Essays for teaching ancient and recent epic narratives from around the world.
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
Nibelungenlied
Poema de mio Cid
Popol Wuj
Ramayana
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
.