The epic world

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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]

Edited volumes on epic typically have to pare down their subject matter to fit within the confines of a few hundred pages.[1] Some kind of restriction seems inevitable, given that epics have been produced by virtually all cultures, depending on how broadly “epic” is defined. And of course, “epic” is notoriously difficult to define cross-culturally: more precise definitions result in narrower and more exclusionary corpora, and the question is complicated by the fact that epic’s sense as a transcultural category is enmeshed in histories of colonial appropriation and Western chauvinism.

Issues like these have not apparently dissuaded scholars from assembling a volume like The Epic World, which, ringing in at forty-two chapters and 638 pages, aims to give a global picture of epic that casts off the category’s persistent Eurocentric suppositions. To do this, The Epic World dispenses with scruples about scope and definition, presenting dozens of chapters on epic traditions from an array of cultures, periods, and media: the usual suspects like Gilgamesh and the Iliad are set alongside (and outnumbered by) chapters on topics like the Tamil Cilappatikaram, Nahua historical annals, the Congolese Lianja, José Hernández’s Martín Fierro, and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.

The editor, Pamela Lothspeich, proposes a maximally inclusive conception of “epic” with a correspondingly minimal definition: epics are, as she remarks in the Introduction, “bold and often lengthy narratives about extraordinary human experiences and struggles” (1). This framing is not likely to satisfy specialists in comparative epic, but Lothspeich’s approach has important advantages. It assumes that the value of a concept like “epic” isn’t in how it delimits and excludes but in its capacity to mobilize a network of interrelated problems concerning orality and literacy, poetry and prose, history and myth, performance, state formation, colonialism, and contemporary reception histories.

Lothspeich focuses especially on the theme of power, which she frames as epic’s central preoccupation (“more than any other storytelling genre, epic is about power” (1). Every kind of cultural production is about power in some sense, but Lothspeich means “power” in its most raw, unmediated forms: conquest, elite aggrandizement, toxic masculinity, and colonialism, as well as resistance to the violent hierarchies that these kinds of power construct. Epic is distinctive because it throws power in your face,[2] and it calls for critical methodologies that can understand the workings of power and promote emancipatory alternatives. Most of the contributors take up and respond productively to this premise, and it succeeds in creating a consistent throughline among the dozens of chapters.

The volume gives readers mostly implicit guidance about how to engage in the kind of critical, globally orientated reading that it promotes. Few of the chapters read between texts and traditions or reflect on overarching methodological questions; most deal with individual epics. The accumulation of chapters leaves readers to draw their own connections within the material (or with their own research), although chapter endnotes do include helpful cross-references. This kind of inductive approach can be fruitful, but it is a tall order in such an expansive volume. The first section (“Ways of Reading Epic”) is the shortest and the only one that offers explicit guidance in this respect: five chapters introduce a small sample of current and emerging research methodologies illustrated by case studies, only one of which is expressly comparative (Ch. 5). The remaining thirty-seven chapters serve as introductions to individual epic texts and traditions, divided into three sections based on a rough periodization, with divisions at “Circa 1000 CE” and “Circa 1850 CE.”

It would have been helpful to expand the section on “Ways of Reading Epic” with entries presenting foundational concepts—like orality, literacy, heroism, performance—from a global or postcolonial perspective.[3] Secondly, given the volume’s political commitments, it should include critical histories of the concept of epic, including a genealogy that would underscore the role of colonialism and nationalism in shaping epic as a genre of “world literature.”[4] Lothspeich’s “Introduction” deals cursorily with both of these issues, and many chapters touch on local entanglements between nationalism, colonialism, and epic, but something more systematic would help readers draw historical and conceptual connections between the single-topic chapters.

Admittedly, my wish list partly misses the spirit of the volume: the Introduction treats the jargon and the disciplinary history of epic studies as regrettable baggage (pg. 3–6) and aims to set the study of epic on more accessible, inclusive, and politically committed foundations. On the other hand, this position is not entirely congruent with the practice of many of the chapters, which do engage in detailed discussions of performance, diction, oral-formulaic theory, and other mainstays of epic studies scholarship.

Although the volume does not claim to be comprehensive, it does claim to be global, so it is not clear why some regions—like Oceania and most of indigenous North America besides Mesoamerica—are not represented at all. The volume’s (not quite) global scope is underscored by the order of chapters in each section: epics from Africa are followed by epics from Asia, then the Americas, then Europe. These planetary circuits are aesthetically pleasing but not especially clarifying. The division of the sections should be more granular, perhaps based on political or historical themes, or perhaps the book should be shorter, but, since the chapters are consistently illuminating and thought provoking, it is not obvious how one would pare them down, except to note that some regions are quite abundantly represented. In any case, the volume probably could not be shortened much, given the monumental page counts that seem to be required by Routledge’s WORLDS series.[5]

For Classicists, the volume is significant because it proposes to displace Greek and Roman epics from the central position that they have often held in the study of epic. Lothspeich argues in the Introduction that this kind of decentering is urgently needed because of “the long entanglement of ‘Classics’ … with white supremacy” (3), pointing especially to the ways in which Greek and Roman epic has been appropriated as a privileged origin for the (white) European literary canon, as well as to the academy’s tendency to valorize written (“civilized”) over oral (“primitive”) epic.[6] The project of broadening the scope of epic and linking it to postcolonial critique will appeal to readers who have been interested in interrogating the disciplinary history of Classics and building more inclusive ways of studying the ancient world.

On the other hand, the Introduction tends to depict literacy, nationalism, colonialism, and Classics as a kind of unified bloc opposed to orality, subalternity, and resistance to power writ large. Several of the volume’s contributors offer a more nuanced picture of the history of epic studies, and especially of the historically complex interplay between the “Western” epic canon and “non-western” literatures.[7] It is worth noting that the project of globalizing epic is a perennial one, and that Western academics have been “discovering” non-western epics and promoting their study for centuries, partly because, as Herbert Tucker (2021) suggests, such texts have served to bolster the prestige of the canonical literary epics and of oral epics appropriated by European nationalisms.

The historical details (and ironies) are important because they raise questions about the place of the present volume in the paradoxical and contested development of the epic canon, which for centuries has been deconstructed but also reinvigorated, repudiated but also entrenched. The word “epic” in The Epic World ties the book’s project back to epos and to Classics, and indeed, many of the volume’s chapters engage productively with this conceptual legacy. The political stakes of such engagements are as variable and singular as the disciplinary histories that inform them.

It is encouraging then that, in practice, the volume’s approach actually welcomes engagement between Greek and Roman epics and epic in an expanded sense. Although only four of the chapters were contributed by Classicists (on the Iliad, the Argonautica, and the Aeneid, plus one on Italian receptions of the Aeneid), two of these belong to the short “Ways of Reading Epic” section that sets the pace for the rest of the volume. Melissa Mueller’s chapter on affect and disability offers a compelling reading of the Iliad around the figures of Thersites and Paris; and Jackie Murray resituates the concept of racecraft in Greek antiquity and uses it to analyze the othering of indigenous communities in Apollonius’ Argonautica. These chapters showcase what Classics can offer to a version of epic studies that no longer takes for granted the primacy or even the relevance of Greek and Roman epics.

Works Cited

Martin, R. 2005. “Epic as Genre.” In A Companion to Ancient Epic, ed. J. M. Foley. Oxford: Blackwell.

Tucker, H. 2021. “Epic.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature.

Authors and Titles

Part I. Ways of Reading Epics

1. A Critical Race Studies Approach: Race and Racecraft in Apollonius’s Argonautica (Jackie Murray)
2. A Postcolonial Studies Approach: From Fanon’s Revolutionary Literature to Glissant’s Relation (Sneharika Roy)
3. An Ecocritical Approach: Early Modern English Epic Possibilities (Chris Barrett)
4. An Affect Studies Approach: Reading Non-Normative Masculinities in Homer’s Iliad (Melissa Mueller)
5. A Network Approach: Tracking Female Power in Seven Epic Narratives (Pádraig MacCarron, Máirín MacCarron, Sílvio Dahmen, Joseph Yose, and Ralph Kenna)

Part II: A Sample of Ancient Iterations (The Beginnings – Circa 1000 CE)

6. The Epic Bible: Authority and Identity in the Face of Adversity (Shawna Dolansky and Sarah Cook)
7. Gilgamesh and Tiamat Abroad: (Mis-)Reading Mesopotamian Epic (Karen Sonik)
8. (Re)Inventing an Epic: Reading the Tamil Cilappatikāram across Time (Morgan J Curtis)
9. Sri Lanka’s Mahāvamòsa, The Great Chronicle (Kristin Scheible)
10. The ‘Epic of the Anglo-Saxons’: The Many Cultural Streams of Beowulf (María José Gómez Calderón)
11. Ecological Colonialism in Vergil’s Aeneid (Laura Zientek)

Part III. Recastings and Innovations (Circa 1000-1850 CE)

12. Sunjata Fasa and the Oral Epic Tradition of Mali (Kassim Kone)
13. Osiris Reborn: The Arabic Epic of Sirat Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan and the Prophetic Königsnovelle (Helen Blatherwick)
14. From Oghuz Khan to Exodus: Lineage, Heroism, and Migration in Oghuz Turk Tradition (Ali Aydin Karamustafa)
15. A Battle of Equals: Rustam and Isafandiar in Illustrated Manuscripts of the Shāhnāma (Behrang Nabavi Nejad)
16. The “Hindu” Epics? Telling the Ramayana and the Mahabharata in Premodern South Asia (Sohini Sarah Pillai)
17. Trickster as Epic Narrator in Malay Hikayat Hang Tuah (Sylvia Tiwon)
18. Connecting with Ancestors: “Imported” and Indigenous Epics in Southeast Asia (Adrian Vickers)
19. Epic Contestations: What Makes an Epic in Multi-Ethnic China? (Mark Bender)
20. Whose Epic is it, Anyway? Gesar and the Myth of National Epic (Natasha L. Mikles)
21. Ode to Mongolian Heroism: The Oirat Epic Jangar (Chao Gejin)
22. Placation, Memorial, and History in Japan’s The Tale of the Heike and Beyond (Elizabeth Oyler)
23. Guaman Poma’s Epic Letter: A Complex Salvo against Spanish Colonialism in the Andes (Scotti M. Norman)
24. Human Owls and Political Sorcery in the Annals of Cuauhtitlan (Martín Vega)
25. An “Epic of Sorts”: Gaspar de Villagrá and His Impossible Epic of the New Mexico (Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez)
26. Gender Performance and Gendered Warriors in the Albanian Epic (Anna Di Lellio and Arbnora Dushi)
27. Slavic Oral-Traditional Epic in the Ottoman Ecumene (Robert Romanchuk)
28. Empire and Resistance in South Slavic and Romanian Oral Epic Poetry (Margaret Hiebert Beissinger)

Part IV. New Forms and Foundational Stories (Circa 1850-present)

29. “It Shall be Ruled by Swallows”: The Epic of the Zulu King Shaka (Phiwokuhle Mnyandu)
30. Lithoko: Continuity, Change, and the Future of South Sotho Praise Poetry (David M. M. Riep)
31. “Man Is the Center”: Centripetal Power in the Malagasy Epic Tale of Ibonia (Hallie Wells and Vony Ranalarimanana)
32. In Service of Authenticity: Epic in Central Africa under Colonialism (Jonathon Repinecz)
33. Female Leadership and Nation Building: The West African Epics (Mariam Konaté)
34. “The Return of Rome”: Empire, Epic, and Twentieth-Century Italian Imperialism in Africa (Samuel Agbamu)
35. Empire and Resistance in Kazakh Oral Epic: The Case of Sătbek Batyr (Gabriel McGuire)
36. Tolstoy’s War and Peace: National Epic on Page, Stage, and Screen (Julie A. Buckler)
37. Ecocriticism and Indigenous Anti-Epics of China (Robin Visser)
38. Anti-Epic as National Epic: Uses and Misuses of Epic in Argentina’s Martín Fierro (Nicolás Suárez)
39. To Keep the Sky from Falling: The Epic of Indigenous Environmentalism in Brazil (Tracy Devine Guzmán)
40. An Epic Struggle in Mesoamerican Indigenous Literatures: Recovering Written Forms of Expression (Arturo Arias)
41. African/American (Heroic) Epic: Lee’s Do the Right Thing as Critique, Caution, Comedy (Gregory E. Rutledge)
42. Listening for Epic Sound and Seeing White Supremacy in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle (Alexander Rothe)

Notes

[1] Recent examples include A Companion to Ancient Epic (2005), Epic and History (2009), and The Cambridge Companion to Epic (2010), which despite the title is largely limited to European epic traditions. Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World (1999) shares many of the global, comparative aspirations of the present volume, but in practice its scope is considerably more limited and its central reference points are Greco-Roman.

[2]  Epic is “a genre that not only displaces unbridled power, but also boast of it and basks in it” (7).

[3] See for example Martin 2005.

[4] Tucker 2021.

[5] According to Routledge, the WORLDS series comprises “magisterial surveys of key historical epochs … giving unprecedented breadth and depth of coverage” . The production of volumes has expanded recently, with more than forty titles released since 2015, almost all exceeding five hundred pages. Perhaps the pace of publication explains the typos in the table of contents and the series title page.

[6] Lothspeich’s account of the place of orality in epic studies seems a little one-sided (5–6). Oral epics have been devalued in certain quarters, but—to indicate just a couple of complications—orality was often valorized by European Romanticism as a trait of national folk traditions, and more recently, orality has been one of the central preoccupations in the study of early Greek epic for the last half century and has motivated a vast amount of comparative research with non-European epic traditions.

[7] On the ambivalent cultural politics surrounding “epic studies,” see especially Chapter 2 on postcolonial epic (by Sneharika Roy); Chapter 32 discusses the African epic controversy (by Jonathon Repinecz), and Chapter 42 discusses epic studies and nationalism in 19^th c. Germany (by Alexander Rothe).