The World of the Khanty Epic Hero-Princes

An Exploration of a Siberian Oral Tradition

Arthur Hatto

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781107103214
• eBook ISBN: 9781316786499
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In his final book, the late Arthur Hatto analyses the Khanty epic tradition in Siberia on the basis of eighteen texts of Khanty oral heroic epic poems recorded and edited by a succession of Hungarian and Russian scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book examines the world view of an indigenous culture as reconstructed from its own words, demonstrates a flexible outline for organising an analytical dossier of the genre of oral heroic epic poetry in a specific culture, and presents an abundance of new information to compare with better-known heroic epics. Consisting of main sections on The Cosmos, Time, The Seasons, Geography, Spirits, Personae, Warfare, Armour and Weapons, and Men's Handiwork, the book also includes a section of background information on the Khanty people. Marianne Bakró-Nagy contributes specialist knowledge of the Khanty language to the linguistic interpretation of the texts, and there is an afterword by Daniel Prior.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Series information
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1 Background: The Khanty
• 2 The Eighteen Khanty Heroic Epics, Their Collectors and Publishers
• 3 Introduction
• 4 The Cosmos
• 5 Time
• 6 The Seasons
• 7 Geography
• 8 Spirits
• 9 Personae
• 10 Warfare
• 11 Armour and Weapons
• 12 Men’s Handiwork
• 13 Afterword: Arthur Hatto, Ethnopoetics, and Epic Moments
• Bibliography
• Index
• Series list