Table of Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
The Story
The Text
The Rediscovery
The Early Translations
1 The Initial Reception (1884-1935) 20
The First Literarization
Babel and Bible
The German Connection
The Spread of the Epic
2 Representative Beginnings (1941-1958) 47
Modes of Modernization
Four Poets in English
Four German Initiatives
A Major German Thematization
The First Musical Settings
3 The Popularization of Gilgamesh (1959-1978) 79
Poetic Adaptations
The First Fictionalization
The Gay Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh and the Philosophers
A Comic Interlude
Three American Fictional Exuberances
The Operatic Gilgamesh
4 The Contemporization of Gilgamesh (1979-1999) 109
New Contexts
Gilgamesh Psychoanalyzed
Gilgamesh Deconstructed
Gilgamesh Historicized
Gilgamesh Drums for the Greens
Gilgamesh Postfigured
Gilgamesh Personalized
Gilgamesh Hispanidzed
Gilgameshiana
Gilgamesh at Millenniums End
5 Gilgamesh in the Twenty-First Century (2000-2009) 154
Poetic Versions in English and French
A New Focus
Gilgamesh as Ritual Drama
Two Fictional Re-Visions
The Politicization of Gilgamesh
Conclusion 189
Chronology 199
Notes 207
Index 221