Abstract
Sexual competition in the epics is looked at for examples of conflict between older or more powerful males and younger or subordinate males over fertile females, a pattern that would have characterized the human environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA). In the Iliad and Odyssey, the Old Testament, the Arthurian Cycle (and its Celtic originals), the Volsunga Saga, and El Cid, this pattern is found to be the frame or prime mover or a central feature of the narrative. It is suggested that changes through time in the literary treatment of the theme reflect a progressive dilution of the traditional power of older males over mate choice.
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To respond to them all would involve writing a whole book rather than a transcript of a twenty-minute paper, but the very number and quality of critical comments encourages me to think that at least I have hit on a worthwhile theme, even if I haven’t covered all the angles in this short space. I have tried to do without references, but the rather cryptic summary of the “basic pattern” is fully spelled out in my book,The Red Lamp of Incest (New York: Dutton, 1980; second edition published by Notre Dame University Press, 1983), and the obviously contentious point about the “secondary” nature of the incest theme, particularly in the Theban cycle of Sophocles, is dealt with at length in “The Virgin and the Godfather” (Chapter 3 of my book,Reproduction and Succession, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1993).
Robin Fox is University Professor of Social Theory at Rutgers University, where he founded the Department of Anthropology in 1967. He previously taught at the universities of London and Exeter in the UK, after education at the London School of Economics and Harvard and fieldwork in New Mexico and Ireland. He was for twelve years a director of research for the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation, which supported much of the earlier work in sociobiology. He is the author of twelve books, including one of verse, drama, and essays,The Violent Imagination (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1989).
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Fox, R. Sexual conflict in the epics. Hu Nat 6, 135–144 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02734175
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02734175