Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses how and to what extent the emotional language of oral lyric poetry, dovetailed with Romantic modernity, was used for different historical, social and ideological purposes through written representations of oral tradition.

Paper long abstract:

The concept of lyric poetry as a form of emotional language is widely accepted to characterize Romantic ideas of literature and oral folk poetry in the 19th century. Lyric poetry in literature is usually considered as a poetry of love and of nature. In Kalevala-meter oral tradition, lyric covers other emotional themes, such as sorrow, hate, humor, erotic and grotesque. However, Kalevala-meter lyric poetry has been labelled as characteristically sorrowful. This side of the Kalevala-meter poetry has been emphazised by editors and readers of the written representations of oral poetry. Common people were seen as a suffering group of people with hard life experiences.

What kind of meanings does lyric as a special language of expressing emotions carry in oral tradition and how did its further usage in written representations possibly change and restraine its emotional content? The question is: whose emotions we thus address in publications? I will concentrate to examples, which illustrate how some parts of oral lyric poetry were adapted (and other parts rejected) in written publications. And further, how and to what extent the emotional language of oral lyric poetry, dovetailed with Romantic modernity, was used for the purposes of the historical, social and ideological processes through written representations of oral tradition.