SLAV 512 - September 23, 2003
Ask for the handouts that were not distributed last time
Blake finishes presentation of Singer of Tales
Show Parry/Lord archive on the web
M - Ukrainian minstrels
Questions about performers and performance?
Folklore for Stalin - the political power of folklore
Folk and elite
Influence of high culture on folklore and the reverse
Is folklore ever fully traditional, guided by the natural forces of tradition alone
Not influenced by other strata of society
Positions of power and defining what is in and what is not
Folklore in Russia and Ukraine today
Forbidden fruit
Soviet-style social engineering to reverse the effects of the social engineering of the Soviet period
Epic and other genres
Jakobson's article on epic and lament
What the link between epic and lament implies
Again - both as oral phenomena, oral composition
Then the implications of sadness
My explanation of epic that brings in
Mythological component
Specifically cosmogonic
Not so much creating as recreating that which has been messed up
Image of the dragon and splitting
Enemy as reptilian, as insect
What is heroic and fighting the impossible battle
Why epic comes and goes, esp. the latter
Historical questions
Questions of marginal figures, esp. linked to religion