The World in Miniature: The Interrelationship of Humans and Landscape in G. Mend-Ooyo's Altan Ovoo

Abstract

The leading Mongol writer G. Mend-Ooyo's poetic novel <italic>Altan Ovoo</italic> offers a vision of nomadic literature based as much on the history and worldview of Mongol nomadic herders as on the late twentieth century Mongolia, poised between Soviet-influenced socialism and Euro-American democratic capitalism, in which it was written. This dissertation has two aims, namely to offer an overview of Mongol nomadic society and culture and to show the place of literature - and poetry in particular - within this worldview, and then to present <italic>Altan Ovoo</italic> as a prism through which the ideas on which nomadic culture is based can be shown as being central to the self-image of Mongolia's people, both in relation to the past and to the future.