Csenge Virág Zalka's Blog, page 80

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten authors I REALLY want to meet

This is my first attempt at participating in Top Ten Tuesday, a blog hop for book and book related blogs. While I am not book related, I do love to read, and I have recently acquired a taste for blog hops.



This week's theme is Top Ten Authors I REALLY want to meet. Because some of my favorites are sadly not with us anymore, I broke my list down into two parts: 7 authors I hope to meet someday,

Story Saturday: Diversity in traditional tales

I recently taught a workshop on heroes at the Northlands Storytelling Conference, in preparation to this year's Summer Reading Program. Several people asked me to make some of my handouts available online, so here we go!

Here is the list of hero- and diversity-related websites from my handouts:


Things Matter
(LGBT superheroes A to Z)

Miss Representation (empowering girls and boys)

The Mary

One Epic Month - Reflections from A to Z

This was my 4th year participating in the Challenge and my first year co-hosting it. I would like to thank my amazing Legendary Ladies, Corinne, Lanise, Mary and Courtney, for doing a great job during A to Z, visiting blogs and gathering links. You are the best!





In my personal opinion, this one was the best A to Z year I have participated in so far! I realize that is partially due to me

Story Saturday: The Fairy Tale Hidden Treasures Blog Tour!

This is my first post in what is hopefully going to be a regular Story Saturday (#storysat) series! It just so happens that this week I am also participating in the Fairy Tale Hidden Treasures Blog Tour, where people post their favorite under-appreciated fairy tales. The tour was the magical brain child of Adam Hoffman over at the Fairy Tale Fandom, and he tagged me to be part of the lineup!
It

10 Things You Get to Do at a Northlands Conference

Last weekend was the annual Northlands Storytelling Conference in Lake Geneva, WI (kind of poetic that storytellers accidentally found themselves flocking to the birthplace of D&D every year). The conference this year was titled Confabulation; it was my fourth time visiting, and definitely by far the best.
It was con-fabulous.
(Not my pun! Not my pun!)

For those of you who have never been to a

Z is for Zong Belegt Baatar (Epics from A to Z)

Zong Belegt Baatar is a Mongol short heroic epic. "Short" in this case means under 500 lines (in chanted or sung oral poetry), and can be told in under 20 minutes. For epics, that is definitely short - but not any less epic.
(I read the English translation in this book.)

The Hero
The epic is named after its hero: Baatar means "hero" in Mongolian, and Zong Belegt is the name. He has a body of

Y is for the lost epic of Yi (Epics from A to Z)

Stories, much like people, have a life cycle. Epics are created, told, and when people cease telling them, they slowly break apart and disappear. Some cultures pick up the pieces (like it happened with the Kalevala or the Kalevipoeg). For today, I will write about an epic that might or might not have ever existed.

Origins



In 1995, Mori Masako published an article in Asian Folklore Studies,

X is for Xi You Ji - also known as Journey to the West (Epics from A to Z)

Come on, guys. Everybody knows the Monkey King, right?... Right?...

Origins
Journey to the West is one of the three great Chinese epics. It has existed in the oral tradition for hundreds of years, and it was also published in book format at the end of the 16th century. It takes place during the Tang Dynasty. It is an epic, mythical journey built on top of the historical event of Buddhism being

W is for Wagadu (Epics from A to Z)

“Four times Wagadu rose. A great city, gleaming in the light of day. Four times Wagadu fell. And disappeared from human sight. Once through vanity. Once through dishonesty. Once through greed. Once through discord.”

Origins
The story of Wagadu is one of the most haunting, most enchanting pieces of oral literature I have ever encountered. It is a West African epic by the Soninke people, and tells

V is for the Vetala Tales (Epics from A to Z)

(I was going to do the Völsunga saga, but we have had enough Vikings already)

Origins
All right, so the Vetala Tales (Vetālapañcaviṃśati) is not exactly an epic. It is a collection of short tales from the oral tradition of India, set inside a frame story, much like the Arabian Nights. It is more often known in English as the Twenty-five Tales of the Corpse Demon. It has four versions written in