Oral Tradition and Book Culture - Paperback

by Pertti Anttonen (Author), Cecilia Af Forselles (Author), Kirsti Salmi-Niklander (Author)

A new interdisciplinary interest has risen to study interconnections between oral tradition and book culture. In addition to the use and dissemination of printed books, newspapers etc., book culture denotes manuscript media and the circulation of written documents of oral tradition in and through the archive, into published collections. Book culture also intertwines the process of framing and defining oral genres with literary interests and ideologies. The present volume is highly relevant to anyone interested in oral cultures and their relationship to the culture of writing and publishing. The questions discussed include the following: How have printing and book publishing set terms for oral tradition scholarship? How have the practices of reading affected the circulation of oral traditions? Which books and publishing projects have played a key role in this and how? How have the written representations of oral traditions, as well as the roles of editors and publishers, introduced authorship to materials customarily regarded as anonymous and collective?

Author Biography

Pertti Anttonen is Professor of Cultural Studies, Especially Folklore Studies at the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu Campus (since 2014). His main interests in research and teaching include folklore and nationalism, politics of history, heritage and tradition, ethnopoetics and the textual representation of orality, and the rites of passage theory. He has published articles on these topics in both Finnish and international journals and research anthologies. His major publication so far is Tradition Through Modernity: Postmodernism and the Nation-State in Folklore Scholarship (2005), soon to be published in Greek and Chinese translation.