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Epic Ambitions in Modern Times seeks neither to be a comprehensive history of the modern epic nor to construct a theoretical framework for understanding how epics work. Its twelve chapters range from a consideration of the final books of Paradise Lost to an assessment of a quartet of twenty-first-century women writers who have retold the ancient epics in the form of novels voiced by marginal characters in the original poems. Between those goalposts the book takes up epic in the forms of an epistolary novel, a work of history, a poetic autobiography, an opera, a silent film, a series of paintings, two literary fantasies, three long poems set in science-fictional futures, and a play.

The book explores how artists in the past three centuries, working in varied forms and media, have aimed for, in Milton's phrase, 'things unattempted yet' in epic creation. The ambition of artists to produce epic and the persistent desire of audiences for epic experience constitute the alternating current that stimulates the analysis of the representative selection of modern epics.

Epic literature --- History and criticism. --- Adaptations

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"This is the first book-length study in the West on the folk epics of the Han Chinese people, who are the majority population of China. These folk epics provide an unparalleled resource for understanding the importance of "the local" in Chinese culture, especially how rice-growing populations perceived their environment and relational world. The folk epics were sung by illiterate farmers while working in the rice paddy or boating along the waterways. It was believed that singing promoted crop fertility and that the rice-plant embodied a female rice spirit whose growth and development paralleled that of human sexuality and procreation. Regarded as "vulgar" due to its erotic content, this song tradition was marginalized and little understood. The erotic content is often removed in editions directed at a national readership. Employing perspectives from memory studies, eco-criticism, and the study of oral traditions, this book examines in detail five iconic folk epics. The author draws on interviews with contemporary song transmitters and ethnologists from the Lake Tai region, as well as a collection of singer transcripts and unedited song material"--

Folklore --- Folk songs --- Epic literature, Chinese --- Fertility --- Rice --- Oral tradition --- History and criticism

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Examines representations of ancient epic and epic conventions in film and television.

Epic films --- Motion pictures and literature. --- Television and literature. --- Civilization, Ancient, in motion pictures. --- Civilization, Ancient, on television. --- Epic literature --- History and criticism. --- Adaptations --- History and criticism.