The “Nation of Poetry”: Language,Festival and Subversion in Macedonia

This article critically examines the Struga Poetry Festival established in 1961 when it placed Macedonian poets and writers on the wider map of world poetry, international literature and language. With this the festival carried a subversive and an emancipatory task that not only promoted Macedonia's national poetry but also pushed the nation itself onto the world stage. Although highly politicized (and deeply political), the festival emerged as a seemingly apolitical event that celebrated the “universal language of poetry”. Yet, with its aesthetic form of an open event devoted to poetry, this festival (in a very Bakhtinian manner) pinpoints the obvious carnivalesque element in manoeuvring and subverting established social and political hierarchies. Initially, it allowed Macedonian language and poets to join established national states that have “undisputed” (or less disputed) literary traditions. The subversive nature of this festival after the 2001 military conflict in Macedonia changed the direction and intensity of the Albanian struggle for improving their status into the Macedonian society. This event has effectively allowed a minority group to initiate social movement and engage in serious identity politics related to territorial self-governance, language and cultural representation.     

Invading Mongols and the Preservation of Korean Traditions: The Monk Iryŏn and the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms

In the thirteenth century, when the Kingdom of Kory?—a state ancestral to modern Korea—was threatened culturally as well as politically by Mongol invasion and domination, a leading monk of that era, Iry?n, undertook to record the folklore of the ancient period, the era of the so-called Three Kingdoms, and to compile it into a major work. This effort might now be called ‘salvage folklore’, but the way in which Iry?n conducted his research and analysed his materials suggests that he should be regarded as Korea’s first folklorist, and that his work, the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, should be regarded as the earliest extant compendium of folkloric material from Korea.     

Venture and Faith in the Commercial Life of the Ottoman Balkans, 1500–1650

British America; Edward L. Cox     

Deceptive data? The role of the investigators in the New Survey of London Life and Labour 1928–32

The data collected by the New Survey of London Life and Labour between 1928 and 1932 is one of the most significant resources of detailed household information for the interwar period, with data extracted for almost 30,000 households, providing detailed information including birthplaces, hours of work, and wages. This article assesses the process of the original data collection, highlighting issues that mean users of the extracted data must proceed with a measure of caution. In particular, it demonstrates that one investigator employed by the survey, who provided information for around a fifth of households, appears to have regularly submitted generic and estimated information that problematizes the dataset.