Joseph Falaky Nagy0.0 How does a written literature come into being within an oral culture, and how does such a literature achieve and maintain its authority? Joseph Falaky Nagy addresses those issues in his wide-ranging reading of the medieval literature of Ireland, from the writings of St. Patrick to the epic tales about the warrior Cu Chulainn. These texts, written in both Latin and Irish, constitute an adventurous and productive experiment in staging confrontations between the written and the spoken, the Christian and the pagan. The early Irish literati, primarily clerics living within a monastic milieu, produced literature that included saints' lives, heroic sagas, law tracts, and other genres. They sought to invest their literature with an authority different from that of the traditions from which they borrowed, native and foreign. To achieve this goal, they cast many of their texts as the outcome of momentous dialogues between saints and angelic messengers or remarkable interviews with the dead, who could reveal some insight from the past that needed to be rediscovered by forgetful contemporaries. Conversing with angels and ancients, medieval Irish writers boldly inscribed their visions of the past onto the new Christian order and its literature. Nagy includes portions of the original Latin and Irish texts that are not readily available to scholars, along with full translations.
Neil Jarman0.0 The deep and abiding sectarian divide splintering Northern Ireland has been the focus of considerable attention recently. In particular, the role parades and visual displays play in underscoring opposition has come into the spotlight with the emergence of heightened tensions, close on the heels of a tentative peace. Providing penetrating insights into the historical roots of Northern Ireland's ethnic hostilities, this timely book explores the role of images and material culture in shaping present attitudes. Ritual, identity, class and memory are shown to be potent forces informing trenchant animosities -- animosities which are visually reflected in banners and murals for unionists and nationalists alike. The pivotal role of the Twelfth of July parade in Belfast, when an estimated 100,000 either parade or watch the Orangemen, is highlighted.Anyone interested in the future of Northern Ireland and concerned about escalating conflict across the globe will warmly welcome this impressive study.
Timothy Mitchell0.0 The dramatic and erotic folk-musical style known as flamenco arose among the stigmatized outgroups of Andalusia - fugitive Jews, Moors, gitanos, blind beggars, harlots, and others - but was quickly embraced and canonized as a fine art by Spanish aristocrats. This lively, highly readable book by Timothy Mitchell is the first full-length investigation of flamenco as well as an absorbing introduction to the cultural psychology of Spain itself. With an arsenal of critical theories honed to a sharp polemical edge, the author targets racialist and politicized mystifications of flamenco and deflates the still-influential primitivism of de Falla and Lorca. He demonstrates that flamenco is a densely historical phenomenon, whose "moods and musical techniques alike are inseparable from alcohol abuse." The denizens of saloons, bordellos, and prisons poured out their woes in guttural deep song, and their haunting cries and brash guitars were quickly taken up by the playboy-philanthropists who frequented the dives. Performers of deep song explored every painful aspect of tragic love; male singers told of having their hearts trampled by some dark-skinned dancer, females of having been abandoned or battered by their men. Guitarists were often expected to double as pimps. Flamenco artistry as we know it today makes sublime psychodrama out of alcoholism, fatalism, masochism, and ethnic rivalry. Mitchell's scholarship sparkles with irony and anecdotes drawn from two centuries of untranslated works. Ultimately he confronts the crucial question: Why does flamenco deep song appeal to people who never shared the traumas that precipitated its birth?
Claudia Kinmonth0.0 This book-the first study of vernacular furniture in Ireland-investigates the origins and distribution of the common furniture of the Irish people. A fascinating and lavishly illustrated exploration of a material culture that is fast disappearing, the book makes a significant contribution not only to the history of furniture but also to Ireland's cultural history.
Georgina Boyes0.0 An exploration of the present folk music revival, which traces the history of English folk songs and dances. The author argues that the existence of a folk revival is a direct and urgent response to a cultural crisis caused by the pressures of industrialization and urbanization.
E.P. Thompson0.0 Customs in Common is the remarkable sequel to E.P. Thompson’s influential, landmark volume of social history, The Making of the English Working Class. The product of years of research and debate, Customs in Common describes the complex culture from which working class institutions emerged in England—a panoply of traditions and customs that the new working class fought to preserve well into Victorian times.
In a text marked by both empathy and erudition, Thompson investigates the gradual disappearance of a range of cultural customs against the backdrop of the great upheavals of the eighteenth century. As villagers were subjected to a legal system increasingly hostile to custom, they tried both to resist and to preserve tradition, becoming, as Thompson explains, “rebellious, but rebellious in defence of custom.” Although some historians have written of riotous peasants of England and Wales as if they were mainly a problem for magistrates and governments, for Thompson it is the rulers, landowners, and governments who were a problem for the people, whose exuberant culture preceded the formation of working-class institutions and consciousness.
Using a wide range of sources, Thompson shows how careful attention to fragmentary evidence helps to decode the fascinating symbolism of shaming rituals including “rough music,” and practices such as the ritual divorce known as “wife sale.” And in examining the vigorous presence of women in food riots from the sixteenth century onwards, he sheds further light on gender relations of the time.
Essential reading for all those intrigued by English history, Customs in Common has a special relevance today, as traditional economies are being replaced by market economies throughout the world. The rich scholarship and depth of insight in Thompson’s work offer many clues to understanding contemporary changes around the globe.
Paul Oliver0.0 This is a new, thoroughly revised edition of Paul Oliver's classic study of the blues. First published in 1960, this remarkable book has not been superseded and its reappearance will be welcomed by all who wish to understand the complexity of meaning in the blues and the experiences which they expressed.
H.R. Ellis Davidson0.0 Most people know of Valhalla, the World-Tree and the gods of Norse mythology, or the strange hunts and voyages of the ancient Irish tales. Yet, few people realize the significance of the similarities and contrasts between the religions of the pre-Christian people of north-western Europe. The Celts and Germans and Scandinavians had much in common in their religious practices and beliefs, and this is the first serious attempt that has been made to compare them. There are striking resemblances in their ideas about battle-goddesses and protective spirits, holy places, sacrificial rituals, divination and ideas about the Other World; and Myths and symbols in pagan Europe poses questions like: do such parallels go back to early times or are they owing to late Viking contact?
Amy Shuman0.0 Based on intensive fieldwork in an urban American junior high school, this original study explores the relationship between oral and written texts in everyday life by analysing tellings and retellings of local events, diaries, writings and discussions.
Iona Opie, Peter Opie0.0 This volume, based on thirty years of collecting and research by two pioneers in the field of children's lore and language, presents hundreds of singing and clapping games popular with children since the Middle Ages, including such favorites as Pop Goes the Weasel, Lazy Mary Will You Get
Up?, Skip to My Lou, The Muffin Man, and Ring a Ring o' Roses.
Serving as an exposition of both the workings of folklore and the perennial ways of young children left to play on their own, The Singing Game categorizes over 150 of these games into groups such as Matchmaking, Wedding Rings, Cushion Dances, Witch Dances, Calls of Friendship, Eccentric
Circles, Buffoonery, and Clapping. The Opies provide a detailed, historical description of each game, as well as a vivid, firsthand account from one of its most recent practitioners on the playgrounds and backstreets throughout England.
Demonstrating how the games have evolved over the years, and how they vary from country to country, this book offers a comprehensive, authoritative history of a universal folk genre. Beautifully illustrated throughout, it contains photographs, lithographs, and prints; the words to each game
as well as the music for many of them; footnotes; a bibliography; a general index; and an index of songs, games, and dances.
Владимир Пропп4.5 Переиздание одной из наиболее интересных книг В. Я. Проппа (1895-1970), крупнейшего фольклориста XX века, в которой автор выясняет источники волшебной сказки в исторической действительности, будет способствовать как развитию современной фольклористики, так и удовлетворению читательского спроса.
Книга предназначена для фольклористов, литературоведов, этнографов, преподавателей, аспирантов и студентов филологических факультетов.
Michael Pickering0.0 The songs on which this study is based were once vibrant in the throats and ears and minds of living people. This book examines the songs and their meanings in relation to the lives of those people, and relates them to the cultural tradition and practice of which they were an integral part. The art of village song represents a sense of cohesiveness and mutual identity around local patterns of kinship, social groupings, territorial orientations and cultural relationships. The actual ways in which songs were part of village life is of course highly problematic, but this book endeavours, most of all, to present an understanding of the place of song in the social life of villagers.
Samuel Menefee0.0 Addressing a bigamous and indigent hawker in the middle of the last century, Justice Maule declared:
I will tell you what you ought to have done. ... You should have instructed your attorney to bring an action against the seducer of your wife for damages ... you should have employed a proctor and instituted a suit in the Ecclesiastical Courts. ... When you had obtained a divorce a mensa et thoro, you had only to obtain a private Act for divorce a vinculo matrimonii ... and altogether these proceedings would cost you L1000. You will probably tell me that you never had a tenth of that sum, but that makes no difference. Sitting here as an English judge it is my duty to tell you that this is not a country in which there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. You will be imprisoned for one day.
The judge's ruling was a wry acknowledgement of the dilemma faced by the man in the street, who was normally unable to obtain a divorce sanctioned by Church or State. For centuries such men resorted to informal means of slipping the knot of matrimony, one of which was selling a wife in the open market. Wives for Sale is a fascinating study of this practice, which developed its own traditions, rules and procedures. The author considers the causes and consequences of wife sales and the reactions to the institution of the courts, the press and the public. He draws parallels between wife-selling and other contemporaneous social practices and beliefs and considers the custom as it was reflected in popular culture.
From this study the selling of wives emerges as a popularly accepted expedient, often welcomed by husband, purchaser and "merchandise" alike. The author argues that the institution was a conservative and traditional solution to the problems faced by communities denied the practical option of divorce, a solution rooted in the primary mechanisms of social interchange. As a scholarly examination of an informal institution, Wives for Sale makes a valuable contribution to ethnography and social history; as an investigation into an ingenious and pragmatic social practice, the book is an intriguing study for both specialists and general readers.
