Collecting South Slavic Oral Epic in 1864: Luka Marjanović’s Earliest Account

• Issue: Volume 26, Number 1
• Author(s): Aaron Phillip Tate
• Article: View PDF | Download PDF
• Citation: http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/26i/tate

Abstract

Luka Marjanović (1844-1920) collected more than 250,000 verses from epic singers in Croatian and Bosnian regions in 1886-88, excerpts of which were published in 1898-99 in the seminal two-volume anthology, Hrvatske narodne pjesme [Croatian Folk Songs] III-IV. Marjanović’s first fieldwork report, however, is virtually unknown, dating from an 1864 preface written for a songbook. This article provides a translation of that preface, with accompanying notes and introduction, and thus supplements current scholarship on nineteenth-century oral epic studies.