Hidden Paradigms: Comparing Epic Themes, Characters, and Plot Structures

by Brenda E.F. Beck

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487529369
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	03/30/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	476
File size:	42 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Summarizing an Epic Legend, The Legend of Ponnivala Nadu
2. Character and Plot Structures, The Mahabharata
3. Human Life as a Balancing Act, The Epic of Gilgamesh
4. Seven Great Phases of History, The Bible’s Old and New Testament Stories
5. Landscapes and Identity Formation, The Vatsendaela Saga
6. Human versus Extra-Human Powers, The Nanabush Legend Cycle
7. Hidden Paradigms, Additional Themes and Some Overview Theories
8. The Story Told by the Stars, Babylonian Star-lore and the Hindu Nakshatras
9. An Epic Story Visualized as a Lotus Plant, The Lotus Plant in Barabudur, Central Java Conclusion
Annotated Bibliography Listing Sources for Specific Epics Discussed
General Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Ruth Finnegan

"Everyone with an interest in epic or, indeed, in narrative or mythology generally should read this book by an internationally respected authority. Taking an innovative comparative approach likely to deeply affect this field of scholarship, it is full of mind-opening insights that will delight the expert and the general reader alike."

Jo Ann Cavallo

"By setting the Land of the Golden River in conversation with the Mahabharata, the epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, Icelandic saga, and North American Indigenous legends, Brenda Beck explores how epic narratives address perennial questions at the core of our humanity. In the process, she reveals to the English-speaking world the anthropological, psychological, and symbolic complexity of a hitherto little-known masterpiece of world literature."

E. Annamalai

"Brenda Beck shows in this book that the oral folk epic Annanmar katai 'the story of twin brothers' is not local or vernacular in its reach. It is in essence a story of the emergence of a farming culture superseding a hunting culture. This sets the ground for the comparative study of five other legends from around the world. Relating the local to the global is new in anthropology. The book ends up showing that all humans journeyed through comparable paths and that they have similar ways of telling that story."

Editorial Reviews

"Everyone with an interest in epic or, indeed, in narrative or mythology generally should read this book by an internationally respected authority. Taking an innovative comparative approach likely to deeply affect this field of scholarship, it is full of mind-opening insights that will delight the expert and the general reader alike."

—Ruth Finnegan, Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences, The Open University

"Brenda Beck shows in this book that the oral folk epic Annanmar katai ‘the story of twin brothers’ is not local or vernacular in its reach. It is in essence a story of the emergence of a farming culture superseding a hunting culture. This sets the ground for the comparative study of five other legends from around the world. Relating the local to the global is new in anthropology. The book ends up showing that all humans journeyed through comparable paths and that they have similar ways of telling that story."

—E. Annamalai, formerly of the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

"By setting the Land of the Golden River in conversation with the Mahabharata, the epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, Icelandic saga, and North American Indigenous legends, Brenda Beck explores how epic narratives address perennial questions at the core of our humanity. In the process, she reveals to the English-speaking world the anthropological, psychological, and symbolic complexity of a hitherto little-known masterpiece of world literature."

—Jo Ann Cavallo, Professor of Italian, Columbia University

From the Publisher