Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: The Russian Academy of Sciences series Pamiatniki Fo/'ldora Narodov Sibiri i Dal'nego Vostoka [Folklore Monuments of1he Peoples of Siberia and the Far East] has survived the fiscal and reorganizational ambiguities of the post-Soviet era, and is progressing well with sixteen volumes now in print. This survey covers volumes 9-16, published 1995-97. For volumes 1-8, published 1990-1994, please see Dauenhauer 1995a, 1995b, 1996a, 1996b for review articles which contain essentially the same information, but have been edited for different readerships. The series is a project of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Branch, Institute of Philology, and is being published by Nanka in Novosibirsk. We should appreciate at the outset that the success of the series in these difficult times is due in no small degree to the administrative skills (above and beyond their outstanding achievement as folklorists) of the general series editors and fOlDlders,A P. Derevianko (editor-in-chief), V. M. Gatsak and A B. Soktoev (assistant editors), and the other members of the editorial board It is with great sadness that I report the passing last year of our friend and colleague, the Buriat folklorist and assistant series editor, Aleksandr Badmaevich Soktoev, Director of the Folklore Department and Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences. For many of us, the Pamiatniki series will not only provide lasting textual monuments and documentation of the folklore genres of Siberia and the Far East, but will also serve as monuments to all the tradition bearers and folklorists whose lives and won helped make it a success. Also to be commended are the series editorial board and all those who contributed to the individual volumes; for reasons of space, I have noted only the managing editors and compilers here. Other important contributors are identified at the front of each volume, as are the many local and regional organizations and funding sources which rallied to support the series. My reviews treat the series as two sets of eight volumes each. This is the way that the volumes published so far have appeared and been distributed. Editorial remarks in the most recent volumes make it appear that the new organization of the series will be in two cycles of ten volumes each. As an overview, I will list all twenty volumes in abbreviated English translation; then make some general statistical and descriptive observations; and then turn to brief: but more detailed discussion of volumes 9-16. Cycle One. 1) Evenk Heroic Narratives (1990), 2) Burial Heroic Epic ofYolDlg Alamzbi Mergen (1991),3) Russian Epic Poetry of Siberia and the Far East (1991),4) yakut Heroic Epic of
Author: Richard Dauenhauer
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1978906206