The World of the Khanty Epic Hero-Princes by Arthur Hatto

The World of the Khanty Epic Hero-Princes by Arthur Hatto

In his final book, the late Arthur Hatto analyses the Khanty epic tradition in Siberia on the basis of eighteen texts of Khanty oral heroic epic poems recorded and edited by a succession of Hungarian and Russian scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book examines the world view of an indigenous culture as reconstructed from its own words, demonstrates a flexible outline for organising an analytical dossier of the genre of oral heroic epic poetry in a specific culture, and presents an abundance of new information to compare with better-known heroic epics. Consisting of main sections on The Cosmos, Time, The Seasons, Geography, Spirits, Personae, Warfare, Armour and Weapons, and Men's Handiwork, the book also includes a section of background information on the Khanty people. Marianne Bakr -Nagy contributes specialist knowledge of the Khanty language to the linguistic interpretation of the texts, and there is an afterword by Daniel Prior.

'… The World of the Khanty Epic Hero-Princes is in many ways a fantastically detailed primer to a world as yet invisible to those who cannot read Khanty, Hungarian, or German …' Gabriel McGuire, Journal of Folklore Research
'Hatto finalizes his career-spanning work on epic traditions with this publication, monumental in analytical interpretation and in its attempt to glimpse some reflections of the 'archaic mind'… This book's achievement is in documenting and conveying the cultural richness and nuanced topographies of the Khanty endemic landscapes and home territories whose singers seem to have been silenced forever.' Tero Mustonen, Sibirica
'Hatto's world-view as a deeply immersed comparative folklorist offers valuable reminders of the richness of ethnopoetics as a way to conceptualize past worlds of beauty, terror, and creativity.' Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Arthur Hatto, FBA (1910–2010) was a scholar of medieval German literature and, especially after his retirement from the University of London, where he served as Professor of German from 1953 to 1977, the comparative study of oral heroic epic poetry. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he had served as a Governor, and a Corresponding Member of the Finno-Ugrian Society. His other publications include translations from Middle High German poems for Penguin Classics: Tristan (1960), the Nibelungenlied (1965), and Parzival (1980); the edition and translation The Memorial Feast for Kökötöy-Khan (Kökötöydün Ašı): A Kirghiz Epic Poem (1977); general editorship of Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry (1980–1989), the two-volume proceedings of the London Seminar on Epic, which Hatto chaired from 1964 to 1972; Essays on Medieval German and Other Poetry (1980); and The Mohave Heroic Epic of Inyo-Kutavêre (1999).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781107103214
ISBN 10	1107103215
Title	The World of the Khanty Epic Hero-Princes
Author	Arthur Hatto
Series	University Of Cambridge Oriental Publications
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2017-02-02
Number of pages	294
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.