Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Francis P. Magoun, Jr., trans. The Old Kalevala and Certain Antecedents. Compiled by Elias Lönnrot. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

In his "Foreword" (pp. xiii-xix) the translator discusses the oral traditional context of Lönnrot's compilation: a "vast corpus of Finnish traditional or oral poetry" that "was the work of countless generations of unlettered singers composing in an ancient tradition without benefit of a fixed text, singers whose creations were never recorded and thus can never be known" (p. xiii). Volume includes translations of the Old Kalevala, the Proto-Kalevala, and various appendices.
Area: FN