The Nart sagas are to the Caucasus what Greek mythology is to Western civilization. This book presents, for the first time in the West, a wide selection of these fascinating myths preserved among ...four related peoples whose ancient cultures today survive by a thread. In ninety-two straightforward tales populated by extraordinary characters and exploits, by giants who humble haughty Narts, by horses and sorceresses,Nart Sagas from the Caucasusbrings these cultures to life in a powerful epos.
In these colorful tales, women, not least the beautiful temptress Satanaya, the mother of all Narts, are not only fertility figures but also pillars of authority and wisdom. In one variation on a recurring theme, a shepherd, overcome with passion on observing Satanaya bathing alone, shoots a "bolt of lust" that strikes a rock--a rock that gives birth to the Achilles-like Sawseruquo, or Sosruquo. With steely skin but tender knees, Sawseruquo is a man the Narts come to love and hate.
Despite a tragic history, the Circassians, Abazas, Abkhaz, and Ubykhs have retained the Nart sagas as a living tradition. The memory of their elaborate warrior culture, so richly expressed by these tales, helped them resist Tsarist imperialism in the nineteenth century, Stalinist suppression in the twentieth, and has bolstered their ongoing cultural journey into the post-Soviet future.
Because these peoples were at the crossroads of Eurasia for millennia, their myths exhibit striking parallels with the lore of ancient India, classical Greece, and pagan Scandinavia. The Nart sagas may also have formed a crucial component of the Arthurian cycle. Notes after each tale reveal these parallels; an appendix offers extensive linguistic commentary. With this book, no longer will the analysis of ancient Eurasian myth be possible without a close look at the Nart sagas. And no longer will the lover of myth be satisfied without the pleasure of having read them.
Excerpts from the Nart sagas
"The Narts were a tribe of heroes. They were huge, tall people, and their horses were also exuberant Alyps or Durduls. They were wealthy, and they also had a state. That is how the Narts lived their lives. . . ."
"The Narts were courageous, energetic, bold, and good-hearted. Thus they lived until God sent down a small swallow. . . ."
"The Narts were very cruel to one another. They were envious of one another. They disputed among themselves over who was the most courageous. But most of all they hated Sosruquo. . . . A rock gave birth to him. He is the son of a rock, illegally born a mere shepherd's son. . . ."
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and ...impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.
The major purpose of this book is to illustrate and explain the fundamental similarities and correspondences between humankind's oldest and newest thought-technologies: oral tradition and the ...Internet. Despite superficial differences, both technologies are radically alike in depending not on static products but rather on continuous processes, not on "What?" but on "How do I get there?" In contrast to the fixed spatial organization of the page and book, the technologies of oral tradition and the Internet mime the way we think by processing along pathways within a network. In both media it's pathways--not things--that matter. _x000B__x000B_To illustrate these ideas, this volume is designed as a "morphing book," a collection of linked nodes that can be read in innumerable different ways. Doing nothing less fundamental than challenging the default medium of the linear book and page and all that they entail, Oral Tradition and the Internet shows readers that there are large, complex, wholly viable, alternative worlds of media-technology out there--if only they are willing to explore, to think outside the usual, culturally constructed categories. This "brick-and-mortar" book exists as an extension of The Pathways Project (http://pathwaysproject.org), an open-access online suite of chapter-nodes, linked websites, and multimedia all dedicated to exploring and demonstrating the dynamic relationship between oral tradition and Internet technology._x000B_
Smart phones, tablets, Facebook, Twitter, and wireless Internet connections are the latest technologies to have become entrenched in our culture. Although traditionalists have argued that ...computer-mediated communication and cyberspace are incongruent with the study of folklore, Trevor J. Blank sees the digital world as fully capable of generating, transmitting, performing, and archiving vernacular culture. Folklore in the Digital Age documents the emergent cultural scenes and expressive folkloric communications made possible by digital "new media" technologies.New media is changing the ways in which people learn, share, participate, and engage with others as they adopt technologies to complement and supplement traditional means of vernacular expression. But behavioral and structural overlap in many folkloric forms exists between on- and offline, and emerging patterns in digital rhetoric mimic the dynamics of previously documented folkloric forms, invoking familiar social or behavior customs, linguistic inflections, and symbolic gestures.Folklore in the Digital Ageprovides insights and perspectives on the myriad ways in which folk culture manifests in the digital age and contributes to our greater understanding of vernacular expression in our ever-changing technological world.
This article deals with Greek animal fables, traditionally attributed to a former slave, Aesop, who lived during the sixth century BCE. As a genre, the Aesopic fables, or the Aesopica, has had a ...significant impact on the Western fable tradition and modern Western children’s literature. The Aesopica owes much to the Mesopotamian fables and has parallels in other Near Eastern cultures. Modern research has concentrated on tracing the oriental roots of the fable tradition and the dating of the different parts of the Aesopica, as well as defining the fable as a genre. The traditional reading of fables has, however, excluded animals qua animals, supposing that fables are mainly allegories of the human condition. The moral of the story (included in the epimythia or promythia) certainly guides one to read the stories anthropocentrically, but the original fables did not necessarily include this positioning element. Many fables address the situation when a prey animal, like a lamb, negotiates with a predator animal, like a wolf, by giving reasons why she should not be killed. In this article, I will concentrate on these fables and analyse them from the point of view of their structure and content. Comparing these fables with some animal similes in Homer’s Iliad, I suggest that these fables deal not only with the ethical problem of ‘might makes right’ as a human condition, but also the broader philosophical question of killing other living creatures and the problem of cruelty.
Culture Work Frandy, Tim; Cederström, B. Marcus
07/2022
eBook
How do culture workers construct public arts and culture projects
that are effective and transformative? How do we create public
humanities projects of the community, for the community, and with
the ...community? How can culture work make a concrete difference in
the quality of life for communities, and lead to the creation of a
more just world? Why do the public humanities matter? Culture
Work explores these questions through real-world examples of
cultural and public humanities projects. The innovative case
studies analyzed in the book demonstrate the vast numbers of
creative possibilities in culture work today-in all their
complexities, challenges, and potentialities. Thematically arranged
chapters embody the interconnected aspects of culture work, from
amplifying local voices to galvanizing community from within, from
preservation of cultural knowledge to its creative repurposing for
a desired future. These inventive projects provide concrete
examples and accessible theory grounded in practice, encourage
readers to embark on their own public culture work, and create new
forward-looking inspiration for community leaders and scholars in
the field.
Folklorun 19. yüzyıl serüveni ulusların köken arayışları ile halk anlatılarının metinsel yayılımlarını belirlemeyle sınırlı kalmış olsa da 20. yüzyılda ortaya çıkan birtakım yaklaşımlar, halkı ...anlamaya yönelik analizlerin kapılarını aralamış görünmektedir. Halkı ve onun ürettiği kültürü parçalardan hareketle bir bütün olarak ele almak, hem folklor disiplininin ontolojik sorunlarına çözüm üretmede bize yardımcı olacağı gibi halkı anlama ve yorumlamada mevcut sorunlara pragmatik çözümler üretecek hem de olası dönüşüm ve katmanlaşmalar bu teorik perspektifle daha doğru okunabilecektir. Bu yazı, şimdiye kadar folklorda kullanılan işlevsel ve yapısal işlevsel teorilerin yöntem ve yaklaşımlarının bazı durumlarda tersine çevrilebileceği hipotezinden hareket etmiştir. Folklorda işlevsel çözümlemelerin daha çok Malinowski ve Bascom’un sayıltılarından etkilendiği bilinmektedir, ancak her iki araştırmacının da ön kabulleri, sistemin işleyişindeki denge ve uyumun hatasız işlediği yönündedir. Ancak şu sorular, açıklığa kavuşturulmadan teori üzerindeki tartışmalar bitecek gibi değildir: Folklorun doğası hep “olumlu” mudur? Her işlev, toplumsal sistemin hayatta kalmasına mı odaklanır? Yapısal ve kurumsal çatışmalarda gerilimi yatıştırıcı folklorik ögelerin etkisi ne yöndedir? Folklor, basit bir eğlence aracı olmanın dışında toplumun ilerleme ve duraklamasında etkili bir öge midir? Makalede, bu sorulardan hareketle folklor incelemelerinde bozuk ve örtük işlevin varlığı tartışmaya açılmıştır
PDF
