Roman epic

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Jeanne Rosier Smith

Writing Tricksters examines the remarkable resurgence of tricksters - ubiquitous shape-shifters who dwell on borders, at crossroads, and between worlds - on the contemporary cultural and literary scene. Depicting a chaotic, multilingual world of colliding and overlapping cultures, many of America's most successful and important women writers are writing tricksters. Taking up works by Maxine Hong Kingston, Louise Erdrich, and Toni Morrison, Jeanne Rosier Smith accessibly weaves together current critical discourses on marginality, ethnicity, feminism, and folklore, illuminating a "trickster aesthetic" central to non-Western storytelling traditions and powerfully informing American literature today. Publisher's description.

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Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr

"This collection of 14 essays explores drama from around the world that depicts the United States and Americans. From eighteenth century German dramas about Native Americans to the theaters of contemporary Japan, Mexico, Ireland, and others, there are conflicting representations of Americans. Sometimes flattering, often critical, and occasionally insulting, these views highlight perceptions of America abroad"--Provided by publisher.

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Richard Seaford

This is an exciting and entirely new synthesis, combining anthropology, political and social history, and the close reading of central Greek texts, to account for two of the most significant features of Homeric epic and Athenian tragedy: the representation of ritual and of codes of reciprocity. Both genres are pervaded by these features, yet each treats them in very different ways. In this book, Dr Seaford shows that these differences cannot be accounted for in merely literary terms, but require a historical explanation. Homer is a product of the city state at an earlier historical stage than is tragedy. It is the growth of the city-state and its concomitant developments - in particular of law and of money, as well as in the practice of ritual - that provide a key to the crystallization of the Homeric narrative tradition, to the specificity of tragedy, and to certain features of the thought of the period. In the case of reciprocity, again whether the positive reciprocity associated with gift exchange or the hostile reciprocity of revenge - the systematic distinctions between Homer and tragedy can be explained only from a historical perspective. In its characteristic movement tragedy reflects and confirms the transition from one kind of society towards another: from a network of reciprocal relations, characteristic of societies where the state is weak or absent, to the organization of citizens around a single centre or series of centres - the institutions and cults of the city-state. Challenging, thoroughly lucid, and at times controversial, this lively, original yet accessible work is the first to attempt to understand the development of early Greek literature from the perspective of state formation. It should make enlivening and important reading for students, scholars, and anyone interested in the history or the literature of classical Greece. All Greek is translated.

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James V. Morrison

"It is a familiar problem for authors of all kinds: how to make the tale interesting when the audience knows - or thinks it knows - the end of the story. As James V. Morrison illustrates in Homeric Misdirection, delay, suspense, and uncertainty all play essential roles in revitalizing the Iliad's traditional story of the Trojan War."--BOOK JACKET. "In this persuasive and suggestive work, the author studies key passages that anticipate later events in the epic. An exploration of Zeus' prophecies, Achilles' threats, and the poet's own commentary indicates that the effect of such misdirection is to undermine the audience's belief in its own ability to predict outcomes."--BOOK JACKET. "Ultimately this uncertainty reminds the poet's listeners of the limits of their own knowledge. This in turn creates a link between the doubt and uncertainty of the audience and that of characters in the Iliad."--BOOK JACKET. "Homeric Misdirection will be of interest not only to students and scholars in classical studies, but also to those interested in the development of narrative, audience-response criticism, and epic literature."--BOOK JACKET.