Imagined states : nationalism, utopia, and longing in oral cultures
Author: Giudice, Luisa D., Porter, Gerald
Added by: carl
Added Date: 2020-03-06
Language: eng
Subjects: Anthropology, Open Access Books, Oral tradition, Utopias, Imaginary places, Ethnicity, Nationalism, Nostalgia, Social Sciences, Folklore, Tradition orale, Utopies, Lieux imaginaires, Ethnicité, Nationalisme, Nostalgie, SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Folklore & Mythology, SOCIAL SCIENCE -- General, Kulturelle Identität, Imaginärer Schauplatz, Mündliche Überlieferung, Utopie, Mondelinge literatuur, Utopieën, Denkbeeldige landen, Etnisch bewustzijn, Heimwee
Publishers: Logan, Utah : Utah State University Press
Collections: IndiaCulture, JaiGyan
ISBN Number: 0874214572, 9780874214574, 1283266857, 9781283266857, 9786613266859, 661326685X, 9781474420839, 1474420834
Pages Count: 300
PPI Count: 300
PDF Count: 1
Total Size: 86.77 MB
PDF Size: 1.42 MB
Extensions: pdf, gz, zip, torrent, mrc
License: Unknown License
Downloads: 175
Views: 225
Total Files: 14
Media Type: texts
Total Files: 5
Description
Abstract
An international ensemble of folklore scholars looks at varied ways in which national and ethnic groups have traditionally and creatively used imagined states of existence-some idealizations, some demonizations-in the construction of identities for themselves and for others. Drawing on oral traditions, especially as represented in traditional ballads, broadsides, and tale collections, the contributors consider fertile landscapes of the mind where utopias overflow with bliss and abundance, stereotyped national and ethnic caricatures define the lives of "others," nostalgia glorifies home and occupation, and idealized and mythological animals serve as cultural icons and guideposts to harmonious social life.Italian Canadian Luisa Del Giudice looks at the rich Italian variants of the traditional gastronomic utopia called Il Paese di Cuccagna, the Land of Cockaigne, "a mythic land of plenty where rivers run with ‘milk and honey’ (wine, beer, coffee, or rum), food falls like manna from heaven, work is banished, and no one ever grows old" and considers its persistence in immigrant worldview. From New Delhi, Sadhana Naithani examines the "preface-d space" that as India, colonial British authors imagined and passed on to readers in formulaic prefaces to collections of Indian folklore. Reimund Kvideland, of Norway, and Gerald Porter, an English scholar teaching in Finland, show how nineteenth-century Norwegian and English railway navvies (itinerant laborers) idealized their low-status occupations in song. In a second essay, Gerald Porter demonstrates through broadside ballad texts the role of caricatures of the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish in constructing "Englishness." Turks were among the "others" Germans demonized, as Tom Cheesman, who teaches in Wales, explains in his paper on their historical representations in German street ballads. Cozette Griffin-Kremer of France paints a sweeping picture of the landscape of the mind that written and popular traditions of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales built around bovine bodies, the human-cow partnership, and the mysteries of domestication, thereby providing conceptions of transcendence of the human condition. Finally, Vaira Freibergs, a scholar and the current president of Latvia, explains the images of longing for idealized childhood homes that married women, exiled by a patrilocal culture, expressed in Latvian folksong.
1 online resource (217 pages) :
An international ensemble of folklore scholars looks at varied ways in which national and ethnic groups have traditionally and creatively used imagined states of existence--some idealizations, some demonizations--in the construction of identities for themselves and for others
Includes bibliographical references and index
Electronic reproduction. [Place of publication not identified] : HathiTrust Digital Library
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002
digitized 2011
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