The Epic World by Lothspeich, Pamela;

Short description:

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The go-to volume for anyone interested in epic literature in a global framework. Engaging with powerful stories and ways of knowing beyond those of the predominantly white Global North, this field-shifting volume exposes the false premises of ""Western civilization"" and ""Classics,"" and brings new questions and perspectives to epic studies.

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Long description:

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Reconceptualizing the epic genre and opening it up to a world of storytelling, The Epic World makes a timely and bold intervention toward understanding the human propensity to aestheticize and normalize mass deployments of power and violence. The collection broadly considers three kinds of epic literature: conventional celebratory tales of conquest that glorify heroism, especially male heroism; anti-epics or stories of conquest from the perspectives of the dispossessed, the oppressed, the despised, and the murdered; and heroic stories utilized for imperialist or nationalist purposes.

The Epic World illustrates global patterns of epic storytelling, such as the durability of stories tied to religious traditions and/or to peoples who have largely ""stayed put""; the tendency to reimagine and retell stories in new ways over centuries; and the imbrication of epic storytelling and forms of colonialism and imperialism, especially those perpetuated and glorified by Euro-Americans over the past 500 years, resulting in unspeakable and immeasurable harms to humans, other living beings, and the planet Earth.

The Epic World is a go-to volume for anyone interested in epic literature in a global framework. Engaging with powerful stories and ways of knowing beyond those of the predominantly white Global North, this field-shifting volume exposes the false premises of ""Western civilization"" and ""Classics,"" and brings new questions and perspectives to epic studies.

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Table of Contents:

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List of Figures and Tables

List of Contributors

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration

Introduction

Part I. Ways of Reading Epics

1. A Critical Race Studies Approach: Race and Racecraft in Apollonius’s Argonautica

Jackie Murray

2. A Postcolonial Studies Approach: From Fanon’s Revolutionary Literature to Glissant’s Relation

Sneharika Roy

3. An Ecocritical Approach: Early Modern English Epic Possibilities

Chris Barrett

4. An Affect Studies Approach: Reading Non-Normative Masculinities in Homer’s Iliad

Melissa Mueller

5. A Network Approach: Tracking Female Power in Seven Epic Narratives

Pádraig MacCarron, Máirín MacCarron, Sílvio Dahmen, Joseph Yose, and Ralph Kenna

Part II. A Sample of Ancient Iterations (The Beginnings-1000 CE)

6. The Epic Bible: Authority and Identity in the Face of Adversity

Shawna Dolansky and Sarah Cook

7. Gilgamesh and Tiamat Abroad: (Mis-)Reading Mesopotamian Epic

Karen Sonik

8. (Re)Inventing an Epic: Reading the Tamil Cilappatikāram across Time

Morgan J Curtis

9. Sri Lanka’s Mahāvaṃsa, The Great Chronicle

Kristin Scheible

10. The ‘Epic of the Anglo-Saxons’: The Many Cultural Streams of Beowulf

María José Gómez Calderón

11. Ecological Colonialism in Vergil’s Aeneid

Laura Zientek

Part III. ""Middle"" Period Re-castings and Innovations (1000-1850 CE)

12. Sunjata Fasa and the Oral Epic Tradition of Mali

Kassim Kone

13. Kingship and Power in Sirat Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan and the Prophetic Königsnovelle

Helen Blatherwick

14. A Battle of Equals: Rustam and Isfandiar in Illustrated Manuscripts of the Shāhnāma

Behrang Nabavi Nejad

15. From Oghuz Khan to Exodus: Lineage, Heroism, and Migration in Oghuz Turk Tradition

Ali Aydin Karamustafa

16. The ""Hindu"" Epics? Telling the Ramayana and the Mahabharata in Premodern South Asia

Sohini Sarah Pillai

17. Trickster as Epic Narrator in Malaysia’s Hikayat Hang Tuah

Sylvia Tiwon

18. Connecting with Ancestors: ""Imported"" and Indigenous Epics in Southeast Asia

Adrian Vickers

19. Epic Contestations: What Makes an Epic in Multi-ethnic China?

Mark Bender

20. Whose Epic is it, Anyway? Gesar and the Myth of National Epic

Natasha Mikles

21. Ode to Mongolian Heroism: The Oirat Epic Jangar

Chao Gejin

22. Placation, Memorial, and History in Japan’s The Tale of the Heike and Beyond

Elizabeth Oyler

23. Guaman Poma’s Epic Letter: A Complex Salvo against Spanish Colonialism in the Andes

Scotti M. Norman

24. Human Owls and Political Sorcery in the Anales de Cuauhtitlan

Martín Vega Olmedo

25. An ""Epic of Sorts"": Gaspar de Villagrá and His Impossible Epic of the New Mexico

Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez

26. Gender Performance and Gendered Warriors in the Albanian Epic

Anna Di Lellio and Arbnora Dushi

27. Slavic Oral-Traditional Epic in the Ottoman Ecumene

Robert Romanchuk

28. Empire and Resistance in South Slavic and Romanian Oral Epic Poetry

Margaret Beissinger

Part IV. New Forms and Foundational Stories (1850-present)

29. ""It Shall be Ruled by Swallows"": The Epic of the Zulu King Shaka

Phiwokuhle Mnyandu

30. Lithoko: Continuity, Change, and the Future of South Sotho Praise Poetry

David M. M. Riep

31. ""Man is the Center"": Centripetal Power in the Malagasy Epic Tale of Ibonia

Hallie Wells and Vony Ranalarimanana

32. In Service of Authenticity: Epic in Central Africa under Colonialism

Jonathon Repinecz

33. Female Leadership and Nation Building: The West African Epics Yennenga and Sarraounia

Mariam Konaté

34. ""The Return of Rome"": Empire, Epic, and Twentieth-Century Italian Imperialism in Africa

Samuel Agbamu

35. Empire and Resistance in Kazakh Oral Epic: The Case of Sătbek Batyr

Gabriel McGuire

36. Tolstoy’s War and Peace: National Epic on Page, Stage, and Screen

Julie A. Buckler

37. Ecocriticism and Indigenous Anti-epics of China

Robin Visser

38. Anti-epic as National Epic: Uses and Misuses of Epic in Argentina’s Martín Fierro

Nicolás Suárez

39. To Keep the Sky from Falling: The Epic of Indigenous Environmentalism in Brazil

Tracy Devine Guzmán

40. An Epic Struggle in Mesoamerican Indigenous Literatures: Recovering Written Forms of Expression

Arturo Arias

41. African/American (Heroic) Epic: Lee’s Do the Right Thing as Critique, Caution, Comedy

Gregory E. Rutledge

42. Epic Sound and Whiteness in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle

Alexander Rothe

Index

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