“Epic literature is not history but is again a way of looking at the past.”

Source: Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300, p. 100.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 19, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Epic literature is not history but is again a way of looking at the past." by Romila Thapar?

Romila Thapar9

Indian historian 1931

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2008/03/07/10_000_bc/ of 10,000 BC (2008)

“The Bruce, with which the Scottish contribution to English literature begins, long held its place as the national epic of Scotland.”

John Barbour (1316–1395) Scottish poet

Kenneth Sisam Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964) p. 108.
Criticism

“The comprehensive picture drawn here of Vyasa in the MBh includes his functions as seer, priest, ascetic, and spiritual preceptor. Of all the epic’s, Vyasa is the one who most closely corresponds to the idea of brahminhood promulgated by the dharma literature and the MBh’s Shanti Parvan- The section of the epic having the greater similarity to the dharma literature.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In pp.50-51.
Sources, Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata

“Turned the wrong way around, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied in "History", harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.”

Philip Roth book The Plot Against America

Source: The Plot Against America (2004), Chapter 3, "June 1941 – December 1941: Following Christians", pp. 113–114 ISBN 0547345313.

“I was once dead but I live again, I think independence is epic fortnite win.”

Olof Palme (1927–1986) Swedish 20th century prime minister

“Experience is nearly always commonplace; the present is not romantic in the way the past is, and ideals and great visions have a way of becoming shoddy and squalid in practical life. Literature reverses this process.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time

“The literature of India makes us acquainted with a great nation of past ages, which grasped every branch of knowledge, and which will always occupy a distinguished place in the history of the civilization of mankind.”

Magnus Björnstjerna (1779–1847) Swedish count and general (1779-1847)

Source: Count Magnus Fredrik Ferdinand Bjornstjerna in: The Theogony of the Hindoos with Their System of Philosophy and Cosmogony by Count M. Björnstjerna https://books.google.co.in/books?id=mHNK92IkdUkC&pg=PA85, Murray, 1844 , p. 85.

“Maybe after the war we’ll be civilized again. That’s the way it has always happened in the past.”

Joe Haldeman book Forever Peace

Source: Forever Peace (1997), p. 14

“I try to encourage people to look at our past in a critical way because as our education, we have a great, great history. But in reality we are poorest in ethics and philosophy, so I try to raise people’s consciousness on how we deal with our past.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei, interview by Christiane Amanpour, 2010

“Etymologically, patient means sufferer. It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades. That illness can be not an epic of suffering but the occasion of some kind of self-transcendence is affirmed by sentimental literature and, more convincingly, by case histories offered by doctor-writers. Some illnesses seem more apt than others for this kind of meditation.”

Susan Sontag book AIDS and Its Metaphors

Source: AIDS and Its Metaphors, (1989), ch. 4, p. 125, Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-312-42013-7 ; later published in combination with Illness As Metaphor. This combined edition is the one referenced here.

“Epic literature is not history but is again a way of looking at the past.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Romila Thapar9

Related quotes

Related topics