Reading the Past Across Space and Time Receptions and World Literature [Hardcover]

Featuring leading scholars in their fields, this book examines receptions of ancient and early modern literary works from around the world (China, Japan, Ancient Maya, Ancient Mediterranean, Ancient India, Ancient Mesopotamia) that have circulated globally across time and space (from East to West, North to South, South to West). Beginning with the premise of an enduring and revered cultural past, the essays go on to show how the circulation of literature through translation and other forms of reception in fact long predates modern global society; the idea of national literary canons have existed just over a hundred years and emerged with the idea of national educational curricula. Highlighting the relationship of culture and politics in which canons are created, translated, promulgated, and preserved, this book argues that such nationally-defined curricula were challenged by critics and writers in the wake of the Second World War. 

Table of Contents

 

 

Introduction: Reading the Past Across Space and Time: Receptions and World Literature

Brenda Deen Schildgen and Ralph Hexter

 

Epic Receptions

Chapter 1 Epic Worlds

Ralph Hexter

 

Chapter 2 Recycling the Epic: Gilgamesh on Three Continents

Wai Chee Dimock

 

Chapter 3 Wheels Working Together: The Popol Wuj and Time Commences in Xibalb? as Markers of a Maya Cosmovision

Arturo Arias

 

Chapter 4 Reception Configurations: The case of European Epic in India

Brenda Deen Schildgen