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.
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Acknowledgment
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
Part I. Ways of Reading Epics
- A Critical Race Studies Approach: Race and Racecraft in Apollonius’s Argonautica
- A Postcolonial Studies Approach: From Fanon’s Revolutionary Literature to Glissant’s Relation
- An Ecocritical Approach: Early Modern English Epic Possibilities
- An Affect Studies Approach: Reading Non-Normative Masculinities in Homer’s Iliad
- A Network Approach: Tracking Female Power in Seven Epic Narratives
- The Epic Bible: Authority and Identity in the Face of Adversity
- Gilgamesh and Tiamat Abroad: (Mis-)Reading Mesopotamian Epic
- (Re)Inventing an Epic: Reading the Tamil Cilappatikāram across Time
- Sri Lanka’s Mahāvamòsa, The Great Chronicle
- The ‘Epic of the Anglo-Saxons’: The Many Cultural Streams of Beowulf
- Ecological Colonialism in Vergil’s Aeneid
- Sunjata Fasa and the Oral Epic Tradition of Mali
- Osiris Reborn: The Arabic Epic of Sirat Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan and the Prophetic Königsnovelle
- From Oghuz Khan to Exodus: Lineage, Heroism, and Migration in Oghuz Turk Tradition
- A Battle of Equals: Rustam and Isafandiar in Illustrated Manuscripts of the Shāhnāma
- The "Hindu" Epics? Telling the Ramayana and the Mahabharata in Premodern South Asia
- Trickster as Epic Narrator in Malay Hikayat Hang Tuah
- Connecting with Ancestors: "Imported" and Indigenous Epics in Southeast Asia
Adrian Vickers - Epic Contestations: What Makes an Epic in Multi-Ethnic China?
- Whose Epic is it, Anyway? Gesar and the Myth of National Epic
- Ode to Mongolian Heroism: The Oirat Epic Jangar
- Placation, Memorial, and History in Japan’s The Tale of the Heike and Beyond
- Guaman Poma’s Epic Letter: A Complex Salvo against Spanish Colonialism in the Andes
- Human Owls and Political Sorcery in the Annals of Cuauhtitlan
- An "Epic of Sorts": Gaspar de Villagrá and His Impossible Epic of the New Mexico
- Gender Performance and Gendered Warriors in the Albanian Epic
- Slavic Oral-Traditional Epic in the Ottoman Ecumene
- Empire and Resistance in South Slavic and Romanian Oral Epic Poetry
- "It Shall be Ruled by Swallows": The Epic of the Zulu King Shaka
- Lithoko: Continuity, Change, and the Future of South Sotho Praise Poetry
- "Man Is the Center": Centripetal Power in the Malagasy Epic Tale of Ibonia
- In Service of Authenticity: Epic in Central Africa under Colonialism
Jonathon Repinecz - Female Leadership and Nation Building: The West African Epics
Mariam Konaté - "The Return of Rome": Empire, Epic, and Twentieth-Century Italian Imperialism in Africa
Samuel Agbamu - Empire and Resistance in Kazakh Oral Epic: The Case of Sătbek Batyr
- Tolstoy’s War and Peace: National Epic on Page, Stage, and Screen
- Ecocriticism and Indigenous Anti-Epics of China
- Anti-Epic as National Epic: Uses and Misuses of Epic in Argentina’s Martín Fierro
- To Keep the Sky from Falling: The Epic of Indigenous Environmentalism in Brazil
- An Epic Struggle in Mesoamerican Indigenous Literatures: Recovering Written Forms of Expression
Arturo Arias - African/American (Heroic) Epic: Lee’s Do the Right Thing as Critique, Caution, Comedy
Gregory E. Rutledge - Listening for Epic Sound and Seeing White Supremacy in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle
Alexander Rothe
Jackie Murray
Sneharika Roy
Chris Barrett
Melissa Mueller
Pádraig MacCarron, Máirín MacCarron, Sílvio Dahmen, Joseph Yose, and Ralph Kenna
Part II. A Sample of Ancient Iterations (The Beginnings - Circa 1000 CE)
Shawna Dolansky and Sarah Cook
Karen Sonik
Morgan J Curtis
Kristin Scheible
María José Gómez Calderón
Laura Zientek
Part III. Recastings and Innovations (Circa 1000-1850 CE)
Kassim Kone
Helen Blatherwick
Ali Aydin Karamustafa
Behrang Nabavi Nejad
Sohini Sarah Pillai
Sylvia Tiwon
Mark Bender
Natasha L. Mikles
Chao Gejin
Elizabeth Oyler
Scotti M. Norman
Martín Vega
Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez
Anna Di Lellio and Arbnora Dushi
Robert Romanchuk
Margaret Hiebert Beissinger
Part IV. New Forms and Foundational Stories (Circa 1850-present)
Phiwokuhle Mnyandu
David M. M. Riep
Hallie Wells and Vony Ranalarimanana
Gabriel McGuire
Julie A. Buckler
Robin Visser
Nicolás Suárez
Tracy Devine Guzmán
Index
Biography
Pamela Lothspeich is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research centers on the Indian epics in modern literature, theatre, and film.
