Manas and Homer
Wachtel A.
July 2024Slavica Publishers
Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia
2024#13Issue 2183 - 198 pp.
The worlds great epics, including Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Beowolf, certainly existed as oral literature before they were committed to writing. There is controversy, however, regarding just how closely the written texts we have correspond to what ancient audiences heard in performance. An analysis of the known pre-Soviet and Soviet performance practice of the Kyrgyz epic Manas, however, allows us to guess that the written versions of ancient epics we possess today are not transcribed command performances by oral bards but rather the careful work of brilliant, literate editors who created well-structured wholes out of a myriad of messy oral parts.
Text of the article Перейти на текст статьи
inVision University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
inVision University
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026