Description
Book Synopsis‘The Voice of the People’ presents a series of essays on literary aspects of the European folk revival of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and focuses on two key practices of antiquarianism: the role that collecting and editing played in the formation of ethnological study in the European academy; and the business of publishing and editing, which produced many ‘folkloric’ texts of dubious authenticity. The volume also presents new readings of various genres, including the epic, song, tale and novel, and contributes to the study of several crucial European literary figures. Above all, it investigates the great anonymous authors of the European folk tradition – in narrative and lyric art – and their relation to the cultural movements and imagined identities of the peoples of the emerging nineteenth-century European nation.
Trade Review‘[A] fine collection of essays covering a large scope of time and geography. […] Not least among the virtues of this collection is that it makes one think and ask questions.’ —Arnd Bohn, ‘Monatshefte’
Table of ContentsList of Figures; Introduction – Michael Perraudin and Matthew Campbell; 1. The Impact of Ossian: Johann Gottfried Herder’s Literary Legacy – Renata Schellenberg; 2. On Robert Burns: Enlightenment, Mythology and the Folkloric – Hamish Mathison; 3. The Classical Form of the Nation: The Convergence of Greek and Folk Forms in Czech and Russian Literature in the 1810s – David L. Cooper; 4. Literary Metamorphoses and the Reframing of Enchantment: The Scottish Song and Folktale Collections of R. H. Cromek, Allan Cunningham and Robert Chambers – Sarah M. Dunnigan; 5. Thomas Moore, Daniel Maclise and the New Mythology: The Origin of the Harp – Matthew Campbell; 6. The Oral Ballad and the Printed Poem in the Portuguese Romantic Movement: The Case of J. M. da Costa e Silva’s Isabel ou a Heroina de Aragom – J. J. Dias Marques; 7. Class, Nation and the German Folk Revival: Heinrich Heine, Georg Büchner and Georg Weerth – Michael Perraudin; 8. The Estonian National Epic, Kalevipoeg: Its Sources and Inception – Madis Arukask; 9. The Latvian Era of Folk Awakening: From Johann Gottfried Herder’s Volkslieder to the Voice of an Emergent Nation – Kristina Jaremko-Porter; 10. From Folklore to Folk Law: William Morris and the Popular Sources of Legal Authority – Marcus Waithe; 11. Pioneers, Friends, Rivals: Social Networks and the English Folk-Song Revival, 1889–1904 – E. David Gregory; 12. The Bosnian Vila: Folklore and Orientalism in the Fiction of Robert Michel – Riccardo Concetti; Epilogue The Persistence of Revival – Matthew Campbell and Michael Perraudin; Bibliography; Index
