The Kalevala and the World's Traditional Epics (review)

This impressive volume, edited by the late Lauri Honko, is based on a conference held in Finland in 1999 to celebrate the Kalevala, the famous landmark of the Finnish poetic tradition. Honko's effort in promoting epic studies is reflected in the vast international scope of scholars represented, and his own prominent and inspiring presence can be traced in several articles, most explicitly in the framing of their discussion. A number of authors seem to create a dialogue with or follow the theoretical guidelines set by the editor in his earlier publications on the same topic. The major portion of research presented concerns the Finnish Kalevala and/or its contextual background, but this bulky collection contains nearly thirty contributions presenting epic traditions from four continents, thus rendering a truly global perspective. The focus falls on "traditional" or "tradition-oriented" epics, to follow Honko's classification, though the range of approach appears versatile, if not occasionally antithetical: explorations of oral-formulaic composition in performance are opposed by considerations advocating the process of memorization; the composer of an epic is regarded by some as a mere penman, being elsewhere considered a creative singer; some contributions analyze the sociohistorical context, occasionally ignoring the performed poetry altogether, whereas others stick strictly to the linguistic aspects of a poetic tradition.

The first of the two Kalevala-cycles is introduced by Honko's own discussion of the five epic performances by the Finnish "singing scribe" Elias Lönnrot and the progress of his mental text. Anna-Leena Siikala looks into the cultural sources of the epic's creative process. Her analysis of the historical and social context of the Archangel Karelian poetic culture reveals how research has conceptualized performers. John Karkala suggests a comparative glance at the epic "culture cosmos" to reach beyond textualizing studies. The next contributions propose insights into the reception of the Kalevala by discussing translations into English: David Elton Gay shows the emergence of a representation of Finnish mythology from fictional history, and Susan Ella Walima's ethnographic survey indicates the epic's symbolic value for an immigrant community.

The European-labeled section of the collection represent various types of oral poetry. Minna Skafte Jensen analyzes formalized verbal communication that is discernible from a performance perspective in the Homeric presentation of presumably oral Iliad and Odyssey poems. John Miles Foley looks at the (Muslim) South Slavic epic songs to investigate the performer's and audience's application of metonymic selections from the "pool of tradition," extending the performance arena and emulating interplay in Homeric and Old English traditional verbal art. Elka Agoston-Nikolova presents an overview of the development of Bulgarian folkloristics through the implementation of folk epic in identity construction. In his contribution, Clive Tolley argues against the universality of the oral-formulaic method of composition: as in the Nordic tradition, it appears applicable to Eddic poems but not to memorized Skaldic verse. In her examination of Faroese ballads, which she regards as an epic tradition with an inherent association between the form of performance and the message of the text, Margaretha Mellberg likewise finds the oral-formulaic theory inapplicable. In his short piece, Osmo Pekonen relates Beowulf in a jocular manner to Finland.

The section on American and African traditional epics includes two articles with outstanding appendices of epic texts. Dell Hymes explores the lineaments of a Mohave historical epic, which become discernible by ethnopoetic interpretation even in the case of approximative patterning available in translations. In his discussion of the poetic tradition in Sub-Saharan Africa, John William Johnson juxtaposes theories of oral composition and argues for the involvement of the use of memory, while considering differing modes of oral composition (oral-formulaic, memorization, and free-style).

In the part designated as Asian epics, Karl Reichl discusses Turkic oral epics and their role of preserving knowledge about genealogy. He contends that epics have formative functions to recount genealogical descent and normative functions to present social norms. In his short contribution...