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]
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Title: Epic traditions in the contemporary world: the poetics of community 
Author: Beissinger, Margaret H
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Literature | Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Comparative Literature
Publisher's Description: The epic tradition has been part of many different cultures throughout human history. This noteworthy collection of essays provides a comparative reassessment of epic and its role in the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds, as it explores the variety of contemporary approaches to the epic genre. Employing theoretical perspectives drawn from anthropology, literary studies, and gender studies, the authors examine familiar and less well known oral and literary traditions - ancient Greek and Latin, Arabic, South Slavic, Indian, Native American, Italian, English, and Caribbean - demonstrating the continuing vitality of the epic tradition.Juxtaposing work on the traditional canon of western epics with scholarship on contemporary epics from various parts of the world, these essays cross the divide between oral and literary forms that has long marked the approach to the genre. With its focus on the links among narrative, politics, and performance, the collection creates a new dialogue illustrating the sociopolitical significance of the epic tradition. Taken together, the essays raise compelling new issues for the study of epic, as they examine concerns such as national identity, gender, pedagogy, and the creation of the canon.   [brief]
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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]
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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]
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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.
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Title: Making health work: human growth in modern Japan 
Author: Mosk, Carl
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Sociology | Demography | Japan | Asian History | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: Mosk shows how population quality provides a key to understanding economic growth and social change in Japan.
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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]
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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]
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Title: Time and the crystal: studies in Dante's Rime petrose 
Author: Durling, Robert M
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Literature | European Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism
Publisher's Description: The Rime petrose , Dante's powerful lyrics about a woman as beautiful and as hard as a precious stone, are generally acknowledged to be an important moment in his stylistic development. In this first full-length investigation of the poetics of the petrose and of their relation to the Divine Comedy , Durling and Martinez uncover much new material, especially from medieval science (astrology and mineralogy), philosophy, and theology. The authors argue that the Rime petrose represent a major turning point in Dante's conception of a "microcosmic poetics" that became the fundamental mode of the Commedia . They demonstrate how Dante here attempts his first full account of his relation to the universe as a whole.This work offers many new insights into the intrinsic significance of these remarkable poems and their place in Dante's development - especially far-reaching are the implications for the interpretation of the Divine Comedy . The book will be of interest not only to students of Dante but also to intellectual historians, historians of science, students of poetics and poetic theory, and to all those interested in medieval literature.   [brief]
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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]
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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]
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Title: Warriors into traders: the power of the market in early Greece
Author: Tandy, David W
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Classics | Ancient History | Classical History | Economics and Business | Anthropology | Politics
Publisher's Description: The eighth century dawned on a Greek world that had remained substantially unchanged during the centuries of stagnation known as the Dark Age. This book is a study of the economic and cultural upheaval that shook mainland Greece and the Aegean area in the eighth century, and the role that poetry played in this upheaval. Using tools from political and economic anthropology, David Tandy argues that between about 800 and 700 B.C., a great transformation of dominant economic institutions took place involving wrenching adjustments in the way status and wealth were distributed within the Greek communities.Tandy explores the economic organization of preindustrial societies, both ancient and contemporary, to shed light on the Greek experience. He argues that the sudden shift in Greek economic formations led to new social behaviors and to new social structures such as the polis , itself a by-product of economic change. Unraveling the dialectic between the material record and epic poetry, Tandy shows that the epic tradition mirrored these new social behaviors and that it portrayed the stresses that economic change brought to the ancient Aegean world.Tandy brings in comparative evidence from other small-scale communities beset by changes, spotlighting the specific plight of one community, Ascra in Boeotia, on whose behalf Hesiod sang his Works and Days . The result is a lively, moving account of a human dilemma that, many centuries later, is all too familiar.   [brief]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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Title: The power of Thetis: allusion and interpretation in the Iliad 
Author: Slatkin, Laura M
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Classics
Publisher's Description: In The Power of Thetis, Laura M. Slatkin reveals the full importance of mythic allusion in Homeric composition and in the experience of Homer's audience.
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Title: Voyage of rediscovery: a cultural odyssey through Polynesia
Author: Finney, Ben R
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Anthropology | United States History | East Asia Other | Asian History
Publisher's Description: In the summer of 1985, a mostly Hawaiian crew set out aboard Hokule'a, a reconstructed ancient double canoe, to demonstrate what skeptics had steadfastly denied: that their ancestors, sailing in such canoes and navigating solely by reading stars, ocean swells, and other natural signs, could intentionally have sailed across the Pacific, exploring the vast oceanic realm of Polynesia and discovering and settling all its inhabitable islands. Their round-trip odyssey from Hawai'i to Aotearoa (New Zealand), across 12,000 nautical miles, dramatically refuted all theories declaring that - because of their unseaworthy canoes and inaccurate navigational methods - the ancient Polynesians could only have been pushed accidentally to their islands by the vagaries of wind and current. Voyage of Rediscovery is a vivid, immensely readable account of this remarkable journey through the Pacific, including tales of a curiosity attack by sperm whales and the crew's welcome to Aotearoa by Maori tribesmen, who dubbed them their sixth tribe. It describes how Hawaiian navigator Nainoa Thompson guided the canoe over thousands of miles of open ocean without compass, sextant, charts, or any other navigational aids. In so doing, it documents the experimental voyaging approach, developed by Ben Finney, which has both transformed our ideas about Polynesian migration and voyaging and been embraced by present-day Polynesians as a way to experience and celebrate their rich ancestral heritage as premier seafarers.By sailing in the wake of their ancestors, the Hawaiians and other Polynesians who captained, navigated, and crewed Hokule'a made the journey described here a cultural as well as a scientific odyssey of exploration.   [brief]
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Title: Renaissance Paris: architecture and growth, 1475-1600 
Author: Thomson, David 1912-
Published: University of California Press,  1985
Subjects: Art | Architecture
Publisher's Description: In the modern literature on Renaissance art and architecture, Paris has often been considered the Cinderella of the European capitals. The prestigious buildings that were erected soon after François I decided in 1528 to make Paris his residence have long since been lost. Thomson, however, restores t . . . [more]
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Title: The two-headed deer: illustrations of the Rāmāyaṇa in Orissa 
Author: Williams, Joanna Gottfried 1939-
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Art | Art History | South Asia
Publisher's Description: India's epic poem, the Ramayana, is a dramatic, ever-evolving tale of a prince and his bride, their adventures and dilemmas, and demons. Joanna Williams studies the art of the Ramayana in Orissa, a region known for its elegantly carved temples. There she researched both literary and visual art works, interviewed artists, and observed them at work.With depth and originality, Williams considers how Indian art tells a story in distinctive ways. Her narratological study takes into account many familiar genres of visual art: illustrated manuscripts, drawings on palm leaf paper, wall paintings, shadow plays, temple sculpture, and painted cloth pata . Included are discussions of pan-Indian versions of the epic, which include film, video, and the comic strip; and those local to Orissa, including rural theater and festivals.Noting that we often treat images designed to be seen in sequence as separate pictures, Williams argues that considering several Ramayana images in sequence reveals their qualities of variety, surprise, and emotional development, promoting an understanding of how the story is told. She discusses the artists' narrative strategies and offers interpretations of how and why artists made their choices.Williams persuasively argues against critics who believe that Indian art, indeed any traditional art, is conventional and lacks individual technique or vision. Her analysis across a variety of genres offers a new model for art historians; at the same time anthropologists, folklorists, and scholars of literature and narratology will find her work of great value.   [brief]
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Title: Inside the drama-house: Rama stories and shadow puppets in South India 
Author: Blackburn, Stuart H
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Anthropology | Asian Studies | South Asia | Cinema and Performance Arts | Hinduism
Publisher's Description: Stuart Blackburn takes the reader inside a little-known form of shadow puppetry in this captivating work about performing the Tamil version of the Ramayana epic. Blackburn describes the skill and physical stamina of the puppeteers in Kerala state in South India as they perform all night for as many as ten weeks during the festival season. The fact that these performances often take place without an audience forms the starting point for Blackburn's discussion - one which explores not only this important epic tale and its performance, but also the broader theoretical issues of text, interpretation, and audience.Blackburn demonstrates how the performers adapt the narrative and add their own commentary to re-create the story from a folk perspective. At a time when the Rama story is used to mobilize political movements in India, the puppeteers' elaborate recitation and commentary presents this controversial tale from another ethical perspective, one that advocates moral reciprocity and balance.While the study of folk narrative has until now focused on tales, tellers, and tellings, this work explores the importance of audience - absent or otherwise. Blackburn's elegant translations of the most dramatic and pivotal sequences of the story enhance our appreciation of this unique example of performance art.   [brief]
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