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Nart Sagas from the Caucasus: Myths and Legends from the Circassians, Abazas, Abkhaz, and Ubykhs. Assembled, translated, and annotated by John Colarusso. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. xxi + 552, illustrations, appendices, bibliography.)
The Nart stories are a cycle of heroic stories known among the peoples of the Caucasus, both the non-Indo-European-speaking peoples represented in this volume and the Ossetes, an Iranian-speaking people. Told in several genres of folk narrative (legends, folktales, and folk poetry), the stories narrate the origins and adventures of the Narts, the people of the Caucasian heroic age. Colarusso's collection is a welcome translation of these texts, especially because it is the first large-scale English translation of the stories. Although the translations of the stories will be of great service to scholars of heroic epic and comparative folk narrative, there are several important problems with the commentary and texts.
Much of the commentary is questionable as analysis and comparison. Colarusso proceeds from the assumption that the stories are "a treasure trove for the study of ancient mythology" that can be used to illuminate not only early Caucasian mythology, but also Indo-European mythology and folk belief (p. xiv). Colarusso suggests that "what is...