Publisher's Synopsis
The book will focus on the textualization process of long oral epics, found today mainly outside Europe, especially on their oral composition, documentation, codification in writing, editing and publication. Interesting fieldwork-based studies on living oral epics are able to inform us about the problems of textualization in a way which will also interest scholars studying long-dead epic traditions such as Homer, Beowulf, Nibelungenlied, Edda, etc. The problem of textualization has been vividly discussed in recent years in anthropology, folkloristics, literary studies, philology and linguistics. The book will open an ethnographic angle on the discussion on how long epics are composed and used in a variety of cultural contexts.
