Epic content Epic performance

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Epic contentEpic performance
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Issues to consider

• What are these poems about?
• What is the tone?
• What sorts of things strike you?
• Ending
• Gender relations
• What makes a hero heroic
• Position of the ruler

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Narrative style

• To what extent are various things described
• To what extent are various people described
• How is dialogue rendered

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Are these stories of loss?

• What is lost? Old relationship between the
  sexes?
• What about issue of hubris? Do Russian heroes
  get themselves into trouble this way?
• Esp. evident in Slovo o Polku Igoreve
• Is hubris artful behavior?

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Relationship of epic to reality

• Do byliny reflect real people, events, battles?
• Epic used to reconstruct lit. where ms. presumed
  lost
• Epic used to reconstruct history where ms.
  presumed lost
• Caveat of imperfect folk memory

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Relationship to history cont.

• Which events are selected for representation in
  byliny?
• Which historical figures heroes?
• What about frankly fantastic elements
• Dragons
• Resurrection from the dead
• Fantastic travel, shape-shifters

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The bandura and the kobzari
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