The organized forms of popular theater within a rich culture of performative events are the subject of this volume. Through a comparative approach to examples, Walter Puchner’s inquiries comfortably navigate traditional puppetry, the history of Karagiozis, and the folk performances of Erofili, extending to the Ionian speeches, religious theater as mass spectacle from the Alps to the Aegean, and the amateur theater of the Greek countryside.
With this book, the publishing series on folklore that began in 2007 is completed. The internationally renowned professor Walter Puchner, through his long-term inquiries in archives, collections, and field research, delivers a corpus of systematic studies that compose a foundational map of the main trends in contemporary folklore, while introducing new branches and specializations, such as theoretical folklore, comparative folklore studies, applied folklore, and theater studies folklore.
This richly documented work offers the methodological conceptual tools of folklore science, while not being limited to Greece alone. The overall work is characterized by a transnational and cross-linguistic dimension, extending research interest across the entire Balkans (and Asia Minor and the Mediterranean), making comparisons and typologies, and thereby providing a strong impetus for the opening of national folklore science to a transnational perspective, which includes the entire region of Southeastern Europe.
The originality and multifaceted theoretical approach of Walter Puchner make this series essential for contemporary scholars of popular culture, students, and anyone interested in the performative aspects of Balkan culture.
