Finnish Folk Poetry and the Kalevala
Synopsis
Since its initial publication in the early nineteenth century, Elias Lonnrot’s Finnish epic Kalevala has attracted international interest and scholarship. However, the author comments that the distorting lenses of translation, cultural difference and historical distance, have rendered the work a cryptic and often misinterpreted text outside of its country of origin. Even within Finland, scholars have found it difficult at times to judge the relation of the Kalevala to its oral sources. Lonnrot’s meticulous notes and discussions of intent and accomplishment make clear what he changed and how he went about it, but give us less inkling of why. This study's view is that the key to understanding Lonnrot’s changes lies in Romantic aesthetics and in the intellectual and socio-political agendas which they encode. Lonnrot created a Romantic epic out of Baltic-Finnic folk poetry, an epic complete with the narrative, generic, gendered and political characteristics of literary epics in nineteenth century’ Europe.Book details
- Series:
- New Perspectives in Folklore
- Author:
- Thomas A. DuBois
- ISBN:
- 9781317945994
- Related ISBNs:
- 9781315861531, 9780815319757
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Pages:
- 342
- Reading age:
- Not specified
- Includes images:
- No
- Date of addition:
- 2022-02-14
- Usage restrictions:
- Copyright
- Copyright date:
- 1996
- Copyright by:
- N/A
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Categories:
- Language Arts, Literature and Fiction