Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 expand sectionINTRODUCTION

 collapse sectionSECTION ONE—  ON THE MARGINS OF THE SCRIBAL:  FROM ORAL EPIC TO TEXT
 expand section1—  Epic as Genre
 expand section2—  Performing Interpretation:  Early Allegorical Exegesis of Homer
 expand section3—  The Arabic Epic Poet as Outcast, Trickster, and Con Man
 expand section4—  Epic, Gender, and Nationalism:  The Development of Nineteenth-Century Balkan Literature

 collapse sectionSECTION TWO—  EPIC AND AUTHORITY
 expand section5—  Metamorphosis, Metaphor, and Allegory in Latin Epic
 expand section6—  Tasso's Trees:  Epic and Local Culture
 expand section7—  Appropriating the Epic:  Gender, Caste, and Regional Identity in Middle India

 collapse sectionSECTION THREE—  THE BOUNDARIES OF EPIC PERFORMANCE
 expand section8—  Problematic Performances:  Overlapping Genres and Levels of Participation in Arabic Oral Epic-Singing
 expand section9—  Worshiping Epic Villains:  A Kaurava Cult in the Central Himalayas

 collapse sectionSECTION FOUR—  EPIC AND LAMENT
 expand section10—  The Natural Tears of Epic
 expand section11—  The Poetics of Loss in Greek Epic
 expand section12—  The Role of Lament in the Growth and Eclipse of Roman Epic

 collapse sectionSECTION FIVE—  EPIC AND PEDAGOGY
 expand section13—  Epics and the Politics of the Origin Tale:  Virgil, Ovid, Spenser, and Native American Aetiology
 expand section14—  Walcott's Omeros :  The Classical Epic in a Postmodern World

 expand sectionNotes
  CONTRIBUTORS
 expand sectionINDEX
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