You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Finnish Literature Society is proud to publish some of the key articles written by the grand old man of Finnish folkoristics Matti Kuusi. His folkloristic achievements can be characterised as a giant feat of memory in areas in which the human brain functions better than any computer. Kuusi is a scholar of the Finnish school in his striving for completeness of materials, and he has demonstrated that the strength and riches of folkloristic study lies in its basic materials and their painstaking treatment often with the help of quantitative analysis. Kuusi's unusual intellectual capacity and his unusual ability to handle wide entities have resulted in scientific results that, with the passage of decades, has proved itself to be unusually long-lasting.
Traditionally, oral traditions were considered to diffuse only orally, outside the influence of literature and other printed media. Eventually, more attention was given to interaction between literacy and orality, but it is only recently that oral tradition has come to be seen as a modern construct both conceptually and in terms of accessibility. Oral traditions cannot be studied independently from the culture of writing and reading. Lately, a new interdisciplinary interest has risen to study interconnections between oral tradition and book culture. In addition to the use and dissemination of printed books, newspapers etc., book culture denotes manuscript media and the circulation of written...
None
None
Mythic discourses in the present day show how vernacular heritage continues to function and be valuable through emergent interpretations and revaluations. At the same time, continuities in mythic images, motifs, myths and genres reveal the longue durée of mythologies and their transformations. The eighteen articles of Mythic Discourses address the many facets of myth in Uralic cultures, from the Finnish and Karelian world-creation to Nenets shamans, offering multidisciplinary perspectives from twenty eastern and western scholars. The mythologies of Uralic peoples differ so considerably that mythology is approached here in a broad sense, including myths proper, religious beliefs and associated rituals. Traditions are addressed individually, typologically, and in historical perspective. The range and breadth of the articles, presenting diverse living mythologies, their histories and relationships to traditions of other cultures such as Germanic and Slavic, all come together to offer a far richer and more developed perspective on Uralic traditions than any one article could do alone.
Over a period of fifteen years, the authors of this beautiful volume have collected and translated 450 orally transmitted poems, songs, charms, prayers, and laments from Finno-Ugrian languages such as Finnish, Estonian, and Lapp. Presented in both English and the original languages, these works offer unique insights into the worldview and lives of pre-literate peoples in various stages of cultural and social development. The poems reveal the beliefs, perceptions, and artistic genius of fifteen peoples scattered across Northern Europe from Scandinavia, deep into Russia and beyond the Urals, and of the Hungarians in Central Europe. Magnificently produced, with more than forty-five illustrations, the book begins with contexualizing essays on the Finno-Ugrian peoples, oral poetry, and the beliefs and ritual practices reflected in the poems. The poems themselves are arranged thematically, according to such topics as cosmology, hunting, agriculture, animal husbandry, love, marriage, healing, and death. They are followed by a poem-by-poem commentary which contextualizes and explicates the text.
In Dangerous Voices Holst-Warhaft investigates the power and meaning of the ancient lament, especially women's mourning of the dead, and sets out to discover why legislation was introduced to curb these laments in antiquity. An investigation of laments ranging from New Guinea to Greece suggests that this essentially female art form gave women considerable power over the rituals of death. The threat they posed to the Greek state caused them to be appropriated by male writers including the tragedians. Holst-Warhaft argues that the loss of the traditional lament in Greece and other countries not only deprives women of their traditional control over the rituals of death but leaves all mourners impoverished.