“With The Storytelling Human: Lithuanian Folk Tradition Today, Lina Būgienė presents a topical collection of contemporary Lithuanian folklore scholarship. … The broad range of topics, from the repatriation of remains of Stalin-era deportees and the rituals linked with this, to contemporary basketball fan culture, provides a rich and colourful tapestry of Lithuanian folk traditions today. … Obviously, it is impossible to present a comprehensive picture of a country in a single and relatively short book. However, the authors and editor have gone a long way. The selection of themes, together with copious notes, ensures broad as well as in-depth coverage that gives the reader a wealth of insights into both Lithuania today, and the multiple pasts it has come from. An extensive bibliography of work in Lithuanian, linked through the notes with the main text, is set up to help guide the reader deeper into the topics covered and the wider debates. It may not inspire many to learn enough of the language to read these texts in Lithuanian, but at least encourage them to look up work the same author(s) may have published in other languages.”— Ullrich Kockel, Lietuvos Etnologija“What this volume translates to western academic audiences is a struggle to remain relevant as a discipline, and a search for affiliations with other academic fields. As a Lithuanian scholar myself, I understand the difficulty of the country’s return to the western academic world after a long break and the limited access of some scholars to English-language academic sources and forums.”— Aušra Paulauskienė, Slavic Review“Storytelling is an essential way to convey not only the knowledge and experiences of past events, but also people’s values and attitudes… The wide spectrum of material from the longing of lost landscapes to the internet memes by basketball fans observed in [the volume] allows us, through very different angles, emotions, and expressions, get an insight into the mind-set of Lithuanians, its background and roots… The contributors, although focusing on folkloristic analysis of their research objects, are nonetheless themselves storytellers of Lithuania when highlighting a selected cultural phenomenon and choosing their approach, emphases, and interpretations.”— Mari Sarv, Estonian Literary Museum, Journal of Baltic Studies“This book offers a contribution to folklore studies on a broad scale and represents an important advance in scholarship. The melding of tradition and modernity is a key theme throughout. A researcher in Lithuanian traditional and contemporary folk narratives, oral history, and folk belief, Būgienė succeeds brilliantly in joining the rich historical trajectory of Lithuanian folkloristics with modern international scholarship. This is a seminal contribution to Lithuanian cultural studies.”—E. J. Vajda, Western Washington University, CHOICE“The anthology The Storytelling Human. Lithuanian Folk Tradition Today is a stellar example of how the disciplinary tradition of simultaneously looking inwards and outwards while keeping one’s eye on the protean matter of research, is realised in the present. The search for the ancient lore of the people has since long been replaced by a commitment to the constantly changing and evolving expressions of folklore… It should be made clear from the start that The Storytelling Human reaches far beyond the typical thrown together anthology with little, if any, inner dialogue and congruence among the contributions. The chapters in the present work complement each other and... present a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts… As a whole, the volume offers many thought-provoking contributions on oral tradition, especially in the field of personal narratives. The editorial work needs to be particularly singled out – it is excellent. Through rich and informative footnotes, all articles provide a wealth of additional information without interrupting the flow of the texts. The contextual explanations are particularly welcome for readers not familiar with the realities and complexities of local Lithuanian conditions in historically changing political frameworks... I strongly recommend The Storytelling Human to students of oral culture, but also to anyone interested in contemporary folkloristics in general or in the vibrant Lithuanian scholarship in particular.”—Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, Tautosakos darbai / Folklore Studies“Contemporary Lithuanian folklore studies, as reflected in these eight research articles, leave traditional approaches far behind. The focal point of all studies presented in this volume is the figure of the narrator in contemporary Lithuanian folklore. This narrator, viewed through a modernist and postmodernist lenses, tends to avoid riddles and recycle proverbs. Typically for the Lithuanian culture, the narrator does not laugh at himself and adheres to stereotypes, be those misogynic or chauvinistic in nature. By examining the narrative practices we can see how personal representations of the past shape contemporary cultural practices (one of the most moving cases presented in the volume describes bringing back home the remains of the deported ancestors and verbal rituals connected with such fulfillment of the duty). A universe of brilliant folkloristic analysis, this collection signifies a dramatic shift both in folklore material and in the study of it.”—Giedrius Subačius, Professor and Endowed Chair in Lithuanian Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago“This book guides the reader through the past and present of Lithuania, its culture and history. Seen from the angle of folklore studies and personal remembrances, these articles shed light on communicative memory, intimate ties between the people and the land, changing landscapes, and the dramatic ruptures and tragedies of the long twentieth century. We learn about the continuity of folklore genres, such as folktales, proverbs, and jokes, their current transformations and new forms of vernacular creativity, as well as the cultural identity of Lithuania. The volume is also a manifesto of renewed Lithuanian folkloristics, which has gone through the crises of disciplinary identity, reconfigured by new generations of scholars and rejuvenated by fresh currents of theoretical thought. This twenty-first-century folkloristics is bright, analytical, and emotionally engaging, and in a close dialogue with international scholarship.”—Ülo Valk, Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, University of Tartu
