Title: Traditional oral epic: the Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Serbo-Croatian return song 
Author: Foley, John Miles
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism | European Literature | Folklore and Mythology | Religion | Language and Linguistics | Classics | Medieval Studies
Publisher's Description: John Miles Foley offers an innovative and straightforward approach to the structural analysis of oral and oral-derived traditional texts. Professor Foley argues that to give the vast and complex body of oral "literature" its due, we must first come to terms with the endemic heterogeneity of traditional oral epics, with their individual histories, genres, and documents, as well as both the synchronic and diachronic aspects of their poetics.Until now, the emphasis in studies of oral traditional works has been placed on addressing the correspondences among traditions - shared structures of "formula," "theme," and "story-pattern." Traditional Oral Epic explores the incongruencies among traditions and focuses on the qualities specific to certain oral and oral-derived works. It is certain to inspire further research in this field.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Homer the theologian: Neoplatonist allegorical reading and the growth of the epic tradition
Author: Lamberton, Robert
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Literary Theory and Criticism
Publisher's Description: Here is the first survey of the surviving evidence for the growth, development, and influence of the Neoplatonist allegorical reading of the Iliad and Odyssey. Professor Lamberton argues that this tradition of reading was to create new demands on subsequent epic and thereby alter permanently the nature of European epic. The Neoplatonist reading was to be decisive in the birth of allegorical epic in late antiquity and forms the background for the next major extension of the epic tradition found in Dante.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Chaucer's Dante: allegory and epic theater in The Canterbury tales 
Author: Neuse, Richard
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Literature | English Literature | European Literature | Medieval Studies
Publisher's Description: Richard Neuse here explores the relationship between two great medieval epics, Dante's Divine Comedy and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales . He argues that Dante's attraction for Chaucer lay not so much in the spiritual dimension of the Divine Comedy as in the human.Borrowing Bertolt Brecht's phrase "epic theater," Neuse underscores the interest of both poets in presenting, as on a stage, flesh and blood characters in which readers would recognize the authors as well as themselves. As spiritual autobiography, both poems challenge the traditional medieval mode of allegory, with its tendency to separate body and soul, matter and spirit. Thus Neuse demonstrates that Chaucer and Dante embody a humanism not generally attributed to the fourteenth century.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The best of the Argonauts: the redefinition of the epic hero in book one of Apollonius's Argonautica 
Author: Clauss, James Joseph
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Classics | Literature | Classical Literature and Language | Literary Theory and Criticism
Publisher's Description: This revelatory exploration of Book One of the Argonautica rescues Jason from his status as the ineffectual hero of Apollonius' epic poem. James J. Clauss argues that by posing the question, "Who is the best of the Argonauts?" Apollonius redefines the epic hero and creates, in Jason, a man more realistic and less awesome than his Homeric predecessors, one who is vulnerable, dependent on the help of others, even morally questionable, yet ultimately successful.In bringing Apollonius' "curious and demanding poem" to life, Clauss illuminates two features of the poet's narrative style: his ubiquitous allusions to the poetry of others, especially Homer, and the carefully balanced structural organization of his episodes. The poet's subtextual interplay is explored, as is his propensity for underscoring the manipulation of the poetry of others through ring composition.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Virgil's epic technique 
Author: Heinze, Richard 1867-1929
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Classics | Literature in Translation
Publisher's Description: Heinze's study, originally published in German in 1903, remains a classic of Virgil scholarship. This translation makes the book available in English for the first time.
Similar Items

Title: Echoes of the past, epics of dissent: a South Korean social movement
Author: Abelmann, Nancy
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Anthropology | Asian Studies | Politics | Sociology | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent , the story of a South Korean social movement, offers a window to a decade of tumultuous social protest in a postcolonial, divided nation. Abelmann brings a dramatic chapter of modern Korean history to life - a period in which farmers, student activists, and organizers joined to protest the corporate ownership of tenant plots never distributed in the 1949 Land Reform.From public sites of protest to backstage meetings and negotiations, from farming villages to university campuses, Abelmann's highly original study explores this movement as a complex process always in the making. Her discussion moves fluently between past and present, local and national, elites and dominated, and urban and rural. Touching on major historical issues, this ethnography of dissent explores contemporary popular nationalism and historical consciousness.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Epic encounters: culture, media, and U.S. interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000
Author: McAlister, Melani 1962-
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: American Studies | United States History | Middle Eastern History | Popular Culture | Middle Eastern Studies | Ethnic Studies | Religion
Publisher's Description: In the last half of the twentieth century, cultural products--from films and news reports to museum exhibits and novels--profoundly shaped ideas about the relationship between Americans and the Middle East. In this innovative book, Melani McAlister explores the cultural history of political interests, arguing that U.S. encounters with the Middle East were influenced by both the presence of oil and the religious symbolism of the region. McAlister's richly textured study shows how culture functions as a social and historical force in shaping politics and identity. She skillfully weaves lively and accessible readings of popular culture with a rigorous analysis of U.S. foreign policy and the domestic politics of race. McAlister begins by situating the postwar development of U.S.-Middle East relations, including the rise of anticolonialism and the establishment of the state of Israel. Subsequent chapters consider specific events and cultural texts such as the epic film The Ten Commandments, the King Tut museum exhibit, writings from the Black arts movement, the U.S.-Iranian hostage crisis, and the 1990-1991 Gulf War. In each of these cases, McAlister demonstrates how representations of the Middle East have been a site of struggle over both the nature of U.S. foreign policy and the construction of race, religion, and gender within the United States. Truly interdisciplinary, this work will appeal to a wide audience as it illuminates the significant intersection of culture and politics that is at the heart of both nationalism and globalization.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The Saga of the Volsungs: the Norse epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer
Author: Byock, Jesse L
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Literature | History | European History | Folklore and Mythology
Publisher's Description: The Saga of the Volsungs is an Icelandic prose epic whose anonymous thirteenth-century author based his story on the legends of Old Scandinavian folk culture. A trove of traditional lore, it tells of love, jealousy, vengeance, war, and the mythic deeds of the dragonslayer, Sigurd the Volsung. The Saga is of special interest to admirers of Richard Wagner, who drew heavily upon this Norse source in writing his Ring Cycle. With its magical ring acquired by the hero, and the sword to be reforged, the saga has also been a primary source for writers of fantasy such as J. R. R. Tolkien and romantics such as William Morris.Byock's comprehensive introduction explores the history, legends, and myths contained in the saga and traces the development of a narrative that reaches back to the period of the great folk migrations in Europe when the Roman Empire collapsed.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: A magic still dwells: comparative religion in the postmodern age
Author: Patton, Kimberley C. (Kimberley Christine) 1958-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Religion | Comparative Religions
Publisher's Description: The first thorough assessment of the field of comparative religion in forty years, this groundbreaking volume surmounts the seemingly intractable division between postmodern scholars who reject the comparative endeavor and those who affirm it. The contributors demonstrate that a broader vision of religion, involving different scales of comparison for different purposes, is both justifiable and necessary. A Magic Still Dwells brings together leading historians of religions from a wide range of backgrounds and vantage points, and draws from traditions as diverse as Indo-European mythology, ancient Greek religion, Judaism, Buddhism, Ndembu ritual, and the spectrum of religions practiced in America. The contributors take seriously the postmodern critique, explain its impact on their work, uphold or reject various premises, and in several cases demonstrate new comparative approaches. Together, the essays represent a state-of-the-art assessment of current issues in the comparative study of religion.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Refiguring American film genres: history and theory
Author: Browne, Nick
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: American Studies | Film | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: This collection of essays by leading American film scholars charts a whole new territory in genre film criticism. Rather than assuming that genres are self-evident categories, the contributors offer innovative ways to think about types of films, and patterns within films, in a historical context. Challenging familiar attitudes, the essays offer new conceptual frameworks and a fresh look at how popular culture functions in American society. The range of essays is exceptional, from David J. Russell's insights into the horror genre to Carol J. Clover's provocative take on "trial films" to Leo Braudy's argument for the subject of nature as a genre. Also included are essays on melodrama, race, film noir , and the industrial context of genre production. The contributors confront the poststructuralist critique of genre head-on; together they are certain to shape future debates concerning the viability and vitality of genre in studying American cinema.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The voice in the margin: Native American literature and the canon 
Author: Krupat, Arnold
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Native American Studies | American Literature
Publisher's Description: In its consideration of American Indian literature as a rich and exciting body of work, The Voice in the Margin invites us to broaden our notion of what a truly inclusive American literature might be, and of how it might be placed in relation to an international - a "cosmopolitan" - literary canon. The book comes at a time when the most influential national media have focused attention on the subject of the literary canon. They have made it an issue not merely of academic but of general public concern, expressing strong opinions on the subject of what the American student should or should not read as essential or core texts. Is the literary canon simply a given of tradition and history, or is it, and must it be, constantly under construction? The question remains hotly contested to the present moment.Arnold Krupat argues that the literary expression of the indigenous peoples of the United States has claims on us to more than marginal attention. Demonstrating a firm grasp of both literary history and contemporary critical theory, he situates Indian literature, traditional and modern, in a variety of contexts and categories. His extensive knowledge of the history and current theory of ethnography recommends the book to anthropologists and folklorists as well as to students and teachers of literature, both canonical and noncanonical. The materials covered, the perspectives considered, and the learning displayed all make The Voice in the Margin a major contribution to the exciting field of contemporary cultural studies.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Nationalism and the genealogical imagination: oral history and textual authority in tribal Jordan
Author: Shryock, Andrew
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Anthropology | Middle Eastern Studies | Middle Eastern History
Publisher's Description: This book explores the transition from oral to written history now taking place in tribal Jordan, a transition that reveals the many ways in which modernity, literate historicity, and national identity are developing in the contemporary Middle East. As traditional Bedouin storytellers and literate historians lead him through a world of hidden documents, contested photographs, and meticulously reconstructed pedigrees, Andrew Shryock describes how he becomes enmeshed in historical debates, ranging from the local to the national level.The world the Bedouin inhabit is rich in oral tradition and historical argument, in subtle reflections on the nature of truth and its relationship to poetics, textuality, and power. Skillfully blending anthropology and history, Shryock discusses the substance of tribal history through the eyes of its creators - those who sustain an older tradition of authoritative oral history and those who have experimented with the first written accounts. His focus throughout is on the development of a "genealogical nationalism" as well as on the tensions that arise between tribe and state.Rich in both personal revelation and cultural implications, this book poses a provocative challenge to traditional assumptions about the way history is written.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: France and the cult of the Sacred Heart: an epic tale for modern times
Author: Jonas, Raymond Anthony
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: History | Religion | French Studies
Publisher's Description: In a richly layered and beautifully illustrated narrative, Raymond Jonas tells the fascinating and surprisingly little-known story of the Sacré-Coeur, or Sacred Heart. The highest point in Paris and a celebrated tourist destination, the white-domed basilica of Sacré-Coeur on Montmartre is a key monument both to French Catholicism and to French national identity. Jonas masterfully reconstructs the history of the devotion responsible for the basilica, beginning with the apparition of the Sacred Heart to Marguerite Marie Alacoque in the seventeenth century, through the French Revolution and its aftermath, to the construction of the monumental church that has loomed over Paris since the end of the nineteenth century. Jonas focuses on key moments in the development of the cult: the founding apparition, its invocation during the plague of Marseilles, its adaptation as a royalist symbol during the French Revolution, and its elevation to a central position in Catholic devotional and political life in the crisis surrounding the Franco-Prussian War. He draws on a wealth of archival sources to produce a learned yet accessible narrative that encompasses a remarkable sweep of French politics, history, architecture, and art.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Nested games: rational choice in comparative politics
Author: Tsebelis, George
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Politics | Economics and Business | Political Theory
Publisher's Description: Clearly written and easily understood by the nonspecialist, Nested Games provides a systematic, empirically accurate, and theoretically coherent account of apparently irrational political actions.
Similar Items

Title: Tran sforming desire: erotic knowledge in Books III and IV of the Faerie queene 
Author: Silberman, Lauren
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Literature | English Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism | Men and Masculinity | Women's Studies | Poetry | Renaissance Literature
Publisher's Description: The Faerie Queene anticipates postmodernist concerns with destabilizing language, and Lauren Silberman's stimulating study of Books III and IV of the poem proceeds from the assumption that Spenser has something important to say to us in the late twentieth century.In these books, Spenser exposes fictions of total control for what they are - fictions. The text affirms the value of risk and improvisation over the temptation to seek guarantees. The books examine the role of desire in moving us to function in an uncertain world and tempting us to foreclose that uncertainty by strategies that seek to frame knowledge through total mastery of it.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Survivors: an oral history of the Armenian genocide
Author: Miller, Donald E. (Donald Earl) 1946-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: History | Middle Eastern History | Middle Eastern Studies | Religion
Publisher's Description: Between 1915 and 1923, over one million Armenians died, victims of a genocidal campaign that is still denied by the Turkish government. Thousands of other Armenians suffered torture, brutality, deportation. Yet their story has received scant attention. Through interviews with a hundred elderly Armenians, Donald and Lorna Miller give the "forgotten genocide" the hearing it deserves. Survivors raise important issues about genocide and about how people cope with traumatic experience. Much here is wrenchingly painful, yet it also speaks to the strength of the human spirit.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The life of a text: performing the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas 
Author: Lutgendorf, Philip
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Religion | Hinduism | South Asia | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: The Life of a Text offers a vivid portrait of one community's interaction with its favorite text - the epic Ramcaritmanas - and the way in which performances of the epic function as a flexible and evolving medium for cultural expression. Anthropologists, historians of religion, and readers interested in the culture of North India and the performance arts will find breadth of subject, careful scholarship, and engaging presentation in this unique and beautifully illustrated examination of Hindi culture.The most popular and influential text of Hindi-speaking North India, the epic Ramcaritmanas is a sixteenth century retelling of the Ramayana story by the poet Tulsidas. This masterpiece of pre-modern Hindi literature has always reached its largely illiterate audiences primarily through oral performance including ceremonial recitation, folksinging, oral exegesis, and theatrical representation. Drawing on fieldwork in Banaras, Lutgendorf breaks new ground by capturing the range of performance techniques in vivid detail and tracing the impact of the epic in its contemporary cultural context.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: When we began there were witchmen: an oral history from Mount Kenya 
Author: Fadiman, Jeffrey
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: History | Anthropology | African Studies | African History
Publisher's Description: This is the history of the Meru people of Mount Kenya, based on their own traditions, from the earliest times through the colonial period. Many of these tales have been ritually passed down through no fewer than nineteen generations; others were remembered by those personally involved. Jeffrey Fadiman gathered them in interviews with more than 100 of the Meru's oldest men and women.The traditions touch on every era of the Meru past. They include narrations, songs, chants, and riddles. They tell of a mysterious origin, past enslavement, despairing flight, mountain warriorhood, British conquest, and the fight for freedom. The Meru elders spoke most often of urogi, or witchcraft, the incantations, rituals, and potions used to deal with the supernatural aspects of Meru life. As their society evolved, so did their urogi , developing a history of its own as practitioners in every generation sought to cope with the challenges of slavery, migration, war, colonialism, and Christianity.Fadiman has crafted the tales into a compelling narrative, passing on in his turn the stories he was given. This is African history from African perspectives that stretch back over 300 years.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The returns of Odysseus: colonization and ethnicity
Author: Malkin, Irad
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Classics | Classical History | Anthropology | Classical Literature and Language
Publisher's Description: This remarkably rich and multifaceted study of early Greek exploration makes an original contribution to current discussions of the encounters between Greeks and non-Greeks. Focusing in particular on myths about Odysseus and other heroes who visited foreign lands on their mythical voyages homeward after the Trojan War, Irad Malkin shows how these stories functioned to mediate encounters and conceptualize ethnicity and identity during the Archaic and Classical periods. Synthesizing a wide range of archaeological, mythological, and literary sources, this exceptionally learned book strengthens our understanding of early Greek exploration and city-founding along the coasts of the Western Mediterranean, reconceptualizes the role of myth in ancient societies, and revitalizes our understanding of ethnicity in antiquity.Malkin shows how the figure of Odysseus became a proto-colonial hero whose influence transcended the Greek-speaking world. The return-myths constituted a generative mythology, giving rise to oral poems, stories, iconographic imagery, rituals, historiographical interpretation, and the articulation of ethnic identities. Reassessing the role of Homer and alternative return-myths, the book argues for the active historical function of myth and collective representations and traces their changing roles through a spectrum of colonial perceptions - from the proto-colonial, through justifications of expansion and annexation, and up to decolonization.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Sainthood: its manifestations in world religions
Author: Bond, George Doherty 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Religion | Comparative Religions | Philosophy
Publisher's Description: Every major religion exalts certain individuals who occupy a dual role. On the one hand they serve as exemplars of virtue to be imitated, and on the other hand they stand removed from other mortals, privileged and unique. Christianity knows them as saints, and in the study of religion the term has been taken over and applied to similar figures in other traditions. The essays in this volume analyze the role of the saint in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, providing both a comparative and an interpretive view of sainthood.The notion of sainthood is problematic in two ways. First, can the category be usefully applied to individuals in religious traditions other than Christianity? How has it manifested itself, and what differences are there in the various manifestations of sainthood? Second, where individuals are considered to have risen above the norms in these different traditions, how is it possible to resolve the tension between the saint's imitability and his or her otherness, between imitating and venerating the saint? The authors consider these questions in relation to a wide range of individuals in all the major traditions.   [brief]
Similar Items