| Summary: | Verse parallelism is one of the most distinctive features of a Finnic tradition of oral poetry, which is called "kalevalaic poetry" in Finland or "regilaul" in Estonia. This essay presents grammatical and semantic principles and patterns according to which parallel verses are composed, and introduces a statistical analysis of parallelism in the repertoire of one singer of these poems. Verse parallelism is considered a constitutive feature which, alongside the meter and alliteration, defines this register. As the first line has normally the full referential power of a proposition, parallel lines add to this power and deepen and enrich description in the discourse. Abstract from website. Jukka Saarinen is Development Manager in the Archives of the Finnish Literature Society. His research interests and activities include Finnish and Karelian kalevalaic poetry and folklore in general. He has recently defended his doctoral thesis on poetics and the song repertoire performed by Arhippa Perttunen (1769-1841), one of the most prominent singers of kalevalaic poetry. He has been involved in developing the SKVR-database, a digital corpus of Finnish and Karelian oral poetry.
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