The book provides highlights on the key concepts and trends of evolution in Hero Epic of Ethnic Minority in China, as one of the series of books of “China Classified Histories”.
The Epics of China introduces selected epic traditions of China, providing information about them, insights into their literary traditions, and theories concerning their origins, historical development, cultural context, structure, bards, and audiences. The book deals with both historical epics and contemporary “living” epic traditions. Examples are drawn from several of China’s fifty-five official ethnic minority peoples, focusing on epics from various historical or present-day Mongol subgroups of North China, most notably Tibetan and Kirgiz, as well as epics from peoples of Southwest China, such as the Zhuang, Yi, Miao, Dong, and Dai. Several chapters deal, too, with the early Turkic epics that once circulated in parts of northern China and Central Asia. On the whole, the book’s chapters are grouped into three sections: early epics, small and medium-length epics, and the great heroic epics Jangar and Manas. Epics from the North are mainly heroic narratives focusing on the exploits of martial heroes. They feature story lines centered on bride-kidnapping, trials undergone by the suitor, and encounters with multi-headed demons (Mongol mangus), one-eyed giants, and female demons of the underworld. Southern epics focus on tales of how early deities created the sky, earth, water and land forms, and living beings, often listing specific plants, animals, and local tribes. Some of these epics involve female creator figures, and many play out in a dynamic process that moves through phases of initial creation, destruction by fire, a second creation, a destructive flood, and the ultimate re-creation of the world as we now know it. There are also heroic epics from southern China, most notably from the Yi, Dai, and Miao.
Reconceptualizing the epic genre and opening it up to a world of storytelling, The Epic World makes a timely and bold intervention toward understanding the human propensity to aestheticize and normalize mass deployments of power and violence. The collection broadly considers three kinds of epic literature: conventional celebratory tales of conquest that glorify heroism, especially male heroism; anti-epics or stories of conquest from the perspectives of the dispossessed, the oppressed, the despised, and the murdered; and heroic stories utilized for imperialist or nationalist purposes. The Epic World illustrates global patterns of epic storytelling, such as the durability of stories tied to religious traditions and/or to peoples who have largely "stayed put"; the tendency to reimagine and retell stories in new ways over centuries; and the imbrication of epic storytelling and forms of colonialism and imperialism, especially those perpetuated and glorified by Euro-Americans over the past 500 years, resulting in unspeakable and immeasurable harms to humans, other living beings, and the planet Earth. The Epic World is a go-to volume for anyone interested in epic literature in a global framework. Engaging with powerful stories and ways of knowing beyond those of the predominantly white Global North, this field-shifting volume exposes the false premises of "Western civilization" and "Classics," and brings new questions and perspectives to epic studies.