[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Teaching World Epics is a collection of twenty-eight essays edited by Jo Ann Cavallo. It offers a vast and impressive overview of world epic literature from antiquity to the present day. While not covering every culture on the planet, it conceptualizes epics as more than “a trajectory that went from Homer to Milton” (p. 3), and offers papers on literature from precolonial Mesoamerica, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and West Africa, alongside others.
As its name suggests, Teaching World Epics aims to provide instructors with the knowledge, methods and resources to acquaint their students with a significant facet of world culture. Although the book is primarily intended for English-speaking academics teaching at undergraduate level, many contributions can be used with profit at high school or graduate level, either in comparative literature classes or for cross-disciplinary subjects such as gender studies or religious studies. Most contributors are leading specialists in their chosen subject, while others have stepped out of their comfort zones, but all draw on solid teaching experience. The essays—which individually do not exceed ten pages—feature recommendations for study materials, such as editions or translations available in English, and feedback from teaching experiences.
These contributions are all driven by the same ambition: to help students grasp our common humanity through the study of epics. Epics are here understood as “stories relating memorable deeds by heroic characters whose actions have significant consequences for themselves and their larger communities” (p. 1). According to Frederick Turner, they are “the means by which we organize any coherent understanding of the world” (p. 249). This approach explains why the theoretical framework does not play a prominent role in this book. Some theories the students may have come into contact with are touched upon: for example, Ana Grinberg asks her students to consider how The Epic of Gilgamesh diverges from Campbell’s monomyth (p. 307). The emphasis put on a very hands-on approach, highly attentive to details and cultural specificities, is deliberate: the authors want to promote an inclusive, postcolonial perspective on world literature in order to help students understand how humans have grappled with existential questions across time and space. This does not in any way diminish the thoroughness of the contributions, which are anything but dogmatic.
Given the editor’s broad definition of epics, she includes in this category stories whose epic nature has been disputed, such as the West African Sun-Jata or the Chinese tale of the Three Kingdoms. As a result, the essays are extremely diverse in form and subject. It might have been worthwhile to question the place of epics today in the Western world and their relationship with other genres, such as the novel: did epics die out in European literature after the 17th century? For example, to what extent is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials (which is a deliberate response to Milton’s Paradise Lost) an epic? The book may give the questionable impression that epics no longer play a major, active role in the western world today. Similarly, to say that the Bible contains no epics (p. 50) is clearly a matter of opinion. If we stay true to the editor’s broad definition, the life of Moses and his journey out of Egypt are just as much epics as the other texts discussed in the book. On the whole, the category of literary epics, mostly from Europe, seems overly narrow when compared to the category of folk epics.
The book is structured around six main chapters. The first five follow a more or less chronological order, with literary epics being distinguished from oral-derived epics from the 16th century onward. The last chapter, entitled “World Epics in Various Context”, pulls together various essays, one dealing with secondary education, the other three recounting teaching experiences with several texts united by theme, geographical origin or analytical framework. While the rationale behind this division developed in the introduction is quite clear, a better title could have been found for the last part. Similarly, Charles S. Ross’ essay, which compares Statius’ Thebaid to Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai and Sturgis’ Magnificent Seven, could have been placed in the final chapter. That said, this division does succeed in bringing out similarities between epics from different regions of the world, which after all was the editor’s goal. It also leaves instructors free to discuss the texts from whatever perspective they wish, which would have been difficult if the epics had been ordered by theme.
Since it is not possible to discuss each of the twenty-eight essays, I am going to address some issues pertaining to the study of epics that permeate the entire volume.
Overall, it is quite remarkable that, when a subject is treated somewhat poorly in one essay, it often receives a more nuanced treatment in another. Arshia Sattar’s essay, for example, is somewhat lacking in nuance when it comes to the question of translation. Seeking to justify the use of translations of the Mahabharata rather than retellings, the author writes that “a translator will tell you what the text wants to say” (p. 21). This assertion is highly questionable, especially at a time when we are dealing with automated translations that are often presented as neutral: it is crucial to make students understand that translating a literary text (be it written or oral) is an act that necessarily implies making choices that are ultimately political, in the broad sense of the word. This question is central to Atefeh Akbari’s remarkable essay, which tackles with great finesse the issues involved in translating the Odyssey, in particular when it comes to gender representations (pp. 328–329). She relies on David Damrosch’s definition of world literature, according to which world literature is “writing that gains in translation” (p. 326), to show the impact of translation on reception. Several authors suggest, as she does, that their students compare different translations in order to understand how translation choices modify the reader’s perception of the text. Developing a similar but more subtle argument to Sattar’s, Nathan C. Henne stresses the importance of choosing a translation that does not use reasons of convenience to alter the texts studied, in this case Popol Wuj, a text composed in K’iche’, a Mesoamerican language dating back to the pre-colonial period: “we must challenge our students to confront awkward language differences that uniquely reflect and preserve fundamentally different cosmovisions” (p. 210/211).
Ultimately, the issue of the translation ties in with the broader question of alterity.[1] The analysis of epics helps to identify two pitfalls in this area: reducing the unknown to the known, and exoticizing the other to the point of dehumanization. On this point, Joseph M. Ortiz’s essay on New World epics offers an interesting counterpoint to Henne’s contribution on Popol Wuj. The author presents a course he teaches at the University of El Paso focusing on three texts, Camões’s Os Lusíadas, Ercilla’s La Araucana and Villagrá’s Historia de la Nueva México. He directs students’ attention to the way in which these three authors portray indigenous people. While Camões offers a racialized and racist depiction of the Khoikhoi, a people of South Africa, comparing them to Polyphemus, the other two authors also reduce the unfamiliar to the familiar, through simplifying comparisons. Villagrá, for example, likens the battles against the Acomans to those against the Moors.[2]
Ortiz notes that his students use these texts, which are often ambiguous, to deepen their reflection on the memory of this era right in the city where they live, El Paso. Villagrá dedicates an episode of his Historia to the Battle of Acoma, one of whose Spanish protagonists was celebrated by the controversial unveiling of a statue in front of El Paso airport. More generally, one of the book’s remarkable aspects lies in its reflection on the historic inscription of these stories without neglecting current events.[3] The writers explain how they provide their students with a better understanding of the links between literature and history by interrogating the notion of canon, its link with communities, especially nations, and the possibility of subverting it. Thomas A. DuBois shows how Elias Lönnrot, by creating the Kalevala from material collected in Finnish folklore, greatly contributed to the birth of a national feeling among the Finns, a population colonized for centuries by Sweden and Russia. Roberta Micallef underlines the changing attitude of political powers toward the Manas epic in Central Asia, while Barlow Der Mugrdechian highlights the importance of David of Sassoun for the Armenian community, especially since the genocide of 1915.
Several essays highlight that these stories, depending on the audience and the storyteller, can take on very different meanings. John William Johnson points out that Sun-Jata‘s performances in Mali rely on shared context and knowledge with the audience. Some aspects of the story are left unsaid, which the outsider must keep in mind. In her fascinating article, Paula Richman invites her students to look at retellings of the Ramayana, which allow social groups to reappropriate episodes from the epic in contexts ranging from devotional retellings to puppet shows in marginalized communities. She refers to an article by Usha Nilson exploring the various Ramayana songs sung by domestic workers and their female employers, and how they envision them differently.[4]
Finally, the question of how to share this knowledge with students obviously occupies a central place within this book. Most of it is based on maieutics, with suggested questions to help students develop their thinking. Zachary Hamby, who teaches in secondary schools, explains how he helps his students engage with epics via some very interesting role-playing and writing games, which he details. Several essays provide insight into the process of composing epics, with students being asked to compose an epic using existing song texts (DuBois) or to rewrite a story in a completely different form (Angelica A. Duran). By doing so, it becomes clear for students that epics do not necessarily take the form of a text, in particular a text in verse, as the traditional definition would have it: epics are first and foremost stories. Akbari’s essay contains several particularly interesting suggestions for activities to understand the power of those specific stories: working on prefaces to grasp the translator’s intentions (which can be, as she shows, very telling), extensively annotating an excerpt or having students create their own, ideal syllabus.
Ultimately, Teaching World Epics fulfills the mission set by its authors: to provide teachers with the keys they need to help their students discover the relevance and diversity of world epics.
Authors and Titles
Jo Ann Cavallo, Introduction.
Arshia Sattar, Morality and Human Nature in the Mahabharata.
Paula Richman, The Multivocal Ramayana Tradition of India.
Carolina López-Ruiz, Understanding the World of Greek and Near Eastern Epics through Homer’s Iliad.
Christine G. Perkell, Ambiguity in Virgil’s Aeneid.
Charles S. Ross, Bad Boys to the Rescue in Statius’ Thebaid.
Victoria Turner, Ideologies of Intercultural Encounter in Three Epics of Medieval France.
Katherine Oswald, The Calculated Heroism of the Poema de mio Cid.
Stefan Seeber, The Nibelungenlied: Otherworld, Court, and Doom in the Classroom.
Albrecht Classen, The Middle High German Kudrun: A Female Protagonist’s Action to End Male Violence.
Emrah Pelvanoğlu, Epic Tales, Ethics Code, and Evidence of Legitimacy: The Intriguing Case of The Book of Dede Korkut.
David T. Bialock, Elizabeth Oyler, and Roberta Strippoli, A Buddhist Perspective on War, Exile, and Women in The Tale of the Heike.
Moss Roberts, Three Kingdoms: Division, Unification, and National Identity from the Han Dynasty to Today.
Luisanna Sardu, Epic Poems and Emotions: Anger in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Bigolina’s Urania.
Jason Lotz, Teaching Spencer’s Faerie Queene through Allegory and Digital Rhetoric.
Joseph M. Ortiz, Camões’s Os Lusíadas, Ercilla’s La Araucana and Villagrá’s Historia de la Nueva México .
Angelica A. Duran, “Thou Hast Seen One World Begin and End”: Worldmaking with Paradise Lost.
Nathan C. Henne, Stretching the Boundaries of Epic: Popol Wuj, Maya Literature and Coloniality.
Thomas A. DuBois, Finland’s Kalevala: Folk Songs, Romantic Nationalism, and an Enduring National Epic.
Roberta Micallef, The Many Lessons of the Central Asian Epic Manas.
Barlow Der Mugrdechian, The Armenian National Folk Epic David of Sassoun.
Frederick Turner, To Drink from the Source: Teaching the Mwindo Epic.
John William Johnson, The Epic of Sun-Jata in the Light of Abrahamic and Mande Traditions.
Thomas A. Hale, Orality and History in The Epic of Askia Mohammed.
Brenda E. F. Beck, The Legend of Poṉṉivaḷa Nāḍu: A South Indian Oral Folk Epic.
Zachary Hamby, Epic Engagement: Giving Ancient Stories New Life in the Secondary School Classroom.
Ana Grinberg, Epic Youth Narratives in an Active Learning World Literature Course.
Dwight F. Reynolds, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sirat Bani Hilal, and the Shahnameh.
Atefeh Akbari, World Epics in Comparison: The Odyssey, Kebra Nagast, and the Shahnameh.
Jo Ann Cavallo, Resources.
Notes
[1] On that topic, it is unfortunate that research from outside the English-speaking world is almost never referred to throughout the volume, even when it is written in English. Yet students must be shown that research is conducted all around the world and that it can bring innovative insights. For example, what Christine G. Perkell describes as inconsistencies in the Aeneid (p. 61) is typical of texts that incorporate mythical materials. They are not likely to be errors, but contradictory versions deliberately incorporated in a single text. See Zgoll, Christian. ‘Myths as Polymorphous and Polystratic Erzählstoffe.’ In Mythische Sphärenwechsel: Methodisch neue Zugänge zu antiken Mythen in Orient und Okzident, edited by Annette Zgoll and Christian Zgoll, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020, pp. 9–82. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110652543-002
[2] As Victoria Turner points out in her paper on medieval French epics, the comparison is not necessarily negative, since the Moors can stand for a “radical similarity” (p. 82).
[3] I must say that some of the connections to current events strike me as a little clumsy (e.g. the comparison between Shambuka’s death and George Floyd’s death on p. 37), but it may be because I do not teach in the United States.
[4] Nilson, Usha. ‘Grinding Millet but Singing of Sita: Power and Domination in Awadhi and Bhojpuri Women’s Songs.’ In Questioning Ramayanas: A South Asian Tradition, edited by Paula Richman, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, pp. 137–158, 379–381.