Amjad Jaimoukha, The cycles of the Circassian Nart Epic Amman Jordan: Sanjalay Press. 2004.
I was hoping for a book of the Nart Epics, and this did, technically, fit the bill, The book itself is 68 pages, single-sided in a plastic binding and not of high technical quality (it seems one page of foot-notes is missing, some of the footnotes start numbering at 0, etc.). It starts with an introduction to the Circassians and the Narts, which also seems to summarize some of the tales. It is not really a scholarly text, the author states facts with no point of reference outside the mythic corpus (i.e. that the Narts killed their elderly at a specific age). A bit more background information on the different ethnic groups within the overall community would have been welcome, as would a pronunciation guide.
The bulk of the book consists of the translated myths, and that is of much higher quality. Where possible Amjad has included the original text in both Cyrillic and transliterated into the Latin alphabet alongside the translations and he provides some useful footnotes (e.g. where divergent spellings refer to the same character. One omission of note, there are several times retellings of the same tale and no clear explanation as to why the divergent forms exist.
Overall not a great book, but not a bad introduction to a rarely-seen Indo-European culture through their mythic corpus
A
ps this is a great example of how the Harvard Libraries have EVERYTHING
I was hoping for a book of the Nart Epics, and this did, technically, fit the bill, The book itself is 68 pages, single-sided in a plastic binding and not of high technical quality (it seems one page of foot-notes is missing, some of the footnotes start numbering at 0, etc.). It starts with an introduction to the Circassians and the Narts, which also seems to summarize some of the tales. It is not really a scholarly text, the author states facts with no point of reference outside the mythic corpus (i.e. that the Narts killed their elderly at a specific age). A bit more background information on the different ethnic groups within the overall community would have been welcome, as would a pronunciation guide.
The bulk of the book consists of the translated myths, and that is of much higher quality. Where possible Amjad has included the original text in both Cyrillic and transliterated into the Latin alphabet alongside the translations and he provides some useful footnotes (e.g. where divergent spellings refer to the same character. One omission of note, there are several times retellings of the same tale and no clear explanation as to why the divergent forms exist.
Overall not a great book, but not a bad introduction to a rarely-seen Indo-European culture through their mythic corpus
A
ps this is a great example of how the Harvard Libraries have EVERYTHING
... it is distressing to realize that you could be making fun of us by inventing the "Circassians" and "Narts", and I would be none the wiser...