Folklore and Ethnology (17)

• Anthropology
• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Literature
• Other languages

Careful Village and Other 'Khashag' from Tibet: The Amdo Comedies of Menla Jyab

• Menla Jyab
• Timothy Thurston
• Tsering Samdrup
• Timothy Thurston
• Tsering Samdrup

This volume offers a unique glimpse into the world of khashag, a vibrant genre of Tibetan spoken comic dialogues from the area Tibetans call Amdo, with the first ever publication of 11 annotated translations of scripts by its leading performer, Menla Jyab. Emerging in the 1980s during a period of cultural revival in Tibetan communities, khashag fused traditional Tibetan expression with influences from Han Chinese xiangsheng (crosstalk), evolving into a medium of sharp societal critique and joyous entertainment. Menla Jyab, a pioneering performer, used his platform in radio, television, to craft comedies described as ‘having meaning in every line’.

• Anthropology
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Literature

Oral Poetry

• Ruth Finnegan

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the vast field of 'oral poetry,' encompassing everything from American folksongs, contemporary pop songs, and Inuit lyrics, to the heroic epics of Homer, biblical psalms, and epic traditions in Asia and the Pacific. Taking a broad comparative approach, it explores oral poetry across Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, and the Americas. Drawing on global research, Ruth Finnegan, the author of the seminal Oral Literature in Africa, sheds light on key debates such as the nature of oral tradition, the relationship between poetry and society, the differences between oral and written forms, and the role of poets in predominantly non-literate contexts.

• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• History
• Music

Music and the Making of Modern Japan: Joining the Global Concert

• Margaret Mehl

In only 50 years, from the 1870s to the early 1920s, Japanese people laid the foundations for the country’s post-war rise as a musical as well as an economic power. Meanwhile, new types of popular song, fuelled by the growing global record industry, successfully blended inspiration from the West with musical characteristics perceived as Japanese.

• Biography
• European Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• History
• Politics and Sociology

(An)Archive: Childhood, Memory, and the Cold War

• Zsuzsa Millei
• Nelli Piattoeva
• Iveta Silova
• Mnemo ZIN

What was it like growing up during the Cold War? What can childhood memories tell us about state socialism and its aftermath? How can these intimate memories complicate history and redefine possible futures? These questions are at the heart of the (An)Archive: Childhood, Memory, and the Cold War. This edited collection stems from a collaboration between academics and artists who came together to collectively remember their own experiences of growing up on both sides of the ‘Iron Curtain’. Looking beyond official historical archives, the book gathers memories that have been erased or forgotten, delegitimized or essentialized, or, at best, reinterpreted nostalgically within the dominant frameworks of the East-West divide. And it reassembles and (re)stores these childhood memories in a form of an ‘anarchive’: a site for merging, mixing, connecting, but also juxtaposing personal experiences, public memory, political rhetoric, places, times, and artifacts. Collectively, these acts and arts of collective remembering tell about possible futures―and the past’s futures―what life during the Cold War might have been but also what it has become.

• Anthropology
• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Linguistics
• Literature

Shépa: The Tibetan Oral Tradition in Choné

• Bendi Tso
• Marnyi Gyatso
• Naljor Tsering
• Mark Turin
• Members of the Choné Tibetan Community

This book contains a unique collection of Tibetan oral narrations and songs known as Shépa, as these have been performed, recorded and shared between generations of Choné Tibetans from Amdo living in the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Presented in trilingual format — in Tibetan, Chinese and English — the book reflects a sustained collaboration with and between members of the local community, including narrators, monks, and scholars, calling attention to the diversity inherent in all oral traditions, and the mutability of Shépa in particular.

• African Studies
• Anthropology
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Literature
• Other languages

Folktales of Mayotte, an African Island

• Lee Haring

The book uncovers the versatility and literary skills of oral narrators in a small African island. Relying on the researches of three French ethnographers who interviewed storytellers in the 1970s-80s, Lee Haring shows a once-colonised people using verbal art to preserve ancient values in the postcolonial world, when the island of Mayotte was transforming itself from a neglected colony to an overseas department of France.

• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Linguistics
• Literature

Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish Folklore from Northern Iraq: A Comparative Anthology with a Sample of Glossed Texts, Volume 1

• Geoffrey Khan
• Masoud Mohammadirad
• Dorota Molin
• Paul M. Noorlander

This comparative anthology showcases the rich and mutually intertwined folklore of three ethno-religious communities from northern Iraq: Aramaic-speaking (‘Syriac’) Christians, Kurdish Muslims and—to a lesser extent—Aramaic-speaking Jews.

• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Linguistics
• Literature

Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish Folklore from Northern Iraq: A Comparative Anthology with a Sample of Glossed Texts, Volume 2

• Geoffrey Khan
• Masoud Mohammadirad
• Dorota Molin
• Paul M. Noorlander

This comparative anthology showcases the rich and mutually intertwined folklore of three ethno-religious communities from northern Iraq: Aramaic-speaking (‘Syriac’) Christians, Kurdish Muslims and—to a lesser extent—Aramaic-speaking Jews.

• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Linguistics

The Neo-Aramaic Oral Heritage of the Jews of Zakho

• Oz Aloni

Aloni focuses on three genres of the Zakho community’s oral heritage: the proverb, the enriched biblical narrative and the folktale.

• Anthropology
• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Literature
• Other languages

Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet: Texts in Mongghul, Chinese, and English

• Li Dechun
• Gerald Roche

Containing ballads of martial heroism, tales of tragic lovers and visions of the nature of the world, Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet: Texts in Mongghul, Chinese, and English is a rich repository of songs collected amongst the Mongghul of the Seven Valleys, on the northeast Tibetan Plateau in western China.

• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Music
• Other languages
• Theatre

Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India

• Francesca Orsini
• Katherine Butler Schofield

Examining materials from early modern and contemporary North India and Pakistan, Tellings and Texts brings together seventeen first-rate papers on the relations between written and oral texts, their performance, and the musical traditions these performances have entailed. The contributions from some of the best scholars in the field cover a wide range of literary genres and social and cultural contexts across the region.

• American and Latin American Studies
• Anthropology
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Literature
• Other languages

Stories from Quechan Oral Literature

• A.M. Halpern
• Amy Miller

This book makes a long-awaited contribution to the oral literature and mythology of the American Southwest, and its format and organization are of special interest. Narratives are presented in the original language and in the storytellers’ own words. Facing-page English translation provides a key to the original Quechan for the benefit of language learners. In presenting not just stories but story complexes, this volume captures the art of storytelling and illuminates the complexity and interconnectedness of an important body of oral literature.

• African Studies
• Anthropology
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Literature
• Other languages

How to Read a Folktale: The 'Ibonia' Epic from Madagascar

• Lee Haring

This book offers an English translation of Ibonia, a spellbinding tale of old Madagascar. Recorded when the Malagasy people were first experiencing European contact, Ibonia proclaims the power of the ancestors against the foreigner. Its fairytale elements link it with European folktales, but the story is nonetheless very much a product of Madagascar. Inflating the folktale form to epic proportions, it combines African-style praise poetry with Indonesian-style riddles and poems. Through Ibonia, Lee Haring expertly helps readers to understand the very nature of folktales, connecting this exotic narrative with fundamental questions not only of anthropology but also of literary criticism.

• African Studies
• Anthropology
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Literature
• Other languages

Storytelling in Northern Zambia: Theory, Method, Practice and Other Necessary Fictions

• Robert Cancel

A collection and analysis of the oral narrative traditions of northern Zambia, this innovative book integrates audio and video recordings into the text. Robert Cancel’s critical interpretation, meanwhile, makes his work a much-needed addition to the slender corpus of African folklore studies dealing with storytelling performance. Cancel threads his way between the complex demands of African fieldwork studies, folklore theory, narrative modes, reflexive description and documentation, and brings to the reader a vivid, varied and instructive array of performances. His study tells us not only about storytelling but sheds light on the study of oral literatures throughout Africa and beyond.

• African Studies
• Digital Humanities
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Literature
• Other languages

Oral Literature in the Digital Age: Archiving Orality and Connecting with Communities

• Mark Turin
• Claire Wheeler
• Eleanor Wilkinson

Thanks to ever-greater digital connectivity, interest in oral traditions has grown beyond that of researcher and research subject to include a widening pool of global users. This book explores the political repercussions of studying marginalised languages; the role of online tools in ensuring responsible access to sensitive cultural materials; and ways of ensuring that when digital documents are created, they are not fossilized as a consequence of being archived. This book is an essential guide and handbook for ethnographers, field linguists, community activists, curators, archivists, librarians, and all who connect with indigenous communities to document and preserve oral traditions.

• African Studies
• Anthropology
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Literature
• Other languages

Oral Literature in Africa

• Ruth Finnegan

Ruth Finnegan’s Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan’s ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, ‘drum language’ and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa.

• Anthropology
• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• History
• History: International Relations
• Politics and Sociology

Frontier Encounters: Knowledge and Practice at the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian Border

• Franck Billé
• Grégory Delaplace
• Caroline Humphrey

China, Russia and Mongolia share thousands of miles of border, but their traditions, languages and worldviews are remarkably different. Presenting varied perspectives on how the borders between these unique countries are enacted, produced and crossed, this book illuminates global uncertainties: China’s search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia’s fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious economic independence of Mongolia as its neighbours negotiate to extract its plentiful resources. Bringing together anthropologists, sociologists and economists, this timely collection of essays offers new perspectives on an area that is currently of enormous economic, strategic and geo-political relevance.