Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century

A discussion about the book Epic Performances from the Middle Ages
into the Twenty-First Century. Part of 'A Book at Lunchtime' series
This volume represents the first systematic attempt to chart the
afterlife of epic in modern performance traditions, with chapters
covering not only a significant chronological span, but also
ranging widely across both place and genre, analysing lyric, film,
dance, and opera from Europe to Asia and the Americas. What emerges
most clearly is how anxieties about the ability to write epic in
the early modern world, together with the ancient precedent of
Greek tragedy's reworking of epic material, explain its migration
to the theatre. This move, though, was not without problems, as
epic encountered the barriers imposed by neo-classicists, who
sought to restrict serious theatre to a narrowly defined reality
that precluded its broad sweeps across time and place. In many
instances in recent years, the fact that the Homeric epics were
composed orally has rendered reinvention not only legitimate, but
also deeply appropriate, opening up a range of forms and traditions
within which epic themes and structures may be explored. Drawing on
the expertise of specialists from the fields of classical studies,
English and comparative literature, modern languages, music, dance,
and theatre and performance studies, as well as from practitioners
within the creative industries, the volume is able to offer an
unprecedented modern and dynamic study of 'epic' content and form
across myriad diverse performance arenas.