Table of Contents

Introduction The Story * The Text * The Rediscovery * The Early Translations 1. The Initial Reception (1884-1935) The First Literarization * Babel and Bible * The German Connection * The Spread of the Epic 2. Representative Beginnings (1941-1958) 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) 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) 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 5. Gilgamesh in the Twenty-First Century (2000-2009) Poetic Versions in English and French * A New Focus * Gilgamesh as Ritual Drama * Two Fictional Re-Visions * The Politicization of Gilgamesh Conclusion Chronology Notes Index

About the Author

Theodore Ziolkowski is Class of 1900 Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He is the author of many books, Ovid and the Moderns, Clio the Romantic Muse: Historicizing the Faculties in Germany and Hesitant Heroes: Private Inhibition, Cultural Crisis, all three from Cornell.

Reviews

"This book represents a fascinating foray-written by a scholar known for his scrupulous research, clarity of expression, subtlety and wit-into the relatively new field of reception history. It offers us a complex history of the reception of the Gilgamesh cycle, rather than an analysis of the constitutive role played by an ancient epic in the emerging modern world."-Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr., Journal of the American Academy of Religion "Ziolkowski brings together an extraordinary assemblage of creative endeavors-literary, musical and artistic-all bound in some way to the ancient poem recovered by Assyriology... Gilgamesh's emergence into the company of what are now identified as the 'great books' is fully explained by the reception history that Ziolkowski describes."- Andrew R. George, Reviews in History (July 2012) "Ziolkowski's treatment [of the reception of the epic of Gilgamesh] is immensely thorough and supported by rich documentation. He sees the story of Gilgamesh as 'a finely tuned seismograph whose reception registers to a significant degree many of the major intellectual upheavals of the past century.' Highly recommended."-Choice (January 2013) "This wide-ranging book charts the rebirth of Gilgamesh after two thousand years of oblivion. Surveying the myriad ways writers and artists have reconstructed and deconstructed Gilgamesh, psychologized and feminized him, Theodore Ziolkowski shows how the ancient epic serves as 'a finely tuned seismograph' that registers many of the major tensions of the contemporary world."-David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature, Harvard University "The ancient and long-lost story of Gilgamesh, his friends, enemies, and staggering adventures is shown in Theodore Ziolkowski's learned and astute book to be, for artists of many nations, a resonant sounding board for urgent issues of modernity and postmodernity."-Stephen Knight, Cardiff University, author of Merlin: Knowledge and Power through the Ages "Theodore Ziolkowski is immensely learned and has read a staggering array of modern publications that somehow or other use Gilgamesh. He is interested to know why the epic evokes such a response and links it to various movements in the arts and literature, especially in the United States, as well as to specific social conditions in Germany."-Benjamin R. Foster, Yale University, translator of the Norton Critical Edition of The Epic of Gilgamesh