Teaching World Epics
- Editor: Jo Ann Cavallo
- Pages: 368
- Published: 2023
- ISBN: 9781603296182 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603296175 (Hardcover)
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.
Acknowledgments (ix)
Introduction (1)
Part I: Epics from the Ancient World
Morality and Human Nature in the Mahabharata (19)
The Multivocal Ramayana Tradition of India (28)
Understanding the World of Greek and Near Eastern Epics through Homer’s Iliad (41)
Ambiguity in Virgil’s Aeneid (54)
Bad Boys to the Rescue in Statius’s Thebaid (64)
Part II: Epics from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century
Ideologies of Intercultural Encounter in Three Epics of Medieval France (77)
The Calculated Heroism of the Poema de mio Cid (90)
The Nibelungenlied: Otherworld, Court, and Doom in the Classroom (100)
The Middle High German Kudrun: A Female Protagonist’s Action to End Male Violence (111)
Epic Tales, Ethics Codes, and Evidence of Legitimacy: The Intriguing Case of The Book of Dede Korkut (121)
A Buddhist Perspective on War, Exile, and Women in The Tale of the Heike (133)
Three Kingdoms: Division, Unification, and National Identity from the Han Dynasty to Today (147)
Part III: Literary Epics of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Epic Poems and Emotions: Anger in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Bigolina’s Urania (159)
Teaching Spenser’s Faerie Queene through Allegory and Digital Rhetoric (169)
New World Epics: Camões’s Os Lusíadas, Ercilla’s La Araucana, and Villagrá’s Historia de la Nueva México (180)
“Thou Hast Seen One World Begin and End”: Worldmaking with Paradise Lost (191)
Part IV: Oral-Derived Epics in the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries
Stretching the Boundaries of Epic: Popol Wuj, Maya Literature, and Coloniality (205)
Finland’s Kalevala: Folk Songs, Romantic Nationalism, and an Enduring National Epic (219)
The Many Lessons of the Central Asian Epic Manas (229)
The Armenian National Folk Epic David of Sassoun (238)
Part V: The Enduring Oral Tradition
To Drink from the Source: Teaching the Mwindo Epic (249)
The Epic of Sun-Jata in the Light of Abrahamic and Mande Traditions (258)
Orality and History in The Epic of Askia Mohammed (270)
The Legend of Poṉṉivaḷa Nadu: A South Indian Oral Folk Epic (281)
Part VI: World Epics in Various Contexts
Epic Engagement: Giving Ancient Stories New Life in the Secondary School Classroom (295)
Epic Youth Narratives in an Active Learning World Literature Course (305)
Middle Eastern Epics across the Millennia: The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sirat Bani Hilal, and the Shahnameh (314)
World Epics in Comparison: The Odyssey, Kebra Nagast, and the Shahnameh (325)
Part VII: Resources
Resources (339)
Notes on Contributors (353)
