Downes (English, Auburn U.) unearths the occluded tradition of the female epic poem, which he argues has a history that ranges from the ancient Sumerian Descen of Inanna, inscribed on clay
tablets between 1900 and 1600 BCE, to Lisa Robertson's Debbie: An Epic (1997). He takes a thematic, rather than chronological approach to the topic, addressing such issues as cyclical mythic
structure, internalized mythic structure, monumental time, the gods and religious thought, feminist discourse, oral culture and women's performance, the local and the global, and poetry as
heroic action. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. Annotation 穢2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
