Role of the Romanies: Images and Counter Images of 'Gypsies'/Romanies in European Cultures

by Nicholas Saul (editor), Susan Tebbutt (Editor)

Since their arrival in Europe at the beginning of the eleventh century, the "Gypsies" have stimulated and fascinated the European imagination, but have also always been perceived as "other" and marginalised. This title is split into four parts and seeks to address the questions raised by the ambivalent encounter of the "Gypsies" with European cultures. The volume begins with three chapters about the genesis, development and scope of Romany Studies. Constructions of Romany culture and identity are at the heart of the second part. Part three focuses on nineteenth and twentieth century literary constructions of Romany identity, be it from a gadzo or Romany perspective. The final part tackles the question of how the role of the Romanies will be remembered, recorded and commemorated.

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

Reviews

[Andre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why do books with essays always end so abruptly?
The introduction sounded inviting far, but the first chapter was pretty pointless from my POV. It didn't even have anything interesting about the Gypsy Lore society.
In a subsequent chapter this alternative hypothesis of the term "gypsy" coming from some Romani really coming from Egypt because they had been sold as slaves to that place, in addition of being of South Asian descent, and later became free is interesting. Just like this was assumed quite early but later on ignored for some reason.
While it was interesting to read that there was a short-lived alternative society to the Gypsy Lore society, I do wonder why this was considered of significance for this book. The alternative to the origin of the word "Gypsy" was one thing, but this seemed pointless.
In another chapter I did wonder which version of Romani Matras was talked about, because in Sinti-Romani the words for flower and grandfather are bluma and babo as far as I know, nothing like the Greek words suggested here. Interesting to read what he wrote about the similarities between anti-semitism/gypsyism and Zionism and Roma nationalism to achieve their goals. Apart from the words for grandfather and flower, the author states that "romanes" is only an adverb and a noun today only in the form “Rumnis,” but as far as I am aware "romanes" respectively "romenes" is a noun in the Sinti dialect of Romani and used as a noun in German to name the Romani language. While the author of that one essay (Hancock) makes a good point regarding the difference between academic research on Romani and the many faulty information on them, I would not, unlike him, consider the 2001 study by Gresham fully reliable. In that genetic study the Roma populations studied were almost all from Bulgaria, with one from Spain and Lithuania each. Aka, most of Europe is missing in it.
What was also interesting was that someone named Okely went further, and concluded that both Gypsy and gadjo women harbor similarly idealized self-images and denigrating stereotypes of the 'other:' 'we' are virginal, monogamous, and abstinent and sexually in control, 'they' are prostitutes, promiscuous, available and sexually out of control.
So this book is pretty much an up and down when it comes to the various essays in it. I would nonetheless recommend reading it though.


PS. You know what is odd? They constantly use the word "gadje" here, but when reading comments of Sinti online they use the word "chale."