National Epics, edited by David Wallace, is a collaborative project that investigates the cultural mechanisms of nationalism. Its 90 chapters will be published by Oxford University Press, and there is an interactive website developed by Penn’s Price Lab in Digital Humanities:
Penn graduate students and Faculty contributing to this project involve Martine Tchitchihe [‘Cameroon’], David Wallace [‘England’], Deven Patel [‘India’], Christopher Attwood [‘Mongolia’], Ahmad Almallah [‘Palestine’], Rita Barnard [’South Africa’], Michael Solomon [‘Spain’], and Thadious Davis [‘USA’]. Courses taught at Penn, originating or cross-listed with COML, have contributed greatly to the development of this project.
An all-day webinar, facilitated by NIU Galway, was held on 28 October 2022. here are a few highlights:
'Australia' began by focusing on issues of indigeneity, and the phenomenon of recent nationhood (since 1901) and ancient human occupation (over 60,000 years); issues taken up by 'Canada' five hours later. 'Thailand' considered challenges arising when a national cultural archive is stored far from national territory: key texts for Thailand are located in Ann Arbor, Michigan (and for Cambodia in Ithaca, New York); movements to repatriate archives and artefacts, as pioneered by Denmark (to Iceland) in 1971, are gaining momentum, globally. 'St Lucia' proposed that its chief epic protagonist is the island itself: a timely reminder that our project is first and foremost about nations (as each chapter title implies) rather than about literary texts that might conform to "epic" dimensions. [Little discussion, in fact, was dedicated to literary form, and it now seems generally accepted that the term epic, with its heavy western baggage, is a term of art standing in for many forms, across the globe.] 'Ambazonia' mapped the geographical and cultural terrain of a nation-in-the-making, a nation preceding a nation-state; 'Cameroon' entered into neighborly, critical dialogue.
'Bulgaria', 'Romania', 'Hungary', 'Serbia', and 'Albania' offered spirited discussion both of individual nationhood and of regional demarcations; 'Romania' explored conflations of Romania with Roma in issues of national identity (a subject explored in the Romania pavilion at the 2022 Venice biennale). 'Wales' spoke of an ancient nation that has never been a state; 'Czechia' and 'Slovakia' discussed how the defining of 'new' national boundaries involves a return to medieval chronicling. 'Philippines' explored the paradox of a 'national' epic written in a language foreign to most members of its nation; 'Georgia' and 'Guatemala' considered the problematics of epics celebrated way beyond national boundaries (thus bringing into view challenges of 'World Literature'). 'Tibet', located in exile, spoke of a national epic continuously expanded by bards, and consequently coveted by a powerful neighbor (raising issues of contested 'intangible heritage', as defined by UNESCO, also of concern to 'Kyrgyzstan'). 'Greece' closed out the day with the Iliad and Odyssey, epics that might seem paradigmatically 'national', but that fluctuate in favor and emphasis, and that share space with the Byzantine Diginis Akritis.