The Owens Valley Epics

Autor/in	Bahr, Donald
Titel	The Owens Valley Epics
Quelle	In: American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 31 (2007) 2, S.41-68 (28 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0161-6463
Schlagwörter	Stellungnahme; United States Literature; Philosophy; American Indian Literature; Oral Tradition; Literary Genres; American Indians; Mythology + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Philosophie; Oral history; Mündliche Überlieferung; Literarische Form; American Indian; Indianer; Mythologie
Abstract	One of the best-studied, least-discussed texts of Native American oral literature is a long Mojave "epic" taken down from a man named Inyo-kutavere by Alfred Kroeber in 1902 and published in 1951. The text was published in twenty-nine pages along with forty-eight pages of commentary and twenty-five pages of notes. In 1999, Arthur Hatto, an Englishman and devotee of epics, produced a second book on the text. It is rare for an oral work by a Native American to be accorded one, let alone two, book-length commentaries; it is also rare for any scholar to call a Native American text an epic. In this article, the author considers the following questions: (1) What is or should be considered an epic in traditional Native American literature; and (2) Where can epics be found within the relative chronologies of whole Native American mythologies? The author considers the second question to be more important than the first because his definition of epic depends on his assessment of the ordering and content of the whole mythologies. According to the author, the mythologies are tellings of an ancientness that divides into two portions, early and late, and those portions have the qualities respectively of edenism and naturalism. Naturalism, organic wholeness, scope, and having human heroes comprise his definition for Native American epic. Some examples of Native American epics are used to illustrate these characteristics. (Contains 52 notes.) (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	American Indian Studies Center at UCLA. 3220 Campbell Hall, Box 951548, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1548. Tel: 310-825-7315; Fax: 310-206-7060; e-mail: sales@aisc.ucla.edu; Web site: http://www.books.aisc.ucla.edu/aicrj.html
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10