Beschreibung
The adventures of the `epic’ in modern times are a
fascinating topic in themselves. The Romantics claimed that
every self-respecting nation should once upon a time have
had one, and they set out to reconstruct these epics for
political as well as cultural reasons. These epics
represented earlier stages in the development of
nation-states and in this modern world they were, for a long
time, hard to appreciate. The introduction of taperecorders,
however, brought the epic back in the lime-light, with a
vengeance. It became fashionable for scholars to record long
oral narratives, and to present them as long written poems
that reflected deeply ingrained ideas. In this process, the
idea of the epic was revitalized. This volume presents
critical analyses – of epics in Sub-Saharan Africa, the
former Soviet Union, South-East Asia, Medieval Europe, and
America – about this process of revitalization, sometimes
even invention, of epics in particular historical, political
and academic contexts.
