Gilgamesh among us : modern encounters with the ancient epic / Theodore Ziolkowski

Object Details

Author

Ziolkowski, Theodore

Contents

Introduction : The story ; The text ; The rediscovery ; The early translations -- Initial reception (1884-1935) : The first literarization ; Babel and Bible ; The German connection ; The spread of the epic -- Representative beginnings (1941-1958) : Modes of modernization ; Four poets in English ; Four German initiatives ; A major German thematization ; The first musical settings -- Popularization of Gilgamesh (1959-1978) : Poetic adaptation s ; The first fictionalization ; The gay Gilgamesh ; Gilgamesh and the philosophers ; A comic interlude ; Three American fictional exuberances ; The operatic Gilgamesh -- Contemporization of Gilgamesh (1979-1999) : New contexts ; Gilgamesh psychoanalyzed ; Gilgamesh deconstructed ; Gilgamesh historicized ; Gilgamesh drums for the Greens ; Gilgamesh postfigured ; Gilgamesh personalized ; Gilgamesh Hispanicized ; Gilgameshiana ; Gilgamesh at millennium's end -- Gilgamesh in the twenty-first century (200-2009) : Poetic versions in English and French ; A new focus ; Gilgamesh as ritual drama ; Two fictional re-visions ; The politicization of Gilgamesh -- Conclusion -- Chronology

Summary

The world's oldest work of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh recounts the adventures of the semimythical Sumerian king of Uruk and his ultimately futile quest for immortality after the death of his friend and companion, Enkidu, a wildman sent by the gods. Gilgamesh was deified by the Sumerians around 2500 BCE, and his tale as we know it today was codified in cuneiform tablets around 1750 BCE and continued to influence ancient cultures--whether in specific incidents like a world-consuming flood or in its quest structure--into Roman times. The epic was, however, largely forgotten, until the cuneiform tablets were rediscovered in 1872 in the British Museum's collection of recently unearthed Mesopotamian artifacts. In the decades that followed its translation into modern languages, the Epic of Gilgamesh has become a point of reference throughout Western culture. In Gilgamesh among Us, Theodore Ziolkowski explores the surprising legacy of the poem and its hero, as well as the epic's continuing influence in modern letters and arts. This influence extends from Carl Gustav Jung and Rainer Maria Rilke's early embrace of the epic's significance--"Gilgamesh is tremendous!" Rilke wrote to his publisher's wife after reading it--to its appropriation since World War II in contexts as disparate as operas and paintings, the poetry of Charles Olson and Louis Zukofsky, novels by John Gardner and Philip Roth, and episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Xena: Warrior Princess. -- Book jacket.

2011

Type

Books

Adaptations

Physical description

xiv, 226 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Smithsonian Libraries

Record ID

siris_sil_1071573

Metadata Usage (text)

CC0