"Epic and History" ed. by David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub

This book is an ‘epic’ undertaking in its own right, extending across four millennia in time, and most of the globe in setting. The challenging mosaic of studies takes shape as an exploratory chart of how memory, story-telling and the desire for heroes may relate to what we might want to call ‘History.’ With contributions from leading scholars, this is a cross-cultural comparison of historical epics across a wide range of cultures and time periods, which presents crucial insights into how history is treated in narrative poetry.

Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Series Editor’s Preface
1 Introduction - David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub
2 Maybe Epic: The Origins and Reception of Sumerian Heroic Poetry - Piotr Michalowski
3 Historical Events and the Process of Their Transformation in Akkadian Heroic Traditions - Joan Goodnick Westenholz
4 Epic and History in Hittite Anatolia: In Search of a Local Hero - Amir Gilan
5 Manly Deeds: Hittite Admonitory History and Eastern Mediterranean Didactic Epic - Mary R. Bachvarova
6 Epic and History in the Hebrew Bible: Definitions, “Ethnic Genres,” and the Challenges of Cultural Identity in the Biblical Book of Judges - Susan Niditch
7 No Contest between Memory and Invention: The Invention of the Pa08ava Heroes of the MahAbhArata - James L. Fitzgerald
8 From “Imperishable Glory” to History: The Iliad and the Trojan War - Jonas Grethlein
9 Historical Narrative in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Elegy - Ewen Bowie
10 Fact, Fiction, and Form in Early Roman Epic - Sander M. Goldberg
11 The Song and the Sword: Silius’s Punica and the Crisis of Early Imperial Epic - Raymond D. Marks
12 The Burden of Mortality: Alexander and the Dead in Persian Epic and Beyond - Olga M. Davidson
13 Slavic Epic: Past Tales and Present Myths - Susana Torres Prieto
14 Historicity and Anachronism in Beowulf - Geoffrey Russom
15 The Nibelungenlied – Myth and History: A Middle High German Epic Poem at the Crossroads of Past and Present, Despair and Hope - Albrecht Classen
16 Medieval Epic and History in the Romance Literatures - Joseph J. Duggan
17 Roland’s Migration from Anglo-Norman Epic to Royal French Chronicle History - Michel-André Bossy
18 A Recurrent Theme of the Spanish Medieval Epic: Complaints and Laments by Noble Women - Mercedes Vaquero
19 History in Medieval Scandinavian Heroic Literature and the Northwest European Context - Robert D. Fulk
20 Traditional History in South Slavic Oral Epic - John Miles Foley
21 Lord Five Thunder and the 12 Eagles and Jaguars of Rabinal Meet Charlemagne and the 12 Knights of France - Dennis Tedlock
22 History, Myth, and Social Function in Southern African Nguni Praise Poetry - Richard Whitaker
23 Epic and History in the Arabic Tradition - Dwight F. Reynolds
24 Comments on “Epic and History” - Dean Miller
Index