Epic and Empire

Epic and Empire
Author: David Quint
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2021-01-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0691222959

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Alexander the Great, according to Plutarch, carried on his campaigns a copy of the Iliad, kept alongside a dagger; on a more pronounced ideological level, ancient Romans looked to the Aeneid as an argument for imperialism. In this major reinterpretation of epic poetry beginning with Virgil, David Quint explores the political context and meanings of key works in Western literature. He divides the history of the genre into two political traditions: the Virgilian epics of conquest and empire that take the victors' side (the Aeneid itself, Camoes's Lusíadas, Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata) and the countervailing epic of the defeated and of republican liberty (Lucan's Pharsalia, Ercilla's Araucana, and d'Aubigné's Les tragiques). These traditions produce opposing ideas of historical narrative: a linear, teleological narrative that belongs to the imperial conquerors, and an episodic and open-ended narrative identified with "romance," the story told of and by the defeated. Quint situates Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained within these rival traditions. He extends his political analysis to the scholarly revival of medieval epic in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and to Sergei Eisenstein's epic film, Alexander Nevsky. Attending both to the topical contexts of individual poems and to the larger historical development of the epic genre, Epic and Empire provides new models for exploring the relationship between ideology and literary form.

Epic and Empire in Vespasianic Rome

Epic and Empire in Vespasianic Rome
Author: Tim Stover
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2012-07-05
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 019964408X

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This volume offers a new interpretation of Flaccus' Argonautica, a Latin epic poem. Stover's approach to the text is both formalist and historicist as he seeks not only to elucidate Flaccus' dynamic appropriation of Lucan, but also to associate the Argonautica's formal gestures within a specific socio-political context.

Iran's Epic and America's Empire

Iran's Epic and America's Empire
Author: Mahmoud Omidsalar
Publisher: eBooks2go, Inc.
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0985498102

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The Shahnameh is Iran's national epic. It is a compendium of Iranian myths, legends, and history. Unlike other Indo-European epics, it is not about a war, like the Iliad, or an individual, like the Odyssey, Beowulf, or the Ramayana. The central character of the Shahnameh is Iran, which it glorifies both as subject and hero. Unlike other classical Indo-European epics, the Shahnameh is not in a dead language. It is intelligible to every speaker of Persian in Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.

The Mongol Empire

The Mongol Empire
Author: Carolyn DeCarlo
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2017-12-15
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1680487841

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Under the leadership of Genghis Khan, a confederation of nomadic farmers transformed into a powerful military force. This text demonstrations how an aggressive empire could have been established from such agrarian roots, inviting the reader to follow the rise of the Mongol Empire from its founding through its expansion into the Golden Horde in the West under the leadership of Batu and his successors and the Yuan Dynasty in the East under Kublai Khan. It also features the Mongol Empire's important role in the development of trade between the East and the West during the Middle Ages, particularly as recorded by Venetian merchant Marco Polo.

Epic and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Epic and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Author: Simon Dentith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 10
Release: 2006-06-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1139457098

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In the nineteenth century, epic poetry in the Homeric style was widely seen as an ancient and anachronistic genre, yet Victorian authors worked to recreate it for the modern world. Simon Dentith explores the relationship between epic and the evolution of Britain's national identity in the nineteenth century up to the apparent demise of all notions of heroic warfare in the catastrophe of the First World War. Paradoxically, writers found equivalents of the societies which produced Homeric or Northern epics not in Europe, but on the margins of empire and among its subject peoples. Dentith considers the implications of the status of epic for a range of nineteenth-century writers, including Walter Scott, Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Morris and Rudyard Kipling. He also considers the relationship between epic poetry and the novel and discusses late nineteenth-century adventure novels, concluding with a brief survey of epic in the twentieth century.

In the Persian Empire

In the Persian Empire
Author: Khadija Ejaz
Publisher: Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc.
Total Pages: 68
Release: 2010-12-23
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1612280250

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What was it about Persia’s leadership and military that compelled powerful civilizations like Greece and Rome to fear and respect the might of the largest empire the ancient world had ever seen? The Persian Empire dictated administrative, economic, and artistic trends on an international level for a thousand years. Its people respected diversity and practiced one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world. But who were these people, really, who gave us the famous Persian carpet and taught us landscape gardening, polo, and wine making? Why do people today who can trace their lineage and traditions back to this remarkable empire still proudly celebrate festivals like Nowruz regardless of their nationality or religion? Discover this and more as you journey back in time over 2,000 years to experience life in the Persian Empire and meet the people who called this great empire home.

Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America

Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America
Author: Eric Jay Dolin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 494
Release: 2011-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393079244

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A Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010 Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan Award Winner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place "A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles Times As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent, however, from the Indians clad in deer skins and "good furs" was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing. The news of Hudson's 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade, which fostered economic rivalries and fueled wars among the European powers, and later between the United States and Great Britain, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America was explored, exploited, and settled, while its native Indians were alternately enriched and exploited by the trade. As Dolin demonstrates, fur, both an economic elixir and an agent of destruction, became inextricably linked to many key events in American history, including the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, as well as to the relentless pull of Manifest Destiny and the opening of the West. This work provides an international cast beyond the scope of any Hollywood epic, including Thomas Morton, the rabble-rouser who infuriated the Pilgrims by trading guns with the Indians; British explorer Captain James Cook, whose discovery in the Pacific Northwest helped launch America's China trade; Thomas Jefferson who dreamed of expanding the fur trade beyond the Mississippi; America's first multimillionaire John Jacob Astor, who built a fortune on a foundation of fur; and intrepid mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith, who sliced their way through an awe inspiring and unforgiving landscape, leaving behind a mythic legacy still resonates today. Concluding with the virtual extinction of the buffalo in the late 1800s, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is an epic history that brings to vivid life three hundred years of the American experience, conclusively demonstrating that the fur trade played a seminal role in creating the nation we are today.

An Empire of Wealth

An Empire of Wealth
Author: John Steele Gordon
Publisher: Zondervan
Total Pages: 674
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 006184764X

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Throughout time, from ancient Rome to modern Britain, the great empires built and maintained their domination through force of arms and political power. But not the United States. America has dominated the world in a new, peaceful, and pervasive way -- through the continued creation of staggering wealth. In this authoritative, engrossing history, John Steele Gordon captures as never before the true source of our nation's global influence: wealth and the capacity to create more of it. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Empire of Shadows

Empire of Shadows
Author: George Black
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2012-03-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1429989742

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"George Black rediscovers the history and lore of one of the planet's most magnificent landscapes. Read Empire of Shadows, and you'll never think of our first—in many ways our greatest—national park in the same way again." —Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder Empire of Shadows is the epic story of the conquest of Yellowstone, a landscape uninhabited, inaccessible and shrouded in myth in the aftermath of the Civil War. In a radical reinterpretation of the nineteenth century West, George Black casts Yellowstone's creation as the culmination of three interwoven strands of history - the passion for exploration, the violence of the Indian Wars and the "civilizing" of the frontier - and charts its course through the lives of those who sought to lay bare its mysteries: Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane, a gifted but tormented cavalryman known as "the man who invented Wonderland"; the ambitious former vigilante leader Nathaniel Langford; scientist Ferdinand Hayden, who brought photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran to Yellowstone; and Gen. Phil Sheridan, Civil War hero and architect of the Indian Wars, who finally succeeded in having the new National Park placed under the protection of the US Cavalry. George Black1s Empire of Shadows is a groundbreaking historical account of the origins of America1s majestic national landmark.

Ancient India/Maurya Empire

Ancient India/Maurya Empire
Author: John Bankston
Publisher: Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc.
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2012-09-30
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1612283551

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The Maurya Empire stretched from Afghanistan to the southern tip of India. The first emperor, Chandragupta Maurya, grew up in a village of peacock farmers. His grandson Ashoka would renounce war and strive for peace. Indians still call him Ashoka the Great and regard him as one of history’s finest rulers. The Maurya Empire was ruled by kings who allowed their ministers to disagree with them. It existed over two thousand years ago, yet it had laws familiar in the 21st century—protecting workers, buyers and sellers. Today its monuments survive while its symbols adorn the flag of India.