Ritual Scenes in the Iliad: Rote, Hallowed, or Encrypted as Ancient Art?
Margo Kitts
Based in oral poetic and ritual theory, this article proposes that ritual scenes in Homer’s Iliad reflect unique compositional constraints…
Pir Sultan Abdal: Encounters with Persona in Alevi Lyric Song
Paul Koerbin
The lyric songs of Pir Sultan Abdal provide one of the richest perspectives on the historical construction, communal perceptions, and…
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Possibilities of Reality, Variety of Versions: The Historical Consciousness of Ainu Folktales
Minako Sakata
In Ainu oral literature there are ubiquitous motifs or story-patterns shared among stories. These stories are integrated by a certain…
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Collecting South Slavic Oral Epic in 1864: Luka Marjanović’s Earliest Account
Aaron Phillip Tate
Luka Marjanović (1844-1920) collected more than 250,000 verses from epic singers in Croatian and Bosnian regions in 1886-88, excerpts of…
The Forgotten Text of Nikolai Golovin: New Light on the Igor Tale
Robert Mann
Mann argues that a rare text of the Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche comes from an early, fifteenth-century redaction that scholars…
A Case Study in Byzantine Dragon-Slaying: Digenes and the Serpent
Christopher Livanos
The Byzantine epic Digenes Akrites has similarities with ancient and medieval Iranian traditions that, in consideration of the epic’s Eastern…
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Crossing Boundaries, Breaking Rules: Continuity and Social Transformation in Trickster Tales from Central Asia
Ildikó Bellér-Hann, Raushan Sharshenova
The article investigates stories from Kyrgyzstan depicting the adventures of a folk hero in tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union.…
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Singing Dead Tales to Life: Rhetorical Strategies in Shandong Fast Tales
Eric Shepherd
This article provides a brief overview of the Shandong fast tale tradition, a Chinese oral performance genre that began in…
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Revenge of the Spoken Word?: Writing, Performance, and New Media in Urban West Africa
Moradewun Adejunmobi
This paper examines the impact of digital media on the relationship between writing, performance, and textuality from the perspective of…
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