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 Conclusion In heroic poetry, history and imaginative image come into conjunction to create these epics, and the fictional helps to explicate the impact and the meaning of the historical. These are moments of historical transition, from old ideas of leadership to new enlightened ideas, from ancient beliefs to new faiths, from bloody patterns of existence to less violent sets of rules and laws. Mwindo, Gilgamesh, and Beowulf are heroic not because of their deeds; they are heroic because of what they represent, because they are the dramatic manifestation of significant events. The entire narrative tradition, or at least major portions of it, comes to bear on these moments of historical and social transition, and they are elevated into epic. There is evidence to suggest that this is the structure of other epics as well. There is much, for example, in Njal’s Saga that echoes the structure and themes of the Mahabharata, the vast Sanskrit epic, the longest epic known. In this massive and sprawling set of heroic adventures, the rivalry between the cousins (the Pandavas and the Kauravas) is treated in great detail and in scores of episodes. Vicious battles, bloodshed, accounts of great violence lace the developing then degenerating relations between the cousins, and set against the profound violence is reconciliation, the possibilities for peace. Njal’s Saga is also filled with episodes of violence and fury, and these too are counterpointed with the hope of peace and reconciliation in a different kind of social organization, the diminishing of the blood feuds that preoccupy the Icelandic society and which threaten whatever delicate fibers are holding the society and the shreds of legalism together. In both of these epics, there is something that seeks, threatens, to break through, a new era with a hope for creativeness that is not a part of the old society, and men are at great pains to make it possible for this to occur. But it cannot happen because of the array of unfinished battles and unconsummated hatreds. Mantis is a bridge to the trickster. With Mantis, there is the consciousness of change, of the passing of the old order, transformation and reorganization. That is what Trickster Mantis reveals as he himself is taught. Most certainly that is what is involved in the complex themes of the narratives in which Mantis is the transformer. The sense of change is ever-present, and there is also in the Mantis narratives the blend of nostalgia for what is passing mingled with anticipation for what is to come, a conservatism that mixes with a sense of future creativity. And Mantis knows that for the new age to be born, he must die. In these narratives, there is a coming to awareness of Mantis, who is in a sense the teacher of the San as yet unborn. Mantis through his stupidity and his trickery is learning and he is also preparing the way for the new age; he is amassing the material artifacts of the San people, he is ordering life as the San will know it, he is learning the necessities for getting along in San society, and all of these will be communicated to the San, as Mantis’s age passes and the new and glorious age of the San appears. It is almost as if, at critical moments in the history of the ancient societies, the oral tradition provides the wherewithal for great poets to bring elements of the tradition to bear on these significant and dangerous transitional periods. The hero is a product of the old society, but he is making the movement to the new. In the contradictions in his character and background are the contradictions that we sense at the passing of the old, the inauguration of the new. But the hero is more than a reflector, he also organizes elements of the two ages, blends them within his own character, and that fusing is a part of the transition. He is a product of the old, and sometimes succumbs entirely to the dictates of the old; but he is also an advocate of the new, and, as such, he seeks to channel useful elements of the old into the new, to make the transition possible. For there is no abrupt change here; the epics deal with change, and the heroes stand for change, but they have feet in both worlds, and they will ultimately have to die, once the transition has been made. In their death is the transition...

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