Kalevipoeg Studies


Book Description

The poem Kalevipoeg, over 19,000 lines in length, was composed by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803–1882) on the basis on folklore material. It was published in an Estonian-German bilingual edition in six instalments between 1857 and 1861; it went on to become the Estonian national epic. This first English-language monograph on the Kalevipoeg sheds light on various aspects of the emergence, creation and reception of the text. The first chapter sketches the objectives of the book and gives a short summary of the contents of the twenty tales of the epic, while the second chapter treats the significance of the epic against the cultural background of nineteenth-century Estonia. The third chapter scrutinizes the emergence of the text in more detail and, in its second part, takes a closer look at the many intertextual connections and the traces the epic material has left in Estonian literature up to the present time. The fourth chapter is a detailed case study of one debated passage of the fifteenth tale. The fifth and the six chapters deal with the German reception of the epic, which partly took place earlier than the reception in Estonia. In the fifth chapter, the first reviews and an early treatise by the German scholar Wilhelm Schott (1863) are discussed. The sixth chapter presents the new genre of ‘rewritings’ of the epic – texts which cannot be labelled as translations but are rather new creations on the basis of Kreutzwald’s text. In the seventh chapter several versions of these retellings and adaptations are compared in order to show the stability of some core material conveyed by various authors. A concluding chapter stresses the significance of foreign reception in the canonization process of the Kalevipoeg. At the end, a comprehensive bibliography and an index are added.




Kalevipoeg


Book Description




A Socialist Realist History?


Book Description

How did the Eastern European and Soviet states write their respective histories of art and architecture during 1940s–1960s? The articles address both the Stalinist period and the Khrushchev Thaw, when the Marxist-Leninist discourse on art history was "invented" and refined. Although this discourse was inevitably "Sovietized" in a process dictated from Moscow, a variety of distinct interpretations emerged from across the Soviet bloc in the light of local traditions, cultural politics and decisions of individual authors. Even if the new "official" discourse often left space open for national concerns, it also gave rise to a countermovement in response to the aggressive ideologization of art and the preeminence assigned to (Socialist) Realist aesthetics.




Ancient Song Recovered


Book Description

Known for over thirty years in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the music of Estonian composer Veljo Tormis (born 1930) was not heard in the West until the 1990s. Tormis has written more than 200 choral works, an opera, a ballet/cantata, thirty film scores, vocal and instrumental chamber music, solo songs, and several orchestral pieces. Educated at the Tallinn and Moscow Conservatories, Tormis has integrated the techniques of 20th-century art music with the melodies of the regilaul or ancient Estonian folksong.Ancient Song Recovered: The Life and Music of Veljo Tormis is the first book in a Western language about a master of 20th-century choral music. The book includes chapters on Estonian history (Tormis's music helped inspire the national independence movement), the regilaul, and the Estonian choral tradition, followed by the biography and discussion of major works. Also included ia an article by a leading Estonian scholar as well as an article by and an interview with Tormis, all of which appear for the first time in English. A works list, CD discography, glossary of names, and CD of sound examples conclude this volume by musicologist and choral conductor Mimi S. Daitz. It will interest scholars of contemporary music, the general music public, and persons concerned with Soviet cultural history




The Voice of the People


Book Description

‘The Voice of the People’ presents a series of essays on literary aspects of the European folk revival of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and focuses on two key practices of antiquarianism: the role that collecting and editing played in the formation of ethnological study in the European academy; and the business of publishing and editing, which produced many ‘folkloric’ texts of dubious authenticity. The volume also presents new readings of various genres, including the epic, song, tale and novel, and contributes to the study of several crucial European literary figures. Above all, it investigates the great anonymous authors of the European folk tradition – in narrative and lyric art – and their relation to the cultural movements and imagined identities of the peoples of the emerging nineteenth-century European nation.




Religion, Myth and Folklore in the World's Epics


Book Description

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems– both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.




Apprentice Academy: Knights


Book Description

Congratulations on your acceptance to the Apprentice Academy, one of the world’s finest institutions for knightly education. Your course of study here will prepare you for a career as a knight, samurai, Viking, or really any type of sword-swinging warrior. Swinging a sword is inherently dangerous, but this guide will help you complete your education while minimizing the twin risks of 1. getting maimed and 2. working too hard. Learn how to: • Fight people! • Fight dragons! • Fight monsters! • Fight everything else! • Die honorably! • And more! Please follow all instructions carefully. If you go off on your own and try something silly, and then get your head chopped off or your body bitten in two, don’t start drafting a letter of complaint. You had fair warning.




History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe


Book Description

National literary histories based on internally homogeneous native traditions have significantly contributed to the construction of national identities, especially in multicultural East-Central Europe, the region between the German and Russian hegemonic cultural powers stretching from the Baltic states to the Balkans. History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, which covers the last two hundred years, reconceptualizes these literary traditions by de-emphasizing the national myths and by highlighting analogies and points of contact, as well as hybrid and marginal phenomena that tra




FInnic Paganism


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Trames


Book Description