On the Difficulty of Documenting Oral Epics

Abstract

The study of oral epics is confronted with traditional poetry which differs from other folklore genres through its length, poetic rules and modes of composition. Learning the prosodic, phraseological and thematic rules of epic discourse is, however, only the beginning of the process of understanding the making and performance of oral epics. The variation of content and form is much wider than a scholar bound to the tenets of literary analysis is likely to expect and perceive. What we meet in our materials is in fact a variety of epic idiolects which utilize a more collective epic register in different ways. A closer look reveals the individualities not only of the singers and their repertoires but also the epics themselves. And even when the singer and the epic remain the same, the variation between different performances may be great. There is, for example, no “right” size for an epic; it may be told in a number of formats, long and short.