Ariosto, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton refine the device, making it integral to the structure of the epic. Later poets frequently resuscitate specific Homeric similes (Holoka), as does Virgil when comparing the “whole crowd” to the “forest leaves that flutter down / at the first autumn frost” (Aeneid 6.305–10), or as does Milton when describing Lucifer’s “Legions” that “layintrans’t / Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks / In Vallombrosa” (Paradise Lost 1.301–3).
See UPAMĀ. H. Fränkel, Die homerischen Gleichnisse (1921); W. P. Ker, Form and Style in Poetry (1928); C. M. Bowra, Tradition and Design in the “Iliad” (1930); J. Whaler, “The Miltonic Simile,” PMLA 46 (1931); Z. E. Green, “Observations on the Epic Simile in the Faerie Queene,” PQ 14 (1935); Frye; K. Widmer, “The Iconography of Renunciation: The Miltonic Simile,” ELH 25 (1958); C. S. Lewis, “Dante’s Simile,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 9 (1965); P. Wheelwright, The Burning Fountain, rev. ed. (1968); M. H. McCall, Ancient Rhetorical Theories of Simile and Comparison (1969); S. N. Kramer, “Sumerian Simile,” JAOS 89 (1969); S. G. Darian, “Simile and the Creative Process,” Lang&S 6 (1973); D. Mack, “Metaphoring as Speech Act,” Poetics 4 (1975); J. Derrida, “White Mythology,” NLH 6 (1975); J. P. Holoka, “ ‘Thick as Autumnal Leaves,’ ” Milton Quarterly 10 (1976); R. H. Lansing, From Image to Idea: The Simile in Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (1977); G. A. Miller, “Images and Models, Simile and Metaphors,” and A. Ortony, “The Role of Similarity in Simile and Metaphors,” Metaphor and Thought, ed. A. Ortony (1979); J. N. Swift, “Simile of Disguise and the Reader of Paradise Lost,” South Atlantic Quarterly 79 (1980); K. O. Murtaugh, Ariosto and the Classical Simile (1980); A. Cook, Figural Choice in Poetry and Art (1985); J. V. Brogan, Stevens and Simile: A Theory of Language (1986); S. A. Nimis, Narrative Semiotics in the Epic Tradition: The Simile (1987); S. J. Wolfson, “ ‘Comparing Power’: Coleridge and Simile,” Coleridge’s Theory of Imagination Today, ed. C. Gallant (1989); W. Prunty, Fallen from the Symboled World (1989); S. Glucksberg, Understanding Figurative Language (2001).
Roland Greene: The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton University Press 2012; S.1307-1308