Reflections of Belief Systems in Karelian and Lithuanian Laments: Shared Systems of Traditional Referentiality?

Stepanova, Eila

doi:10.15181/ab.v15i1.18

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…6 Second, as far as I know, only one other investigator of contemporary lament has participated and not just observed or recorded, performing his own laments with others, and that was in Venezuela [41]. Third, this is the first anthropological investigation of a movement referring to itself as a -lament revival.‖ Besides my own ethnographic data, I also draw on archival data interpreted with the help of contemporary folklorists (Heidi Haapoja; 7 [42,43];…”

Section: Fieldwork With äI-lamentersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sacred Psychotherapy in the “Age of Authenticity”: Healing and Cultural Revivalism in Contemporary Finland

Wilce

2011

Religions

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Like other European countries, contemporary Finland has witnessed an explosion of healing modalities designatable as -New Age‖ (though not without profound controversy, [1]). This paper focuses on Finnish courses in lament (wept song, tuneful weeping with words) that combine healing conceived along psychotherapeutic lines and lessons from the lament tradition of rural Karelia, a region some Finns regard as their cultural heartland. A primary goal of the paper is to explicate a concept of -authenticity‖ emerging in lament courses, in which disclosing the depths of one's feelings is supported not only by invoking -psy--discourses of self-help, but also by construing the genuine emotional self-disclosure that characterizes neolamentation as a sacred activity and a vital contribution to the welfare of the Finnish people.

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Section: Fieldwork With äI-lamentersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sacred Psychotherapy in the “Age of Authenticity”: Healing and Cultural Revivalism in Contemporary Finland

Wilce

2011

Religions

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“…How about if the recurrent element of the process has the equivalent of a narrative plot but is not retold as a story? Should we consider it a myth that, in Karelian tradition, a deceased individual undertakes a dangerous journey from the realm of the living to the otherworld, where the gates to the realm of the dead are opened, the guardian dog is silenced, and the ancestors receive that person with candles to integrate him or her into their community (orchestrated through ritual by lamenters: (Stepanova 2011(Stepanova , 2014)? In folklore archives, it is possible to find countless examples of single-sentence explanations under "etiological legends" or "origin myths."…”

Section: Scenarios and Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ritual performance orchestrates mythic motifs, themes, and narrative patterns, from expelling an agent of illness to ensuring the journey of a deceased individual to the otherworld and successful integration into the community of the ancestors (Frog 2017c; see also (Frog 2010b;Stepanova 2011Stepanova , 2014). For example, healing rituals can be organized on the narrative pattern of the thunder-god expelling a society-threatening agent of chaos: the healing specialist acts in the slot of the god as a representative of his power placing the illness agent in the opposing role of the confrontation (Siikala [1992Frog 2013b, pp.…”

Section: Myth Ritual Taboo and Expectations Of Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

Myth

Frog

2018

Humanities

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Myth has become a fundamental frame of reference for Western thinking. This paper explores the term and category "myth" from the perspective of folklore studies, with concern for the use of myth as a tool in research. The ways in which myth has been used in both academic and popular discourses are discussed. These are viewed in a historical perspective against the backdrop of the origins of the modern term. Attention is given to how historical patterns of use have encoded "myth" with evaluative stance-taking, building an opposition of "us" versus "them" into myth as something "other people" have, in contrast to us, who know better. Discussion then turns to approaching myth as a type of story. The consequences of such a definition are explored in terms of what it does or does not include; the question of whether, as has often been supposed, myth is a text-type genre, is also considered. Discussion advances to aesthetic evaluation at the root of modern discussions of myth and how this background informs the inclination to identify myth as a type of story on the one hand while inhibiting the extension of the concept to, for example, historical events or theories about the world or its origins, on the other. Approaching myth as a type of modeling system is briefly reviewed-an approach that can be coupled to viewing myth as a type of story. Finally, discussion turns to the more recent trend of approaching mythology through mythic discourse, and the consequences as well as the benefits of such an approach for understanding myth in society or religion. There are many different ways to define myth. The present article explores how different approaches are linked to one another and have been shaped over time, how our definition of myth and the way we frame the concept shape our thinking, and can, in remarkably subtle ways, inhibit the reflexive application of the concept as a tool to better understand ourselves.

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“…(Frog & Stepanova 2011: 204-209;Stepanova 2012: 264-273, 282-283. ) It is even possible to expand the field under consideration cross-culturally: Finnic and Baltic laments, for instance, also share such stylistic and grammatical features as repetition, alliteration, and parallelism, combined with a consistent conception of death and the otherworld, although the language and images employed are culture-dependent (Stepanova 2011). Within any one of these frames -with some reserve, of course -it is possible to infer that these features recur in all laments of the particular region.…”

Section: Genres As Homeostatic Property Clustersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Let us assume that in addition to properties a, b, and c (such as alliteration, parallelism, and poetic synonyms for most nouns) which are known to be found in many laments, we also find property d (say, a consistent conception of death and the otherworld) in many of them (Stepanova 2011). Perhaps property d is not a result of or otherwise related to a, b, or c. If we know that the genre is "out there" in the world, that is, that it is not just a projection made by the researcher, we have good reasons to presume that property d can be found not only in many of the laments we have studied, but in many other laments as well.…”

Section: Laments As a Local Kind -Or A Universal One?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Genre - text - interpretation: Multidisciplinary perspectives on folklore and beyond

Koski

Frog²,

Savolainen³

2016

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Reflections of Belief Systems in Karelian and Lithuanian Laments: Shared Systems of Traditional Referentiality?

Cited by 4 publications

References 8 publications

Sacred Psychotherapy in the “Age of Authenticity”: Healing and Cultural Revivalism in Contemporary Finland

Sacred Psychotherapy in the “Age of Authenticity”: Healing and Cultural Revivalism in Contemporary Finland

Myth

Genre - text - interpretation: Multidisciplinary perspectives on folklore and beyond

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