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Yéil Kundayaayí, Adventures of Raven: Tlingit Raven Stories

Yéil Kundayaayí, Adventures of Raven: Tlingit Raven Stories - Paperback

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Availability:In StockContributor:Nora Marks Dauenhauer (Editor), Richard Dauenhauer (Editor), Will Geiger (Editor)Series:Classics of Tlingit Oral LiteraturePublish date:12/30/2025Pages:864
Language:EnglishPublisher:University of Washington PressISBN-13:9780295754802ISBN-10:029575480XUPC:9780295754802Book Category:Literary Collections, Social ScienceBook Subcategory:Native American, Folklore & Mythology, Native American StudiesProduct ID:SCKWZM9673

Tlingit tales reveal Raven's wit and world-shaping power

Raven is a legendary cultural hero, world-maker, and trickster figure among the Tlingit of Southeast Alaska. Here his adventures appear for the first time in the original language--transcribed directly from recordings of oral performance--accompanied by facing English translations and detailed annotations. This volume brings together fifty stories by seven Tlingit storytellers born between 1870 and 1915. These include the oldest known audio recordings of these stories told in Tlingit and some of the longest and most detailed Raven stories in the historical record.

These stories occupy a unique position and function in Tlingit oral literature. If ancestral narrative is the genres of history and tragedy, and oratory is in the genre of ceremony, then Raven stories are in the genre of comedy. Raven hops here and there, from serious origin myth to absurd comic relief. The stories often illustrate human weaknesses but expressed humorously, typically in a bewildering combination of the sacred and the scatological.

Developed and passed down over millennia, these stories and the lessons they offer will amuse, engage, and resonate across the Northwest Coast and beyond. The text is rich with linguistic, literary, and cultural commentary especially for students and teachers of the Tlingit language, as well as anthropologists, linguists, and folklorists.

Decades in the making, Yéil Kundayaayí, Adventures of Raven brings the wisdom and skill of these master storytellers to new generations.

Language:EnglishPublisher:University of Washington PressISBN-13:9780295754802ISBN-10:029575480XUPC:9780295754802Book Category:Literary Collections, Social ScienceBook Subcategory:Native American, Folklore & Mythology, Native American StudiesProduct ID:SCKWZM9673

Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer published histories and oral literature of the Tlingit people, worked to preserve and teach the Tlingit language, and helped standardize the written form of the language. Jeff Leer is professor emeritus of Alaska Native languages at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Will Geiger is a Tlingit-language researcher and editor at Sealaska Heritage Institute.


Publisher: University of Washington Press

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