In the early nineteenth century, Vuk Karadzic, a Serb scholar and linguist, collected and eventually published transcriptions of the traditional oral poetry of the South Slavs. It was a monumental and unprecedented undertaking. Karadzic gathered and heard performances of the rich songs of Balkan peasants, outlaws, and professional singers and their rebel heroes. His four volumes constitute the classic anthology of Balkan oral poetry, treasured for nearly two centuries by readers of all literatures, and influential to such literary giants as Goethe, Merimee, Pushkin, Mickiewicz, and Sir Walter Scott.This edition of the songs offers the most complete and authoritative translations ever assembled in English. Holton and Mihailovich, leading scholars of Slavic literature, have preserved here the unique meter and rhythm at the heart of Serbian oral poetry, as well as the idiom of the original singers. Extensive notes and comments aid the reader in understanding the poems, the history they record and the oral tradition that lies beneath them, the singers and their audience.The songs contain seven cycles, identified here in sections titled: Songs Before History, Before Kosovo, the Battle of Kosovo, Marko Karadzic, Under the Turks, Songs of the Outlaws, and Songs of the Serbian Insurrection. The editors have selected the best known and most representative songs from each of the cycles. A complete biography is also provided.
General study of Yugoslavia - covers the historical setting, geographical aspects, the social structure and living conditions, ethnic groups, the political system and the economic structure, culture and education, agriculture, industry, trade, foreign policy and defence, etc. Bibliography pp. 553 to 630, glossary, maps and statistical tables.
The Epics of Gilgamesh, Homer, Vergil, Shahnameh, are sources of our knowledge of religious beliefs. This epic is a welcome introduction to the spiritual world of the Albanians as they fought the crusades. The "Songs of the Frontier Warrior is the first English-language translation ever made of Albanian epic verse. As the product of a little-known culture and a difficult, rarely studied language, the Albanian epic has tended to remain in the shadow of the Serbo-Croatian, or more properly, Bosnian epic, with which it has undeniable affinities. This translation may thus be regarded as an initial attempt to rectify the imbalance and to give scholars and the reading public in general an opportunity to delve into the exotic world of the northern Albanian tribes. The present bilingual edition offers a broad selection of the best known songs. Also included are an introduction, a glossaries of terms and sources, and a selective bibliography.
Originally published in 1942, this book contains English verse translations of national ballads from the First Serbian Uprising of 1804 to 1813. The text concentrates its attention on the revolt of the Serbs under Karađorđe Petrović against the Turks, an area of the literature concerning the Uprising which had previously found no English translator. A detailed introduction is also provided, illustrating the importance of the selected ballads and the historical context of their creation. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the First Serbian Uprising and the cultural history of The Balkans.
First published between 1932 and 1940, this is a three-volume study of the historical development of literature. It explores the oral and written literatures of regions from Iceland and the British Isles, to Russia, the Balkans, Africa, India and the Pacific, placing them in their historical context and examining similarities between them. The authors discuss both ancient and recent texts, illustrating the connections within each group and considering the question of whether all literary growth is influenced by common factors. Praised on publication as ' ... a work that is not, probably could not be, superseded' (International Journal of Comparative Sociology), the book remains a benchmark for those studying comparative literature or the history of literary criticism. Volume 2 focuses particularly on Russia and the Balkans, and also surveys both early Indian and early Hebrew literature.
The Growth of Literature is a key work for all scholars and students of comparative literature, and will also interest those involved with other fields of literary studies as well as sociology, anthropology and related disciplines. The three volumes, hailed as classics when they first appeared between 1932 and 1940, were last reprinted in 1968. Now available for the first time in paperback, they remain the definitive study of their subject. The work contains an examination of comparative literatures in various countries and at various times, with a view to demonstrating what literature (oral and written) consists of at different stages of its growth and what, if any, general principles can be applied to its development under diverse conditions. In the first volume Professor and Mrs Chadwick establish the categories of literature which are used throughout as a means of classification, and discuss the heroic age in Europe, focusing on Classical, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic cultures. In the second volume they deal with Russian oral literature, Yugoslav oral poetry, early Indian literature and early Hebrew literature. Volume III examines the oral literature of the Tatars, of Polynesia, and of Africa, concluding with a general survey which makes use of the categories developed in the first volume.
Why did Yugoslavia fall apart? Was its violent demise inevitable? Did its population simply fall victim to the lure of nationalism? How did this multinational state survive for so long, and where do we situate the short life of Yugoslavia in the long history of Europe in the twentieth century? A History of Yugoslavia provides a concise, accessible, comprehensive synthesis of the political, cultural, social, and economic life of Yugoslavia—from its nineteenth-century South Slavic origins to the bloody demise of the multinational state of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Calic takes a fresh and innovative look at the colorful, multifaceted, and complex history of Yugoslavia, emphasizing major social, economic, and intellectual changes from the turn of the twentieth century and the transition to modern industrialized mass society. She traces the origins of ethnic, religious, and cultural divisions, applying the latest social science approaches, and drawing on the breadth of recent state-of-the-art literature, to present a balanced interpretation of events that takes into account the differing perceptions and interests of the actors involved. Uniquely, Calic frames the history of Yugoslavia for readers as an essentially open-ended process, undertaken from a variety of different regional perspectives with varied composite agenda. She shuns traditional, deterministic explanations that notorious Balkan hatreds or any other kind of exceptionalism are to blame for Yugoslavia’s demise, and along the way she highlights the agency of twentieth-century modern mass society in the politicization of differences. While analyzing nuanced political and social-economic processes, Calic describes the experiences and emotions of ordinary people in a vivid way. As a result, her groundbreaking work provides scholars and learned readers alike with an accessible, trenchant, and authoritative introduction to Yugoslavia's complex history.