Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. CONTENTS IX
3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1
5. SECTION ONE On the Margins of the Scribal From Oral Epic to Text
6. 1 Epic as Genre 21
7. 2 Performing Interpretation: Early Allegorical Exegesis of Homer 33
8. 3 The Arabic Epic Poet as Outcast, Trickster, and Con Man 54
9. 4 Epic, Gender, and Nationalism: The Development of Nineteenth- Century Balkan Literature 69
10. SECTION TWO Epic and Authority
11. 5 Metamorphosis, Metaphor, and Allegory in Latin Epic 89
12. 6 Tasso's Trees Epic and Local Culture 108
13. 7 Appropriating the Epic Gender, Caste, and Regional Identity in Middle India 131
14. SECTION THREE The Boundaries of Epic Performance
15. 8 Problematic Performances: Overlapping Genres and Levels of Participation in Arabic Oral Epic-Singing 155
16. 9 Worshiping Epic Villains: A Kaurava Cult in the Central Himalayas1 169
17. SECTION FOUR Epic and Lament
18. 10 The Natural Tears of Epic 189
19. 11 The Poetics of Loss in Greek Epic 203
20. 12 The Role of Lament in the Growth and Eclipse of Roman Epic 221
21. SECTION FIVE Epic and Pedagogy
22. 13 Epics and the Politics of the Origin Tale: Virgil, Ovid, Spenser, and Native American Aetiology 239
23. 14 Walcott's Omeros The Classical Epic in a Postmodern World 270
24. CONTRIBUTORS 297
25. INDEX 301