AROMANIAN FOLKLORIST IOAN D. CARAGIANI
AROMANIAN FOLKLORIST IOAN D. CARAGIANI

Summary/Abstract: Ioan Caragiani is the first to publish poems from Aromanian folklore in Romania. He resorted to the testimony of folklore, insofar as it preserved the memory of the Vlachs, highlighting the Aromanian origin of the toponyms in their native localities. The study of language and folklore thus became not only an occupation, but also a patriotic duty for the folklorist Caragiani. As he himself declares, he collected from his pilgrimages through the lands inhabited by Aromanians many folk songs; he selected ten of them and published them in the Aromanian dialect in the journal Convorbiri literare. Although few in number, these popular poems are the first published in the Romanian press and open the way to extensive further research. Only after two decades would Pericles Papahagi publish his first collection of Aromanian folklore Cântece de leagăn la macedoromâni, and in 1900 he published the vast folk collection Din literatura poporană a aromânilor, in which it will include a large part of the poems collected by Caragiani.

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