Albanian epic poetry
[15] In 1830 Vuk Karadžić recorded from Dovica Obadović from Đurakovac near Peć 12 Albanian songs and one riddle for Jernej Kopitar.
In 1847, Vincenzo Dorsa published in Naples Su gli Albanesi, ricerche e pensieri, which contains three Albanian poems translated into Italian.
[21][20] Arbëresh writer Girolamo De Rada, who was already imbued with a passion for his Albanian lineage in the first half of the 19th century, began collecting folklore material at an early age.
From 1848 he served as interpreter to French consul in Shkodra, Louis Hyacinthe Hécquard, who was very interested in folklore and decided to prepare a book on northern Albanian oral tradition.
They travelled through the northern Albanian mountains and recorded folklore material which were published in French translation in the 1858 Hécquard's pioneering Histoire et description de la Haute Albanie ou Guégarie (History and Description of High Albania or Gegaria”).
This collection contains twelve songs in French, without the original Albanian, which were lost later in the flood that devastated the city of Shkodra on 13 January 1866.
They celebrate the battles of the Albanians in the different parts of the Ottoman Empire, including the heroic deeds of beys and those of the Souliotes.
[23] An important collection of Albanian epic poems was published by Michele Marchianò in Canti popolari albanesi delle colonie d'Italia in 1908.
[25] K. D. Sotiriou published in 1909 the collection "Short Songs and Tales of the Albanians" written in the Arvanitika dialect of the village of Markopulo in Attica and the island of Spetses.
[15] In 1923 Giuseppe Schirò published the remarkable collection Canti tradizionali ed altri saggi delle colonie albanesi di Sicilia.
[26][27][18] Harvard Scholars Milman Parry and Albert Bates Lord began to explore the traditional Albanian songs, seeking to uncover how the Homeric epics were composed.
[30] Until the beginning of the 21st century, there have been collected about half a million verses of the Kreshnikësh cycle (a number that also includes variations of the songs).
Providing a complete catalogue of Albanian texts and recordings collected by Parry and Lord with a selection of twelve of the most remarkable songs in Albanian including the English translations, the book represents an authoritative guide to one of the most important collections of Balkan folk epic in existence.
[18] Oral epics are "performance traditions", fundamentally a complex communication of emotion, culture, and history that imbue meaning by more than written text.
It consists of a sound box made of carved wood (usually maple as it is considered as the best material) covered with an animal skin, and a long neck which is decorated at the top, usually with the head of a goat, a ram or a horse.
It is played with a bow pulled over the string which is never pressed to the neck, creating a dramatic and sharp sound, expressive and difficult to master.
[9] Due to the Albanian language barrier, this tradition has lacked substantial international scholarship, translation, and recognition as an important source of cultural history.
Under tight control by Stalinist leaders in the second half of the 20th century, Albania was effectively isolated from the rest of the world.
The closed borders kept out outsiders and kept in Albanians who wished to leave, cutting off external study, contact, and heavily impeded the development of substantive cultural exchange and research.
Albanian's lack of representation in the world literary scene is not due to quality, but to dearth of external interest and difficulty of access.
