Karl Reichl

Broschiertes Buch

The Oral Epic

From Performance to Interpretation

Beschreibung

This book focuses on the performance of oral epics and explores the significance of performance features for the interpretation of epic poetry.

The leading question of the book is how the socio-cultural context of performance and the various performance elements contribute to the meaning of oral epics. This is a question which not only concerns epics collected from living oral tradition, but which is also of importance for the understanding of the epics of antiquity and the Middle Ages which originated and flourished in an oral milieu.

The book is based on fieldwork in the still vibrant oral traditions of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and Siberia. The discussion combines fieldwork with theory; it is not limited to Turkic epics but branches out into other oral traditions.

Autor

Karl Reichl is Professor Emeritus of the University of Bonn (Institute of English, American and Celtic Studies). He has had visiting professorships at Harvard University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, the University of Madison at Wisconsin, and the Karakalpak State University in Nukus. His main research interests lie in medieval oral literature and in contemporary (or near-contemporary) oral epic poetry, especially in the Turkic-speaking areas of Central Asia.

Produktdetails

• Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture
• Verlag: Routledge / Taylor & Francis
• Seitenzahl: 284
• Erscheinungstermin: 31. Mai 2023
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 15mm
• Gewicht: 453g
• ISBN-13: 9781032038087
• ISBN-10: 103203808X
• Artikelnr.: 67823662

Rezensionen

Underlying The Oral Epic: From Performance to Interpretation are Reichl's pioneering labor of many decades to inform research on orality in medieval European literatures by means of his extensive fieldwork with Central Asian Turkic oral bards (Parry's first and unrealized choice as ethnographic subjects to test his path-breaking theory of Homeric composition) and his grounding in musicology, ethno-and otherwise. The book goes beyond this basis, however. It is one of the most broadly comparative single-authored syntheses of research yet produced on living or recently living oral epic traditions worldwide. As such, the book makes a worthy American/oralist complement to synthetic works in the other schools (for example, A. T. Hatto, "Towards an Anatomy of Heroic and Epic Poetry," in Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry, Vol. 2, 1989; and V. M. Gatsak, Ustnaia picheskaia traditsiia vo vremeni, 1989). Moreover, its conciseness, evenness in treating matters of broad scope, and accessible style make it suitable for use as a textbook.

--Daniel Prior, Miami University for Journal of American Folklore