World Epics
This collaborative website is devoted to epics from across the globe, including epic narratives in theatrical dramatizations, puppetry arts, music, art, and film. It aims likewise to showcase websites and teaching resources developed by colleagues that feature both literary and oral epics, from the ancient world to today.
Don’t Miss
Featured Resources
The Sirat Bani Hilal Digital Archive is devoted to preserving and making accessible to scholars and the general public original recordings and other documentation concerning the Arabic oral epic poem Sirat Bani Hilal.
African Epics
The website “African Poems” has a section featuring several epic poems, with introductions, written excerpts, and oral performances.
JPARC is a consortium of scholars supporting the research and promotion of Japanese performing arts in Japan and abroad.
The site’s main focus is on theatrical, musical, and artistic representations based on Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and other Italian Renaissance romance epics.
Keep Informed
Films, Events, Book Series, and Journals
Feathers of Fire: A Persian Epic
Feathers of Fire: A Persian Epic is a visually breathtaking cinematic shadow play for all ages, created and directed by Hamid Rahmanian, a 2014 Guggenheim fellowship-winning filmmaker/visual artist. The play unfolds an action-packed magical tale of star-crossed...
Sita Sings the Blues
Sita Sings the Blues This English-language animated film was written, directed, produced and animated by Nina Paley in 2008. It revisits the principle episodes of the Ramayana from Sita's perspective and weaves together Indian and American culture.
Symposium: Music and Epics
From 2 to 4 November 2022, a symposium will be held in Geneva on the theme of the Epic, focusing more specifically on the role of music in its interpretation. Based on an idea of the Ateliers d'ethnomusicologie (ADEM), in collaboration with the Haute Ecole de Musique...
World Epics in Puppet Theater: India, Iran, Japan, Italy
A mini-symposium dedicated to World Epics in Puppet Theater: India, Iran, Japan, Italy was held online through the Museo Internazionale delle Marionette "Antonio Pasqualino" (Palermo) on Friday, November 12, 2021. A video recording of the event is available on both...
Puppetry International: The Epic Issue (2021)
Puppetry International: The Epic Issue Fall and Winter, 2021 Issue #50 contains: Editorials by Andrew Periale and Dassia Posner Unbounded in Time: Puppets and Epics by John Bell Agrippino Manteo and His “Irreplaceable Scripts” by Jo Ann Cavallo Puppetry in The Ring...
Anthem World Epic and Romance
The Anthem World Epic and Romance series publishes rigorous, innovative scholarly studies dealing with epics and chivalric romances from across the globe, both written and oral, in poetry and prose, as well as adaptations in theater and cinema. The series seeks to...