| Arthur T. Hatto: The Mohave Heroic Epic of Inyo-kutavêre: Re-appraised and further interpreted on the basis of the edition of A. L. Kroeber and consultation of his field record. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia (Academia Scientiarum Fennica). 1999. 162 pp. ISBN 951-41-0838-8 (hardback) 17 euros (hardback) |
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| The Mohave Heroic Epic, the study of Inyo-kutavêre’s Great Telling of how the Mohave regained their Given, then Lost Valley, belongs to the discipline of Ethnopoetics, one that has progressed by leaps and bounds since Alfred Kroeber chanced to record the tale as it was translated live into English for him in 1902, and with a rare wealth of ethnographic comment publish it in 1951. The time has now come to re-assess and re-interpret this narrative as a true member of what we term ’the Heroic Epic meta-Genre’ , the only North American Indian specimen so far recognized and indeed the only pre-Metal Age Heroic Epic known currently to scholars.
ARTHUR THOMAS HATTO, F. B. A., was born in London in 1910 and was educated at Dulwich College (1923-27) and King’s College, London (1927-32). While Lektor für Englisch at the University of Bern he made his edition of a pre-Lutheran German translation of the Apocalypse, for which he was awarded the M. A. with Distinction of London University (1934). From an Assistant Lectureship in German at King’s College (1939), he was appointed Reader (1946), then Professor of German Language and Literature in the University of London (1953) until his retirement (1977). He served as a Governor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, gave the Foundation Day Lecture there (Shamanism and Epic Poetry in Northern Asia, 1970) and was elected an Honorary Fellow (1981). A Founder-Member and the Chairman of the London Seminar on Epic (1964-72) and General Editor, Hatto edited I Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry (1980), completed by II (1989), ed. J. B. Hainsworth, which contains Hatto’s ’Towards an Anatomy of Heroic and Epic Poetry’ (pp. 145-306). Among his works are editions of Kirghiz epics: The Memorial Feast for Kökötöy-khan (1977); The Manas of Wilhelm Radloff (1990). |
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