Hidden Paradigms: Comparing Epic Themes, Characters, and Plot Structures; A South Indian Folk Legend Viewed Through Many Lenses - Brossura

Beck, Brenda E. F.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1487529341 ISBN 13: 9781487529345

Casa editrice: Univ of Toronto Pr, 2023

Riassunto

Understanding an epic story’s key belief patterns can reveal community-level values, the nature of familial bonds, and how divine and human concerns jockey for power and influence. These foundational motifs remain understudied as they relate to South Asian folk legends, but are nonetheless crucial in shaping the values exemplified by such stories’ central heroes and heroines.

In Hidden Paradigms, anthropologist Brenda E.F. Beck describes The Legend of Ponnivala, an oral epic from rural South India. Recorded in 1965, this story was sung to a group of village enthusiasts by a respected pair of local bards. This grand legend took more than thirty-eight hours to complete over eighteen nights. Bringing this unique example of Tamil culture to the attention of an international audience, Beck compares this virtually unknown South Indian epic to five other culturally significant works – the Ojibwa Nanabush cycle, the Mahabharata, an Icelandic Saga, the Bible, and the Epic of Gilgamesh – establishing this foundational Tamil story as one that engages with the same universal human struggles and themes present throughout the world. Copiously illustrated, Hidden Paradigms provides a fresh example of the power of comparative thinking, offering a humanistic complement to scientific reasoning.

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Informazioni sull?autore

Brenda E.F. Beck is an adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Univ of Toronto Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2023
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1487529341
• ISBN 13: 9781487529345
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 470
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile