Fourteen essays on epic, oral and literary, from ancient to modern, from the Americas to India.

Fourteen essays on epic, oral and literary, from ancient to modern, from the Americas to India.

This volume explores how postcolonial texts have determined the evolution or emergence of specific formal innovations in narrative genres. While the prominence of questions of cultural identity in postcolonial studies has prevented due attention to concerns of literary form and aesthetics, this book gives premium to the literary, aiming to delineate the evolution of specific narrative techniques as part of an emerging postcolonial aesthetics. Essays delineate elements of an emergent postcolonial narratology across a variety of seminal generic forms, such as the epic, the novel, the short story, the autobiography, and the folk tale, focusing on genre as a powerful tool for the historicizing of literature and orature within cultural discourses. Investigating the heuristic value of concepts such as mimicry, writing back, translation, negotiation, or subversion, the book considers the value of explanatory paradigms for postcolonial generic models. It also explores the status of postcolonial comparative aesthetics versus globalization studies and liberal concepts of the transnational, taking issue with the prominence of Western concepts of identity in discussions of postcolonial literature and the favoring of mimetic forms. This volume offers a unique contribution to the study of narrative genre in postcolonial literatures and provides valuable insight into the field of postcolonial studies on the whole.

Paul explores the relationship between films set in the ancient world and the classical epic tradition, arguing that there is a connection between the genres. Through this careful consideration of how epic manifests itself through different periods and cultures, we learn how cinema makes a claim to be a modern vehicle for a very ancient tradition.

Cultures across the globe have embraced epics: stories of memorable deeds by heroic characters whose actions have significant consequences for their lives and their communities. Incorporating narrative elements also found in sacred history, chronicle, saga, legend, romance, myth, folklore, and the novel, epics throughout history have both animated the imagination and encouraged reflection on what it means to be human. Teaching World Epics addresses ancient and more recent epic works from Africa, Europe, Mesoamerica, and East, Central, and South Asia that are available in English translations. Useful to instructors of literature, peace and conflict studies, transnational studies, women's studies, and religious studies, the essays in this volume focus on epics in sociopolitical and cultural contexts, on the adaptation and reception of epic works, and on themes that are especially relevant today, such as gender dynamics and politics, national identity, colonialism and imperialism, violence, and war. This volume includes discussion of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Giulia Bigolina's Urania, The Book of Dede Korkut, Luís Vaz de Camões's Os Lusíadas, David of Sassoun, The Epic of Askia Mohammed, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the epic of Sun-Jata, Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga's La Araucana, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Kalevala, Kebra Nagast, Kudrun, The Legend of Poṉṉivaḷa Nadu, the Mahabharata, Manas, John Milton's Paradise Lost, Mwindo, the Nibelungenlied, Poema de mio Cid, Popol Wuj, the Ramayana, the Shahnameh, Sirat Bani Hilal, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Statius's Thebaid, The Tale of the Heike, Three Kingdoms, Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá's Historia de la Nueva México, and Virgil's Aeneid.

With contributions from leading scholars, this is a uniquecross-cultural comparison of historical epics across a wide rangeof cultures and time periods, which presents crucial insights intohow history is treated in narrative poetry. The first book to gain new insights into the topic of‘epic and history’ through in-depth cross-culturalcomparisons Covers epic traditions across the globe and across a wide rangeof time periods Brings together leading specialists in the field, and is editedby two internationally regarded scholars An important reference for scholars and students interested inhistory and literature across a broad range of disciplines

The first book devoted exclusively to the poetry and literary aesthetics of one of Native America’s most accomplished writers, this collection of essays brings together detailed critical analyses of single texts and individual poetry collections from diverse theoretical perspectives, along with comparative discussions of Vizenor’s related works. Contributors discuss Vizenor’s philosophy of poetic expression, his innovations in diverse poetic genres, and the dynamic interrelationships between Vizenor’s poetry and his prose writings. Throughout his poetic career Vizenor has returned to common tropes, themes, and structures. Indeed, it is difficult to distinguish clearly his work in poetry from his prose, fiction, and drama. The essays gathered in this collection offer powerful evidence of the continuing influence of Anishinaabe dream songs and the haiku form in Vizenor’s novels, stories, and theoretical essays; this influence is most obvious at the level of grammatical structure and imagistic composition but can also be discerned in terms of themes and issues to which Vizenor continues to return.