{"id":2193,"date":"2026-07-31T17:54:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T17:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/classics-courses-syllabi\/epic-qualities-of-the-sundiata\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T17:54:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T17:54:47","slug":"epic-qualities-of-the-sundiata","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/classics-courses-syllabi\/epic-qualities-of-the-sundiata\/","title":{"rendered":"Epic Qualities of the Sundiata Lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Epic\n Qualities of the Sundiata<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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by\n Dr. Janice Siegel<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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An epic is a long, narrative tale that reflects the totality of a\nculture. By the time you are done reading an epic, you know how the people in\nthis culture live, honor their dead, dress, eat, worship, build their homes,\ndesign their government…what kind of laws they make and how\nthey enforce them, how they interact with other cultures and much more. Reading\nan epic is like seeing a cross section of a culture – all layers are\nbared.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Epics are vast in terms of time, scope, and geographical\nspace: conflicts are bigger than normal: GOOD versus EVIL (see\nMilton’s Paradise Lost, for example). The Epic hero represents GOOD (according to the mores\nof the culture whose epic this is) and the foil, the hero’s antagonist, always\nhas qualities morally and culturally repulsive to the subject culture.\nTherefore, the epic hero’s victory over his foe is not a personal victory: it is\na cultural triumph! The\nmetaphorical reading of the specific details of the conflict is always most significant. Ex:\nSoumaoro’s\nhabit of wearing footwear of human skin appals us in the same way that the\ncannibal monsters of Greek mythology do – they reveal a disrespect for human\nlife and break a cultural taboo so frightening that they must be eradicated for\nthe good of all. The threat is metaphorical, for it addresses cultural taboo, but it\nis also physical and *real* for it threatens to destroy the very society the\nepic represents. While pointing out the differences between cultures, epics\nparadoxically and simultaneously also celebrate that part of ourselves\nuniversally shared by all because of our underlying brotherhood in humanity. A\ncurious double-sided coin, epic is.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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All epics present supernatural wonders\nbeyond our human understanding: epic heroes generally do what we cannot –\nSundiata’s battle with Soumaoro is on a different plain than our reality, in the\nsame way that Odysseus fights the Cyclops (Homer’s Odyssey, and Hercules\nfights the monster Cacus (Vergil’s Aeneid). Every epic hero\nrepeatedly thwarts death (although he must eventually succumb), either by visiting and returning from the\nunderworld, which mere mortals cannot do (katabasis), by receiving the help of a\ndivinity or otherwise supernatural entity, or by using magic to\nprotect himself from the laws that govern that realm. Witness Sundiata’s prayers\nto the jinn, and even the ease with which Balla Fasseke calms evil spirits with\nmusic.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In the Sundiata we also have an\nexample of epic cataloguing to acknowledge the participation of variety of tribes, peoples,\ncity-states in the victory Sundiata brings to Mali. Just like in the song by Martha and\nthe Vandellas, Dancing in the Streets, when everyone gets together for a\nrecitation of the tale, you cheer when your home town is mentioned – in the Iliad, we have long lists of cities\nand their constituent families who provided men and ships to the Trojan\nWar effort, and in the Sundiata, we have a recitation of the different tribes\nwho allied with Sundiata and contributed to defeating Soumaoro in the Battle of\nKrina.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Genealogy is also particularly\nhighlighted in epics. The overall purpose of an epic is to\nvalidate\/celebrate\/perpetuate the cultural identity of a people by making them a\npart of something bigger than what they are as individuals; a recitation of an\nindividual’s genealogy serves a similar purpose: it inserts people into the stream of\ntheir cultural history, heritage,\nand achievement by connecting them with their personal past, all of which has\ncontributed to the greatness of their cultural present.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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For more on the\n qualities of mythic heroes see Dr.\n J’s Illustrated Mythic Hero lecture<\/b>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":2167,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2193","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2193\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}