Divine Yet Human Epics

Divine Yet Human Epics PDF Author: Shubha Pathak
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674726758
Category : Epic poetry, Greek
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shubha Pathak explores a new way to connect the primary Sanskrit epics Ramaya?a and Mahabharata with their Greek analogues, the Iliad and Odyssey. This cross-cultural comparative study provides a more comprehensive perspective on the poems' religiosity than the vantage points of Hellenists or of Indologists alone.

Divine Yet Human Epics

Divine Yet Human Epics PDF Author: Shubha Pathak
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674726758
Category : Epic poetry, Greek
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shubha Pathak explores a new way to connect the primary Sanskrit epics Ramaya?a and Mahabharata with their Greek analogues, the Iliad and Odyssey. This cross-cultural comparative study provides a more comprehensive perspective on the poems' religiosity than the vantage points of Hellenists or of Indologists alone.

Teaching World Epics

Teaching World Epics PDF Author: Jo Ann Cavallo
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 1603296190
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

The Epic World

The Epic World PDF Author: Pamela Lothspeich
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000912167
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 661

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

The Cambridge Companion to Homer

The Cambridge Companion to Homer PDF Author: Robert Louis Fowler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521012461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to Homer is a guide to the essential aspects of Homeric criticism and scholarship, including the reception of the poems in ancient and modern times. Written by an international team of scholars, it is intended to be the first port of call for students at all levels, with introductions to important subjects and suggestions for further exploration. Alongside traditional topics like the Homeric Question, the divine apparatus of the poems, the formulae, the characters and the archaeological background, there are detailed discussions of similes, speeches, the poet as story-teller and the genre of epic both within Greece and worldwide. The reception chapters include assessments of ancient Greek and Roman readings as well as selected modern interpretations from the eighteenth century to the present day. Chapters on Homer in English translation and Homer in the history of ideas round out the collection.

Many Mahābhāratas

Many Mahābhāratas PDF Author: Nell Shapiro Hawley
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438482426
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 488

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many Mahābhāratas is an introduction to the spectacular and long-lived diversity of Mahābhārata literature in South Asia. This diversity begins with the Sanskrit Mahābhārata, an early epic poem that narrates the events of a catastrophic fratricidal war. Along the way, it draws in nearly everything else in Hindu mythology, philosophy, and story literature. The magnitude of its scope and the relentless complexity of its worldview primed the Mahābhārata for uncountable tellings in South Asia and beyond. For two thousand years, the instinctive approach to the Mahābhārata has been not to consume it but to create it anew. The many Mahābhāratas of this book come from the first century to the twenty-first. They are composed in nine different languages—Apabhramsha, Bengali, English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu. Early chapters illuminate themes of retelling within the Sanskrit Mahābhārata itself, demonstrating that the story's propensity for regeneration emerges from within. The majority of the book, however, reaches far beyond the Sanskrit epic. Readers dive into classical dramas, premodern vernacular poems, regional performance traditions, commentaries, graphic novels, political essays, novels, and contemporary theater productions—all of them Mahābhāratas. Because of its historical and linguistic breadth, its commitment to primary sources, and its exploration of multiplicity and diversity as essential features of the Mahābhārata's long life in South Asia, Many Mahābhāratas constitutes a major contribution to the study of South Asian literature and offers a landmark view of the field of Mahābhārata studies.

Theologies of Fear in Early Greek Epic

Theologies of Fear in Early Greek Epic PDF Author: Carman Romano
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040131697
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the theological significance of horror elements in the works of Hesiod and in the Homeric Hymns for the characters within these poems, the mortal audience consuming them, and the poet responsible for mythopoesis. Theologies of Fear in Early Greek Epic argues that just as modern supernatural horror fiction can be analyzed to reveal popular conceptions of the divine, so too can the horrific elements in early Greek epic. Romano develops this analogy to show how myth-makers chose to include, omit, or nuance horror elements from their narratives in order to communicate theological messages. By employing methodological approaches from religious studies, classical studies, and literary studies of supernatural horror fiction, this book brings a fresh perspective to our understanding of how the Greeks viewed their gods and how poets helped to create that view. Theologies of Fear in Early Greek Epic will be of interest to scholars in classical studies, religious studies, and comparative literature, as well as students in courses on myth, religion, and Greek culture and society.

I Am Divine. So Are You

I Am Divine. So Are You PDF Author: Devdutt Pattanaik
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9352774868
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 2015, a historic panel discussion took place at the global Festival of Theology held in Sweden. Its objective was to examine what the sacred texts of the Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - had to say about human sexuality.By bringing in perspectives from the Karmic faiths of Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Hinduism, which together represent the beliefs of almost a third of the world's population, I Am Divine. So Are You expands this conversation between world religions and human sexuality to a truly global level.The theology of Karmic faiths is revealed at the intersection of scripture, culture, rituals and lived realities. And hence they are dynamic and amenable to a multiplicity of perspectives. They lend themselves more easily to a recognition and acceptance of fluidity in human sexuality.This is a landmark book as it recasts religion - especially Karmic faiths - as an ally and not an adversary of queer emancipation and thus significantly informs the secular and legal movements for LGBTQ rights around the world.

Achilles beside Gilgamesh

Achilles beside Gilgamesh PDF Author: Michael Clarke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108481787
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413

Get Book Here

Book Description
Interprets the poetic meaning of the Iliad in relation to the heroic literature of the Ancient Near East.

Krishna's Mahabharatas

Krishna's Mahabharatas PDF Author: Sohini Sarah Pillai
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197753558
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
Krishna's Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative is a comprehensive study of premodern regional Mahabharata retellings. This book argues that Vaishnavas (devotees of the Hindu god Vishnu and his various forms) throughout South Asia turned this epic about an apocalyptic, bloody war into works of ardent bhakti or "devotion" focused on the beloved Hindu deity Krishna. Examining over forty retellings in eleven different regional South Asian languages composed over a period of nine hundred years, it focuses on two particular Mahabharatas: Villiputturar's fifteenth-century Tamil Paratam and Sabalsingh Chauhan's seventeenth-century Bhasha (Old Hindi) Mahahbharat.

Visions and Revisions in Sanskrit Narrative

Visions and Revisions in Sanskrit Narrative PDF Author: Raj Balkaran
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1760465909
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 484

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sanskrit narrative is the lifeblood of Indian culture, encapsulating and perpetuating insights and values central to Indian thought and practice. This volume brings together eighteen of the foremost scholars across the globe, who, in an unprecedented collaboration, accord these texts the integrity and dignity they deserve. The last time this was attempted, on a much smaller scale, was a generation ago, with Purāṇa Perennis (1993). The pre-eminent contributors to this landmark collection use novel methods and theory to meaningfully engage Sanskrit narrative texts, showcasing the state of contemporary scholarship on the Sanskrit epics and purāṇas.