Oxford Handbook of Slavic and East European Folklore

The Oxford Handbook of Slavic and East European Folklore provides a broad survey of the folklore of the Slavic and East European world: Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltics, as well as Central and Southeastern Europe. The volume contains forty-three chapters that offer an array of distinctive yet comparable traditions and genres. It includes folklore of the life cycle; calendrical-cycle traditions, magic, and folk belief; folktales, epic, lyric songs, proverbs, and jokes; local Romani, Muslim, and Jewish musical genres; and material culture. The handbook presents an assortment of oral traditions for an audience of folklorists, students, and scholars who wish to explore the rich expressive culture of the Slavic and East European world.

List of contents

• About the Editor


• List of Contributors


• Introduction


• Margaret Hiebert Beissinger


• Part I: Life-Cycle Folklore


• Weddings


• 1. Ukrainian Wedding Rituals


• Natalie Kononenko


• 2. Russian Wedding Songs


• Olga Levaniouk


• 3. Serbian Wedding Practices in Post-War Kosovo


• Sanja Zlatanovic


• 4. Tambura Bands and Sonic Flag Rituals in Croatian Weddings


• Ian MacMillen


• 5. Marriage and Wedding Traditions among the Cortorar Roma in Romania


• C¿t¿lina Tes¿r


• Childbirth


• 6. Estonian Runosongs on Childcare, Pregnancy, Birth, and Intimacy


• Mari Sarv


• 7. The Folklore of Childbirth in Russia


• Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby


• Death Rites


• 8. Greek Death Rituals and Lament


• Gail Holst-Warhaft


• 9. Customary Practices of Death and Mourning in Albania


• Bledar Kondi


• 10. Death Rites and Laments in Russia


• Elizabeth Warner


• Part II: The Traditional Calendar, Magic, and Folk Belief


• Folklore of the Seasonal Cycle


• 11. Baltic Calendrical Folklore


• Elo-Hanna Seljamaa


• 12. Seasonal Rituals, Traditional Dance, and Ethnochoreology in Serbia


• Selena Raköevi¿


• 13. Folklore of the Seasonal Cycle in Croatia: The Lastovo Carnival


• Iva Niem¿i¿


• 14. Dance in Calendrical Community Celebrations in Romania


• Liz Mellish


• Magic and the Power of Words


• 15. Magic in Hungary: Verbal Charms, Benedictions, and Exorcisms


• Dániel Bárth


• 16. "Inverted Behavior" in South Slavic Ritual and Magic


• Maria Vivod


• Varieties of Folk Belief


• 17. Eschatology and Peasant Visions in Moldovan Folk Religion


• James A. Kapaló


• 18. Songs, Rites, and Identity in the Religious Folklore of Latvia and Lithuania


• Michael Strmiska, Gatis Ozoli¿ Odeta Rudling, and Dignenš, Udre


• 19. Folk Belief and Religion in Ukraine: Creating the Charisma of Place


• Mariya Lesiv


• Part III: Oral Traditional Narrative


• Poetry: Epic and Ballad


• 20. Byliny: Russian Folk Epic


• Natalie Kononenko


• 21. Dumy: Ukrainian Folk Epic


• Natalie Kononenko


• 22. South Slavic Epic and the Philology of the Border


• David F. Elmer


• 23. South Slavic Women's Ballads


• Aida Vidan


• Prose: Folktale and Legend


• 24. Folk tales in Greece


• Maria Kaliambou


• 25. Slovak Tales and the Collections of Pavol Dobsinský


• Jana Piroš¿áková


• 26. Vladimir Propp and Russian Wondertales


• Sibelan Forrester


• 27. Supernatural Legends in the Western Balkans


• Dorian Juri¿


• 28. Polish Urban Legends as a Folklore Genre


• Marta Wójcicka


• Part IV: Music, Song, Identity, and Performance


• Ethnoreligious Identity: Music and Song


• 29. The Sevdalinka as Traditional Bosnian Love Song


• Nirha Efendi¿


• 30. The Traditional Yiddish Folk Song


• Michael Lukin


• 31. Klezmer Music in Eastern Europe and in America


• Walter Zev Feldman


• Balkan Romani Music Traditions


• 32. Romani (Gypsy) Music in Bulgaria and Macedonia


• Lozanka Peycheva


• 33. The Music of Urban Lautari in Southern Romania


• Speran¿a R¿dulescu and Margaret H. Beissinger


• 34. Romani Musical Labor and Cultural Politics in Southeastern Serbia


• Alexander Markovi¿


• Folk and Popular Music in Post-communist Eastern Europe


• 35. Bluegrass as Folk Music in the Czech Republic


• Lee Bidgood


• 36. Folktron: Folklore Influences in Contemporary Bulgarian Popular Music


• Asya Draganova


• 37. Albanian Etnopop and the Emergence of a "Balkan" Regional Music Sphere


• Jane C. Sugarman


• Part V: The Folklore of Everyday Life


• Folk Wit, Wisdom, and the Spoken Word


• 38. Chastushki


• Laura J. Olson and Svetlana Adonyeva


• 39. Wise and Humorous Words: Hungarian Proverbs, Riddles, and Jokes


• Anna T. Litovkina, Katalin Vargha, Péter Barta, and Hrisztalina Hrisztova-Gotthardt


• Material Culture


• 40. Tradition and Adaptation in Russian Folk Art


• Alison Hilton


• 41. Folk Art Reassessed: Entangled Material Culture in Rural Romania


• Alexandra Urdea and Magdalena Buchczyk


• 42. Foodways in Moldova


• Jennifer Cash


• Index

About the author

Margaret Hiebert Beissinger is a Research Scholar and Lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. Before teaching at Princeton, she was on the faculty of the Slavic Department and the Folklore Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research and publications focus on Slavic and East European folklore, oral epic, and Romani culture and music-making. She has authored numerous articles and chapters, as well as The Art of the Lautar: The Epic Tradition of Romania and coedited the volumes Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World and Manele in Romania: Cultural Expression and Social Meaning in Balkan Popular Music.

Summary

The Oxford Handbook of Slavic and East European Folklore provides a wide-ranging survey of the oral traditions of the Slavic and East European world. It covers national, ethnic, racial, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups extending from the eastern zones of Russia to the western borders of the Czech Republic and from Estonia along the Baltic Sea to Greece at the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula. The volume presents this broad world area - loosely connected by circumstances of geography, history, and politics - as a large and diverse cultural continuum.

In forty-three chapters written by scholars ranging from folklorists who are natives of the Slavic and East European region to British and North American specialists in the field, Editor-in-Chief Margaret Hiebert Beissinger presents an extensive array of distinctive yet comparable traditions, rituals, and genres. Divided into five sections, the volume includes: the folklore and lyric genres of the life cycle (wedding, birth, and death rites); calendrical-cycle traditions, dance, magic, and folk belief; traditional prose and poetic narrative; oral traditions among minority ethno-religious and racial communities, as well as folk and popular music and song; and the folklore of everyday life, including aphoristic verbal forms and material culture. The volume's chapters focus on folklore of the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries, from the very "traditional," to contemporary issues that influence folklore and expressive culture, such as life-changing pandemics, ethnic conflict, and war, as well as evolving gender roles. The handbook presents a wide assortment of materials for an audience of students and specialists alike: folklorists, ethnographers, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and literature scholars, as well as others who wish to explore the rich oral traditions of the Slavic and East European world.

Product details

• Authors: Beissinger, Margaret H. (Research Scholar and Lect Beissinger
• Assisted by: Margaret H. Beissinger (Editor), Beissinger Margaret H. (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 28.03.2025
• EAN: 9780190080778
• ISBN: 978-0-19-008077-8
• No. of pages: 1194
• Series: Oxford Handbooks
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Folklore, myths & legends, Literary studies: general, Literary theory, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / European / Eastern, Folklore studies / Study of myth (mythology)