Call Number:

Ms. Coll. 1170

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

0.8 linear feet (2 boxes)

Preferred Citation:

Lowell Edmunds collection of folk tales relating to incest and parricide, 1974-1985, Ms. Coll. 1170, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1974-1985 (inclusive)

Creator:

Edmunds, Lowell

Form:

Folk tales, Audiovisual materials, Correspondence, and Reprographic copies

Abstract:

Lowell Edmunds is an emeritus professor of Classics at Rutgers University with research interests in Greek literature and mythology. This collection includes correspondence regarding translations and published and unpublished texts of folk tales relating to incest and parricide translated from more than twenty languages. Researchers will find African, Albanian, Asian, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latin and Greek, Lithuanian, Spanish, and Slavic folk tales as well as those from the Near East and the Western Hemisphere.

Lowell Edmunds was born on October 11, 1938 in Franklin, New Hampshire. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy; Harvard University, earning his A.B in 1960 and his Ph.D. in 1970; and University of California, Berkeley, earning his M.A. in 1965. He taught classics at Harvard University from 1970 to 1978, at Boston College from 1978 to 1983, at Johns Hopkins University from 1983 to 1988, and at Rutgers University from 1988 to 2007 when he retired, remaining as an emeritus professor at Rutgers. In addition to his duties as a professor, he also edited the Comparative Civilizations Bulletin and was a member of several other editorial boards of scholarly journals. His research interests include Greek literature and mythology. He has published extensively on those topics and has also published two books on the martini.

Edmunds collected folk tales relating to incest and parricide from around the world and in many languages. The final item in the collection indicates that much of his work was originally intended for use in Classics 121, a course he taught at Harvard University in the spring term of 1975. It is possible that the final product of his research was Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and Its Later Analogues, which was published in 1985.

This collection includes correspondence regarding translations and published and unpublished texts of folk tales relating to incest and parricide. Lowell Edmunds collected these folk tales and compiled them into an unpublished volume (the annotated draft of which can be found in box 2 folder 4) which was used in his spring 1975 Classics 121 course at Harvard University. Based upon dates in the collection and subsequent requests for folk tales to be sent to him, it appears that this course may have been the genesis for a project which was intended for publication by the University of Pennsylvania Press. It does not appear that the publication progressed as intended; but it is possible that the manuscript was eventually published in 1985 by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 1985 as Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and Its Later Analogues.

These stories include several versions of the Greek "Oedipus" from different cultures as well as numerous versions of a tale called "A Son Who Killed his Father and Married his Mother," to name only a few. The bulk of the collection consists of photocopies of the published folktales in their original language and typescripts of their translations, but it also includes a small amount of correspondence, some manuscript copies of the folk tales, and notes.

Edmunds appears to have arranged the folk tales geographically, and this collection maintains that order. Researchers will find African, Albanian, Asian, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latin and Greek, Lithuanian, Spanish, and Slavic folk tales as well as those from the Near East and the Western Hemisphere.