Advertisement
| forms of oral literature: Oral Literature in Africa Ruth Finnegan, 2012-09 Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, drum language and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website. |
| forms of oral literature: How to Read a Folktale Lee Haring, 2013-10-24 How to Read a Folktale offers the first English translation of Ibonia, a spellbinding tale of old Madagascar. Ibonia is a folktale on epic scale. Much of its plot sounds familiar: a powerful royal hero attempts to rescue his betrothed from an evil adversary and, after a series of tests and duels, he and his lover are joyfully united with a marriage that affirms the royal lineage. These fairytale elements link Ibonia with European folktales, but the tale is still very much a product of Madagascar. It contains African-style praise poetry for the hero; it presents Indonesian-style riddles and poems; and it inflates the form of folktale into epic proportions. Recorded when the Malagasy people were experiencing European contact for the first time, Ibonia proclaims the power of the ancestors against the foreigner. Through Ibonia, Lee Haring expertly helps readers to understand the very nature of folktales. His definitive translation, originally published in 1994, has now been fully revised to emphasize its poetic qualities, while his new introduction and detailed notes give insight into the fascinating imagination and symbols of the Malagasy. Haring’s research connects this exotic narrative with fundamental questions not only of anthropology but also of literary criticism. |
| forms of oral literature: Memory Patricia Fara, Karalyn Patterson, 1998-09-03 This engaging volume for the general reader explores how individuals and societies remember, forget and commemorate events of the past. The collection of eight essays takes an interdisciplinary approach to address the relationships between individual experience and collective memory, with leading experts from the arts and sciences. We might expect scientists to be concerned with studying just the mental and physical processes involved in remembering, and humanities scholars to be interested in the products of memory, such as books, statues and music. This collection exposes the falseness of such a dichotomy, illustrating the insights into memory which can be gained by juxtaposing the complementary perspectives of specialists venturing beyond the normal boundaries of their disciplines. The authors come from backgrounds as diverse as psychoanalysis, creative writing, neuroscience, social history and medicine. |
| forms of oral literature: Homo Narrans John D. Niles, 2010-08-03 It would be difficult to imagine what human life would be like without stories—from myths recited by Pueblo Indian healers in the kiva, ballads sung in Slovenian market squares, folktales and legends told by the fireside in Italy, to jokes told at a dinner table in Des Moines—for it is chiefly through storytelling that people possess a past. In Homo Narrans John D. Niles explores how human beings shape their world through the stories they tell. The book vividly weaves together the study of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture with the author's own engagements in the field with some of the greatest twentieth-century singers and storytellers in the Scottish tradition. Niles ponders the nature of the storytelling impulse, the social function of narrative, and the role of individual talent in oral tradition. His investigation of the poetics of oral narrative encompasses literary works, such as the epic poems and hymns of early Greece and the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, texts that we know only through written versions but that are grounded in oral technique. That all forms of narrative, even the most sophisticated genres of contemporary fiction, have their ultimate origin in storytelling is a point that scarcely needs to be argued. Niles's claims here are more ambitious: that oral narrative is and has long been the chief basis of culture itself, that the need to tell stories is what distinguishes humans from all other living creatures. |
| forms of oral literature: African Oral Literature Isidore Okpewho, 1992-09-22 . . . its pages come alive with wonderful illustrative material coupled with sensitve and insightful commentary. —Reviews in Anthropology . . . the scope, breadth, and lucidity of this excellent study confirm that Okpewho is undoubtedly the most important authority writing on African oral literature right now . . . —Research in African Literatures Truly a tour de force of individual scholarship . . . —World Literature Today . . . excellent . . . —African Affairs . . . a thorough synthesis of the main issues of oral literature criticism, as well as a grounding in experienced fieldwork, a wide-ranging theoretical base, and a clarity of argument rare among academics. —Multicultural Review This is a breathtakingly ambitious project . . . —Harold Scheub . . . a definitive accounting of the evidence of living oral traditions in Africa today. Professor Okpewho's authority as an expert in this important new field is unrivaled. —Gregory Nagy Isidore Okpewho's African Oral Literature is a marvelous piece of scholarship and wide-ranging research. It presents the most comprehensive survey of the field of oral literature in Africa. —Emmanuel Obiechina . . . a tour de force of scholarship in which Okpewho casts his net across the African continent, searching for its verbal forms through voluminous recent writings and presents African oral literature in a new voice, proclaiming the literariness of African folklore. —Dan Ben-Amos This is an outstanding book by a scholar whose work has already influenced how African literature should be conceived. . . . Professor Okpewho is a scholar with a special talent to nurture scholarship in others. After this work, African literature will never be the same. —Mazisi Kunene Isidore Okpewho, for many years Professor of English at the University of Ibadan, is one of the handful of African scholars who has facilitated the growth of African oral literature to its status today as a literary enterprise concerned with the artistic foundations of human culture. This comprehensive critical work firmly establishes oral literature as a landmark of high artistic achievement and situates it within the broader framework of contemporary African culture. |
| forms of oral literature: Oral Literature for Children Aaron Mushengyezi, 2013 This book is the first ever major effort to document and study hundreds of texts from an African (Ugandan) oral culture for children – folktales, riddles, and rhymes – and at the same time to make them available in the local Languages and to focus on their cultural and national value. The author surveys the history of collecting in Uganda and situates the texts in their broader geographical, historical, socio-cultural and educational Setting, including the early collecting efforts of heritage-minded Ugandans and European missionaries. Most of this preservational work is elusive and under-explored – so that the present book constitutes a major pioneering summary of Ugandan oral culture for children. The book addresses key questions such as: What happens when we collect, transcribe, and translate an oral text? How do we transfer components of the oral text to the page? What are the challenges of translating oral forms targeting specifi¬cally a child Audience, and what choices ought to be made in the process? The book provides possible ways of rethink¬ing the debate about orality and literacy as modes of representation – the generic interrelationship between the oral and the written text, and how the two can enter dialogue through transcription and translation. The latter are effective means to archive these oral forms for children and use them to promote literacy and numeracy skills in predominantly oral communities. In the current institutions of formal education in Uganda, this coexistence of orality and literacy is evident in the class¬room environment, where the oral text is turned into words on the page to encourage literacy. Through transcription, the collector is able to capture oral texts in other forms – audio, written, visual, and digital. With the new technologies available, the task is not as arduous as in the past, and the information thus captured is made available in all its wealth for purposes of instruction or entertainment. |
| forms of oral literature: Power, Marginality and African Oral Literature Graham Furniss, Liz Gunner, 1995-09-14 African oral literature, like other forms of popular culture, is not merely a form of entertainment but a medium for commenting on contemporary social and political events. It can also be a significant agent of change capable of directing, provoking, preventing, overturning, and recasting social reality. The contributors to this collection are anthropologists, linguists, historians, and ethnomusicologists, who present fresh material on oral literature to paint a lively picture of current real life situations in Africa. |
| forms of oral literature: The Ballad and Oral Literature Joseph Harris, 1991 Francis James Child, compiler and editor of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, established the scholarly study of folk ballads in the English-speaking world. His successors at Harvard University, notably George Lyman Kittredge, Milman Parry, and Albert B. Lord, discovered new ways of relating ideas about sung narrative to the study of epic poetry and what has come to be called - oral literature. In this volume, 16 scholars from Europe and the United States offer original essays in the spirit of these pioneers. The topics of their studies include well-known Child ballads in their British and American forms; aspects of the oral literatures of France, Ireland, Scandinavia, medieval England, ancient Greece, and modern Egypt; and recent literary ballads and popular songs. Many of the essays evince a concern with the theoretical underpinnings of the study of folklore and literature, orality and literacy; and as a whole the volume re-establishes the European ballad in the wider context of oral literature. Among the contributors are Albert B. Lord, Bengt R. Jonsson, Gregory Nagy, David Buchan, Vesteinn Olason, and Karl Reichl. |
| forms of oral literature: The Oral and Beyond Ruth H. Finnegan, 2007 Ruth Finnegan examines the verbal arts in Africa and looks at whether the image of Africa as the 'oral' continent stands up to a more comparative and critical approach to 'orality' and performance. |
| forms of oral literature: Oral Literature of the Kalenjin Ciarunji Chesaina, 1991 |
| forms of oral literature: Tales of Darkness and Light Soso Tham, 2018-04-25 Soso Tham (1873–1940), the acknowledged poet laureate of the Khasis of northeastern India, was one of the first writers to give written poetic form to the rich oral tradition of his people. Poet of landscape, myth and memory, Soso Tham paid rich and poignant tribute to his tribe in his masterpiece The Old Days of the Khasis. Janet Hujon’s vibrant new translation presents the English reader with Tham’s long poem, which keeps a rich cultural tradition of the Khasi people alive through its retelling of old narratives and acts as a cultural signpost for their literary identity. This book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Indian literature and culture and in the interplay between oral traditions and written literary forms. This edition includes: • English translation • Critical apparatus • Embedded audio recordings of the original text |
| forms of oral literature: Oral Tradition Jan Vansina, |
| forms of oral literature: The Singer Resumes the Tale Albert Bates Lord, 1995 Edited by Mary Louise Lord after the author's death, The Singer Resumes the Tale focuses on the performance of stories and poems within settings that range from ancient Greek palaces to Latvian villages. Lord expounds and develops his approach to oral literature in this book, responds systematically for the first time to criticisms of oral theory, and extends his methods to the analysis of lyric poems. He also considers the implications of the transitional text - a work made up of both oral and literary components. Elements of the oral tradition - the practice of storytelling in prose or verse, the art of composing and transmitting songs, the content of these texts, the kinds of songs composed, and the poetics of oral literature - are discussed in the light of several traditions, beginning in the ancient world, through the Middle Ages, to the present. Throughout, the central figure is always the singer. Homer, the Beowulf poet, women who perform lyric songs, tellers of folktales, singers of such ballads as Barbara Allen, bards of the Balkans: all play prominent roles in Lord's book, as they have played central roles in the creation of this fundamental literature. |
| forms of oral literature: Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts Ruth Finnegan, 2003-09-02 Provides up-to-date guidance on how to approach the study of oral forms and their performances, examining both the practicalities of fieldwork and the methods by which oral texts and performances can be observed, collected and analysed. |
| forms of oral literature: The Singer of Tales Albert Bates Lord, Stephen Arthur Mitchell, Gregory Nagy, 2000 Discusses the oral tradition as a theory of literary composition and its applications to Homeric and medieval epic. |
| forms of oral literature: Forms of oral literature in the Roman world Alexander Scobie, 1986 |
| forms of oral literature: Storytelling in Northern Zambia Robert Cancel, 2013 Storytelling plays an important part in the vibrant cultural life of Zambia and in many other communities across Africa. This innovative book provides a collection and analysis of oral narrative traditions as practiced by five Bemba-speaking ethnic groups in Zambia. The integration of newly digitalised audio and video recordings into the text enables the reader to encounter the storytellers themselves and hear their narratives. Robert Cancel's thorough critical interpretation, combined with these newly digitalised audio and video materials, makes Storytelling in Northern Zambia a much needed addition to the slender corpus of African folklore studies that deal with storytelling performance. Cancel threads his way between the complex demands of African fieldwork studies, folklore theory, narrative modes, reflexive description and simple documentation and succeeds in bringing to the reader a set of performers and their performances that are vivid, varied and instructive. He illustrates this living narrative tradition with a wide range of examples, and highlights the social status of narrators and the complex local identities that are at play. Cancel's study tells us not only about storytelling but sheds light on the study of oral literatures throughout Africa and beyond. Its innovative format, meanwhile, explores new directions in the integration of primary source material into scholarly texts. This book is the third volume in the World Oral Literature Series, developed in conjunction with the World Oral Literature Project. |
| forms of oral literature: Oral Poetry Ruth Finnegan, 2018-05-16 This classic study is an introduction to oral poetry, a broad subject which Ruth Finnegan interprets as ranging from American folksongs, Eskimo lyrics, and modern popular songs to medieval oral literature, the heroic poems of Homer, and recent epic compositions in Asia or the Pacific. The book employs a broad comparative perspective and considers oral poetry from Africa, Asia, and Oceania as well as Europe and America. The results of Finnegan's vast research illuminate and suggest fresh conclusions to many current controversies: the nature of oral tradition and oral composition; the notion of a special oral style; possible connection between types of poetry and types of society; the differences between oral and written communication; and the role of poets in non-literate societies. Drawing on insights from anthropology and literary scholarship, Oral Poetry attempts to create a greater appreciation of the literary aspects of this fascinating form of poetry. Finnegan quotes extensively from a wide variety of sources, mainly in translation. The discussion is presented in non-technical language and will be of interest not only to sociologists and social anthropologists, but also to all those interested in comparative literature and in folk poetry from cultures around the world. The re-issue of this text, widely used in folklore, anthropology, and comparative literature courses, comes at an appropriate juncture in interdisciplinary scholarship, which is witnessing the breakdown of traditional disciplinary boundaries and an increase in the comparative study of oral poetry. For this volume Ruth Finnegan has provided a new foreword relating the text to more recent developments. |
| forms of oral literature: Oral Literary Performance in Africa Nduka Otiono, Chiji Akọma, 2021-05-31 This book delivers an admirably comprehensive and rigorous analysis of African oral literatures and performance. Gathering insights from distinguished scholars in the field, the book provides a range of contemporary interdisciplinary perspectives in the study of oral literature and its transformations in everyday life, fiction, poetry, popular culture, and postcolonial politics. Topics discussed include folklore and folklife; oral performance and masculinities; intermediated orality, modern transformations, and globalisation; orality and mass media; spoken word and imaginative writing. The book also addresses research methodologies and the thematic and theoretical trajectories of scholars of African oral literatures, looking back to the trailblazing legacies of Ruth Finnegan, Harold Scheub, and Isidore Okpewho. Ambitious in scope and incisive in its analysis, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of African literatures and oral performance as well as to general readers interested in the dynamics of cultural production. |
| forms of oral literature: Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet Gerald Roche, 2017-11-02 Containing ballads of martial heroism, tales of tragic lovers and visions of the nature of the world, Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet: Texts in Mongghul, Chinese, and English is a rich repository of songs collected amongst the Mongghul of the Seven Valleys, on the northeast Tibetan Plateau in western China. These songs represent the apogee of Mongghul oral literature, and they provide valuable insights into the lives of Mongghul people—their hopes, dreams, and worries. They bear testimony to the impressive plurilingual repertoire commanded by some Mongghul singers: the original texts in Tibetan, Mongghul, and Chinese are here presented in Mongghul, Chinese, and English. The kaleidoscope of stories told in these songs include that of Marshall Qi, a chieftain from the Seven Valleys who travels to Luoyang with his Mongghul army to battle rebels; Laarimbu and Qiimunso, a pair of star-crossed lovers who take revenge from beyond the grave on the families that kept them apart; and the Crop-Planting Song and the Sheep Song, which map the physical and spiritual terrain of the Mongghul people, vividly describing the physical and cosmological world in which they exist. This collection of songs is supported by an Introduction by Gerald Roche that provides an understanding of their traditional context, and shows that these works offer insights into the practices of multilingualism in Tibet. Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet is vital reading for researchers and others working on oral literature, as well as those who study Inner Asia, Tibet, and China’s ethnic minorities. Finally, this book is of interest to linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists, particularly those working on small-scale multilingualism and pre-colonial multilingualism. |
| forms of oral literature: Orality and Literacy Walter J. Ong, 2003-12-16 This classic work explores the vast differences between oral and literate cultures offering a very clear account of the intellectual, literary and social effects of writing, print and electronic technology. In the course of his study, Walter J. Ong offers fascinating insights into oral genres across the globe and through time, and examines the rise of abstract philosophical and scientific thinking. He considers the impact of orality-literacy studies not only on literary criticism and theory but on our very understanding of what it is to be a human being, conscious of self and other. This is a book no reader, writer or speaker should be without. |
| forms of oral literature: The Epic of Gor Mahia Adrian Onyando, 2003 |
| forms of oral literature: Lyric, Meaning, and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe Thomas Andrew DuBois, 2006 DuBois draws on sets of lyric songs from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland to explore the question of meaning in folklore, especially the role of traditional audiences in appraising and understanding nonnarrative songs. |
| forms of oral literature: Contemporary Oral Literature Fieldwork Peter Wasamba, 2015-10-19 Contemporary Oral Literature Fieldwork is based on rich research experience dating back to the 1990s. The book is written against the backdrop of Africas confusion with regard to the place of oral literature in the face of the rest of the world, where oral literature exists in conjunction with new literary forms. Wasamba argues that the oral and the written literatures are complementary literary forms. Throughout the work, the author underscores the universal dimension of oral literature as he demonstrates its particular attributes. |
| forms of oral literature: "What is Literature?" and Other Essays Jean-Paul Sartre, 1988 What is Literature? challenges anyone who writes as if literature could be extricated from history or society. But Sartre does more than indict. He offers a definitive statement about the phenomenology of reading, and he goes on to provide a dashing example of how to write a history of literature that takes ideology and institutions into account. |
| forms of oral literature: Oral Literary Worlds Sara Marzagora, Francesca Orsini, 2025-01-31 The discipline of world literature has traditionally focused on written literatures, particularly the novel, with little emphasis placed on the unwritten verbal arts, despite the significance of oral literary expressions around the world, in the past as in the present. This volume redresses this gap by putting the discipline of world literature into dialogue with scholarship on orature and folklore. It asks, what does world literature look like if we start from orature, from oral texts and utterances, and from the performances and audiences that support it? Featuring contributions from an international array of scholars, Oral Literary Worlds explores oral traditions from three multilingual regions: the Maghreb, East Africa and South Asia. Essays discuss a variety of vernacular genres, from Swahili tumbuizo to Na’o folk songs, shedding light on less studied forms of vernacular oral production. Collectively, the contributions critique the characterisation of oral traditions as static and pre-modern, and underscore the contemporary relevance of orature to cultural and political discourse. Oral Literary Worlds offers a timely and accessible perspective on world literature through the lens of orature, moving away from traditional hierarchies and dichotomies that have characterised previous scholarship. It aims to open up new ways of thinking through local and transnational textual circulation, literary power dynamics, the interaction between textuality and audiences, and aesthetic philosophies. This volume will be an invaluable resource for scholars of world literature, folklore and performance studies, and will further interest teachers and students of popular culture, literature of dissent and music. |
| forms of oral literature: Journey to the West (2018 Edition - PDF) Wu Cheng'en, 2018-08-14 The bestselling Journey to the West comic book by artist Chang Boon Kiat is now back in a brand new fully coloured edition. Journey to the West is one of the greatest classics in Chinese literature. It tells the epic tale of the monk Xuanzang who journeys to the West in search of the Buddhist sutras with his disciples, Sun Wukong, Sandy and Pigsy. Along the way, Xuanzang's life was threatened by the diabolical White Bone Spirit, the menacing Red Child and his fearsome parents and, a host of evil spirits who sought to devour Xuanzang's flesh to attain immortality. Bear witness to the formidable Sun Wukong's (Monkey God) prowess as he takes them on, using his Fiery Eyes, Golden Cudgel, Somersault Cloud, and quick wits! Be prepared for a galloping read that will leave you breathless! |
| forms of oral literature: Oral Art Forms and Their Passage Into Writing Else Mundal, Jonas Wellendorf, 2008 The present collection examines the complex interrelationship between the oral and the written and the problems of textualisation. |
| forms of oral literature: Medieval Oral Literature Karl Reichl, 2011-11-30 Medieval literature is to a large degree shaped by orality, not only with regard to performance, but also to transmission and composition. Although problems of orality have been much discussed by medievalists, there is to date no comprehensive handbook on this topic. ‘Medieval Oral Literature’, a volume in the ‘De Gruyter Lexikon’ series, was written by an international team of twenty-five scholars and offers a thorough discussion of theoretical approaches as well as detailed presentations of individual traditions and genres. In addition to chapters on the oral-formulaic theory, on the interplay of orality and writing in the Early Middle Ages, on performance and performers, on oral poetics and on ritual aspects of orality, there are chapters on the Older Germanic, Romance, Middle High German, Middle English, Celtic, Greek-Byzantine, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and Turkish traditions of oral literature. There is a special focus on epic and lyric, genres that are also discussed in separate chapters, with additional chapters on the ballad and on drama. |
| forms of oral literature: Introduction to African Oral Literature F. B. O. Akporobaro, |
| forms of oral literature: The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature James Howard Cox, Daniel Heath Justice, 2014 Over the course of the last twenty years, Native American and Indigenous American literary studies has experienced a dramatic shift from a critical focus on identity and authenticity to the intellectual, cultural, political, historical, and tribal nation contexts from which these Indigenous literatures emerge. The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature reflects on these changes and provides a complete overview of the current state of the field. The Handbook's forty-three essays, organized into four sections, cover oral traditions, poetry, drama, non-fiction, fiction, and other forms of Indigenous American writing from the seventeenth through the twenty-first century. Part I attends to literary histories across a range of communities, providing, for example, analyses of Inuit, Chicana/o, Anishinaabe, and M tis literary practices. Part II draws on earlier disciplinary and historical contexts to focus on specific genres, as authors discuss Indigenous non-fiction, emergent trans-Indigenous autobiography, Mexicanoh and Spanish poetry, Native drama in the U.S. and Canada, and even a new Indigenous children's literature canon. The third section delves into contemporary modes of critical inquiry to expound on politics of place, comparative Indigenism, trans-Indigenism, Native rhetoric, and the power of Indigenous writing to communities of readers. A final section thoroughly explores the geographical breadth and expanded definition of Indigenous American through detailed accounts of literature from Indian Territory, the Red Atlantic, the far North, Yucat n, Amerika Samoa, and Francophone Quebec. Together, the volume is the most comprehensive and expansive critical handbook of Indigenous American literatures published to date. It is the first to fully take into account the last twenty years of recovery and scholarship, and the first to most significantly address the diverse range of texts, secondary archives, writing traditions, literary histories, geographic and political contexts, and critical discourses in the field. |
| forms of oral literature: Aspects of Orality and Greek Literature in the Roman Empire Consuelo Ruiz-Montero, 2020-02-05 Orality was the backbone of ancient Greek culture throughout its different periods. This volume will serve to deepen the reader’s knowledge of how Greek texts circulated during the Roman Empire. The studies included here approach the subject from both a literary and a sociocultural point of view, illuminating the interconnections between literary and social practices. Topics considered include epigraphy, the rhetoric of transmitting the texts, language and speech, performance, theatre, narrative representation, material culture, and the interaction of different cultures. Since orality is a widespread phenomenon in the Greek-speaking world of the Roman Empire, this book draws the reader’s attention to under-researched texts and inscriptions. |
| forms of oral literature: The Mwindo Epic from the Banyanga Daniel Biebuyck, Kahombo C. Mateene, 2023-07-28 The feats of the hero Mwindo are here glorified in the bilingual text of an epic which was sung and narrated in a Bantu language and acted out by a member of the Nyanga tribe in the remote forest regions of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Admirably structured, coherent, and richly poetic, the epic is in prose form, interspersed with song and proverbs in verse. An example of the classic tradition of oral folk literature, the tale has important implications for the comparative study of African culture, as the text provides profound insights into the social structure, value system, linguistics, and cosmology of this African people. The feats of the hero Mwindo are here glorified in the bilingual text of an epic which was sung and narrated in a Bantu language and acted out by a member of the Nyanga tribe in the remote forest regions of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Admira |
| forms of oral literature: Stories from Quechan Oral Literature A.M. Halpern, Amy Miller, 2014-11-24 The Quechan are a Yuman people who have traditionally lived along the lower part of the Colorado River in California and Arizona. They are well known as warriors, artists, and traders, and they also have a rich oral tradition. The stories in this volume were told by tribal elders in the 1970s and early 1980s. The eleven narratives in this volume take place at the beginning of time and introduce the reader to a variety of traditional characters, including the infamous Coyote and also Kwayúu the giant, Old Lady Sanyuuxáv and her twin sons, and the Man Who Bothered Ants. This book makes a long-awaited contribution to the oral literature and mythology of the American Southwest, and its format and organization are of special interest. Narratives are presented in the original language and in the storytellers’ own words. A prosodically-motivated broken-line format captures the rhetorical structure and local organization of the oral delivery and calls attention to stylistic devices such as repetition and syntactic parallelism. Facing-page English translation provides a key to the original Quechan for the benefit of language learners. The stories are organized into story complexes”, that is, clusters of narratives with overlapping topics, characters, and events, told from diverse perspectives. In presenting not just stories but story complexes, this volume captures the art of storytelling and illuminates the complexity and interconnectedness of an important body of oral literature. Stories from Quechan Oral Literature provides invaluable reading for anyone interested in Native American cultural heritage and oral traditions more generally. |
| forms of oral literature: Anguish Of Snails Barre Toelken, 2003-12-01 After a career working and living with American Indians and studying their traditions, Barre Toelken has written this sweeping study of Native American folklore in the West. Within a framework of performance theory, cultural worldview, and collaborative research, he examines Native American visual arts, dance, oral tradition (story and song), humor, and patterns of thinking and discovery to demonstrate what can be gleaned from Indian traditions by Natives and non-Natives alike. In the process he considers popular distortions of Indian beliefs, demystifies many traditions by showing how they can be comprehended within their cultural contexts, considers why some aspects of Native American life are not meant to be understood by or shared with outsiders, and emphasizes how much can be learned through sensitivity to and awareness of cultural values. Winner of the 2004 Chicago Folklore Prize, The Anguish of Snails is an essential work for the collection of any serious reader in folklore or Native American studies. |
| forms of oral literature: Xiipúktan (First of All) George Bryant, Amy Miller, 2013-11-17 The Quechan people live along the lower part of the Colorado River in the United States. According to tradition, the Quechan and other Yuman people were created at the beginning of time, and their Creation myth explains how they came into existence, the origin of their environment, and the significance of their oldest traditions. The Creation myth forms the backdrop against which much of the tribe’s extensive oral literature may be understood. At one time there were almost as many different versions of the Quechan creation story as there were Quechan families. Now few people remember them. This volume, presented in the Quechan language with facing-column translation, provides three views of the origins of the Quechan people. One synthesizes narrator George Bryant’s childhood memories and later research. The second is based upon J. P. Harrington’s A Yuma Account of Origins (1908). The third provides a modern view of the origins of the Quechan, beginning with the migration from Asia to the New World and ending with the settlement of the Yuman tribes at their present locations. Publication of this book is made possible by the Institute of Museum and Library Services Native American / Native Hawaiian Museum Services Program grant number MN-00-13-0025-13. This collection is for the Quechan people and will also interest linguists, anthropologists, oral literature specialists, and anyone curious about Native American culture. This book is part of our World Oral Literature Series in conjunction with the World Oral Literature Project. |
| forms of oral literature: Animal Farm George Orwell, 2025 |
| forms of oral literature: The Making of Homeric Verse Milman Parry, Adam Parry, 1980 |
| forms of oral literature: Oral Literature in Africa Ruth Finnegan, 2020-10-09 Ruth Finneganâ s Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finneganâ s ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, drum language and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. Oral Literature in Africa has been accessed by hundreds of readers in over 60 different countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and numerous other African countries. The digital editions of this book are free to download thanks to the generous support of interested readers and organisations, who made donations using the crowd-funding website Unglue.it. Oral Literature in Africa is part of our World Oral Literature Series in conjunction with the World Oral Literature Project. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors. |
| forms of oral literature: A Dictionary of Oral Literature Leteipa Ole Sunkuli, Simon Okumba Miruka, 1990 |
Registration - Mayo Clinic
Time permitting, please complete the registration forms and return them to Mayo Clinic using one of the options provided in your preregistration packet. To expedite the registration process, …
Metoprolol (oral route) - Mayo Clinic
Jun 1, 2025 · Appropriate studies have not been performed on the relationship of age to the effects of metoprolol oral liquid and tablets in the pediatric population. Safety and efficacy have …
Cholestyramine (oral route) - Mayo Clinic
Apr 1, 2025 · Side effects may be more likely to occur in patients over 60 years of age, who are usually more sensitive to the effects of cholestyramine. Although certain medicines should not …
Living wills and advance directives for medical decisions
Mar 25, 2025 · Forms vary by state, but a POLST lets your healthcare professional include details about your care. These details can include what treatments a medical team should not use, …
Azelastine (nasal route) - Mayo Clinic
Apr 1, 2025 · Appropriate studies performed to date have not demonstrated pediatric-specific problems that would limit the usefulness of Astepro® nasal spray in children. However, safety …
Domestic violence against women: Recognize patterns, seek help
Feb 4, 2025 · Domestic violence happens between people who are or have been in a close relationship. Domestic violence also is called intimate partner violence. This type of violence …
Self-injury/cutting - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic
Nov 21, 2024 · Forms of self-injury. Self-injury mostly happens in private. Usually, it's done in a controlled manner or the same way each time, which often leaves a pattern on the skin. …
Hydrocodone and acetaminophen (oral route) - Mayo Clinic
Jun 1, 2025 · Anexsia. Ceta Plus. Co-Gesic. Dolorex Forte. Hycet. Lorcet. Lortab. Maxidone. Norco. Stagesic. Vicodin HP. Zydone
Ivermectin (oral route) - Mayo Clinic
Feb 1, 2025 · Appropriate studies have not been performed on the relationship of age to the effects of ivermectin in children weighing less than 15 kilograms (kg). Safety and efficacy have …
Endometriosis - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic
Aug 30, 2024 · Hi, I'm Dr. Megan Wasson, a minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon at Mayo Clinic. In this video, we will cover the basics of endometriosis, including what is it, who gets it, …
Registration - Mayo Clinic
Time permitting, please complete the registration forms and return them to Mayo Clinic using one of the options provided in your preregistration packet. To expedite the registration process, …
Metoprolol (oral route) - Mayo Clinic
Jun 1, 2025 · Appropriate studies have not been performed on the relationship of age to the effects of metoprolol oral liquid and tablets in the pediatric population. Safety and efficacy have …
Cholestyramine (oral route) - Mayo Clinic
Apr 1, 2025 · Side effects may be more likely to occur in patients over 60 years of age, who are usually more sensitive to the effects of cholestyramine. Although certain medicines should not …
Living wills and advance directives for medical decisions
Mar 25, 2025 · Forms vary by state, but a POLST lets your healthcare professional include details about your care. These details can include what treatments a medical team should not use, …
Azelastine (nasal route) - Mayo Clinic
Apr 1, 2025 · Appropriate studies performed to date have not demonstrated pediatric-specific problems that would limit the usefulness of Astepro® nasal spray in children. However, safety …
Domestic violence against women: Recognize patterns, seek help
Feb 4, 2025 · Domestic violence happens between people who are or have been in a close relationship. Domestic violence also is called intimate partner violence. This type of violence …
Self-injury/cutting - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic
Nov 21, 2024 · Forms of self-injury. Self-injury mostly happens in private. Usually, it's done in a controlled manner or the same way each time, which often leaves a pattern on the skin. …
Hydrocodone and acetaminophen (oral route) - Mayo Clinic
Jun 1, 2025 · Anexsia. Ceta Plus. Co-Gesic. Dolorex Forte. Hycet. Lorcet. Lortab. Maxidone. Norco. Stagesic. Vicodin HP. Zydone
Ivermectin (oral route) - Mayo Clinic
Feb 1, 2025 · Appropriate studies have not been performed on the relationship of age to the effects of ivermectin in children weighing less than 15 kilograms (kg). Safety and efficacy have …
Endometriosis - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic
Aug 30, 2024 · Hi, I'm Dr. Megan Wasson, a minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon at Mayo Clinic. In this video, we will cover the basics of endometriosis, including what is it, who gets it, …
