The Šabdan Baatir Codex: Epic and the Writing of Northern Kirghiz History (Book)
Title: The Šabdan Baatir Codex: Epic and the Writing of Northern Kirghiz History
Author: Daniel Prior
Abstract: In The Šabdan Baatir Codex, Daniel Prior presents the first scholarly edition, translation, and interpretation of a unique manuscript of early twentieth-century Kirghiz poetry in Arabic script. Dedicated to the chief Šabdan Baatir, the Codex claims the attention of scholars by its illuminating position in a network of oral and written genres that encompassed epic poetry and genealogy, panegyric and steppe oral historiography; that echoed oral composition-in-performance and aspired to print publishing. The Codex’s fresh articulation of concepts of Kirghiz self-identification may be described as incipiently national. The Codex thus bridges the interval, often glossed over in cultural histories, between a supposedly archaic state of oral epic tradition and the “afterlife” of epics in modern ethno-nationalist projects.
Year: 2013
Publisher: Brill
Type: Single author monograph
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 978-90-04-2304
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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