Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture – serie

This collection of essays is a major contribution to the study of oral composition and ritual communication, and in particular to the use of 'parallelism' (the poetic ordering of words and phrases in alternative, duplicate form). The introduction by James J. Fox sets the topic in historical perspective, beginning with Robert Lowth's introduction of the term 'parallelism' in 1753 in his study of biblical language, demonstrating that what was once viewed as a form of composition unique to Ancient Hebrew is a feature common to many literatures around the world. The volume thus presents a remarkable picture of life in eastern Indonesia, which is both valuable in itself and useful for comparative analysis. All of the essays contain original texts with translations, together with detailed commentaries on their content and the context of their performance. The study of parallelism and its use in situations of formal communication has been receiving increasing attention from anthropologists, linguists, and all those interested in oral literature, as a topic of real theoretical and ethnographic interest. To Speak in Pairs represents an important advance in the study of oral literature in context.

Based on intensive fieldwork in an urban American junior high school, this original study explores the relationship between oral and written texts in everyday life by analysing tellings and retellings of local events, diaries, writings and discussions.

Sir Raymond Firth is one of the most distinguished British anthropologists, and one internationally acclaimed. His work here forms part of one of the fullest and most professional ethnographic accounts by any anthropologist of a non-industrial people, an account which extends over many years. This book is about the songs of a Western Pacific people, the Tikopia, who not so long ago lived entirely on a small remote island of the Solomons. Their songs vary from lively dance chants to mournful funeral laments. All are novel to western ears. The book provides about 100 examples, in text and translation. It also discusses the relation of the songs to the social life of the people, and it includes an analysis of the structure of their music, by Mervyn McLean, a noted musicologist.

The Xhosa-speaking peoples of south-eastern South Africa have a long tradition of oral poetry, extending back at least two hundred years. This book, first published in 1983, was the first detailed study of that tradition. Jeff Opland has assembled a large corpus of Xhosa oral poetry making his the first analysis of an active South African oral poetic tradition to be based on actual fieldwork. The book focuses in particular on the poetry produced by the imbongi, or court poet, and Professor Opland examines the poetry and careers of four such individuals. He describes the imbongi's informal training, the diction of his poetry and its improvisational character and the relationship of the poet to the chief and the community, revealing that the role of the poetry is essentially political. He also considers the nature of the poetry in relation to ritual. His discussion of Xhosa poetry in relation to theoretical constructs of oral poetry and of oral mental processes is an important contribution to the debate about the nature and distinctiveness of 'oral literature'. With its interdisciplinary approach, it will appeal to readers from many disciplines as well as to general readers interested in African culture.

The domei is a popular narrative art form among the Mende people of Sierra Leone. Although it is a traditional form, the narratives are not remembered or retold, but on each occasion the performers recreate out of a common stock of characters and plots domeisia, which are singular and sometimes brilliant expressions of a singular, and often brilliant, culture. In this book Donald Cosentino presents a large selection of these narratives, as he collected them in dramatic performance on the verandahs and around the cooking fires of a Mende village. The domei is told to please, and Dr Cosentino details the various elements that constitute the pleasure of an oral performance. But beneath the surface glitter of these ironic, horrifying, bawdy and haunting narrative performances, there is an intellectual hardness of argument and debate which shines through the domeisia included here. Dominating these performances, and emblematic of the entire artistic tradition, are the 'everywoman' figure of the Defiant Maid, Yombo, and the 'everyman' Stubborn Farmer, Kpana.

Sijobang - the singing of a poetic narrative about the legendary hero Anggun Nan Tungga - is a form of popular entertainment in the area around Payakumbuh, in the highlands of West Sumatra. Although the story exists as a written text, it is best known locally as drama and sung narrative, and it is its character as an oral performance that forms the subject of this book. Nigel Phillips begins by setting sijobang in its cultural and literary context, and then goes on to describe the social background and training of the paid storytellers who perform the narrative. He presents a summary of the story, and discusses its transient, fragmentary and unstandardized form. Transcriptions and translations of two recorded performances follow, leading into a description of sijobang's main linguistic and literary features. Finally, Dr Phillips examines in some detail the extent to which performances vary from one occasion to another, and what connection this may have with the storyteller's degree of experience.

This book, by one of the leading scholars in linguistic anthropology, concerns the verbal art of the Kuna Indians of San Blas, Panama. The author describes a rich and varied array of Kuna verbal practices, ranging from reporting, formal speechmaking and political oratory to chants and magical communication with the spirit world. This is a world in which all knowledge and information, from history and geography to the latest sport news from Panama City, is orally conceived, perceived and transmitted, and Joel Sherzer demonstrates how experience is shaped by these verbal discourses. This book represents the complete range of verbal performances in a single Native American society. These are transcribed in the original native language from tape recordings of actual events and translated into English. It is a significant contribution to theory, practice and method in anthropology, folklore and oral literature.

The legend of a dog which is unjustly killed by its master in error, after it has defended his child from attack by a snake or wolf, appears in several popular cultures of Indo-European origin. This book concentrates on one local manifestation of the legend: a cult among the peasants of the Dombes, north of Lyons, who brought their sick child to the grave of 'Saint Guinefort', the martyred greyhound, for preservation from disease. Providing a rare access to the underlying cultural traditions of Europe, all too often submerged in the survivals of literate culture, this book will be welcomed by a wide range of historians and anthropologists.

What significance did the body have for the obsessively religious, superstitious, yet materially bound minds of the pre-industrial age? The human body was a constant prey to disease, plague, unhealthy living conditions, the evil effects of druggery and nutritional deficiency, yet the saints seemed to testify to the existence of life beyond this, to a tangible Garden of Eden where all suffering was reversed. The right to entry to this haven was also seen in corporeal terms. The practice of abstemiousness, self-inflicted torture, even the courting of humiliation could trigger visions of beatitude, of the longed-for paradise. In this extraordinary and often astounding book, Professor Camporesi traces these experiences back to various documents across the centuries and explores the juxtaposition of medicine and sorcery, cookery and surgery, pharmacy and alchemy. He opens the window on a fascinating and colourful, if at times violent, world: of levitating and gyrating saints, gardens full of candied fruits and crystalline fountains, amazing exorcisms and arcane medical practices.

This book challenges conventional theories about literacy, and the practices which often arise from them. It attempts to provide a new perspective through which the variety of literacy practices across different cultures can be viewed and from which the practical issues that arise in specific literacy campaigns and programmes can be approached. Dr Street first examines the explicit theories developed about literacy within different academic disciplines, on the premise that these underlie statements about literacy within development campaigns and in everyday usage. He analyses in detail arguments about the 'technical' and 'neutral' nature of literacy and its supposed 'cognitive' consequences in the work of some psychologists, linguists and social anthropologists. He claims that these amount to a coherent but flawed model that he terms the 'autonomous' model of literacy. Against this he poses an 'ideological' model, one which pays greater attention to the social structure. He attempts to bring together recent shifts in this direction in writings on literacy and to construct a coherent model for further work.

Based on a corpus of Texan oral narratives collected by the author over the past fifteen years, this study presents an analysis of the literary qualities or orally performed verbal art, focusing on the significance of its social context. Although the tales included are all from Texas, they are representative of oral storytelling traditions in other parts of the United States, including tall tales, hunting stories, local character anecdotes, accounts of practical jokes, and so on. They are also highly entertaining in their own right. Professor Bauman's main emphasis is on the act of storytelling, not just the text. His central analytical concern is to demonstrate the interrelationships that exist between the events recounted in the narratives (narrated events), the narrative texts, and the situations in which the narratives are told (narrative events). He identifies these interrelationships by combining a close formal analysis of the texts with an ethnographic examination of the way in which their telling is accomplished, paying particular attention to the links between form and function. He also illuminates other more general concerns in the study of oral narrative, such as stability and variation in the oral text, the problem of genre, and the rhetorical efficacy of literary forms. As an important contribution to the theoretical and practical literary analysis of orally performed narratives, the book will appeal to students and teachers of folklore, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, and literary theory.

In the last few years, social historians have discovered what might be called the 'linguistic dimension' of their discipline, just as sociolinguists have been discovering the 'historical dimension' and historians of language the 'social dimension'. They have become interested in language both as a source for social history and also as a historical phenomenon in its own right. This volume of essays brings together some of this recent work by social historians of Britain, France and Italy from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The authors concern themselves with the politics as well as the sociology of language; with dialect as well as standard languages; with writing as well as speech; with the language of women as well as that of men; with the language of politeness and the language of insult; the language of deference and the language of revolt; the language of sub-cultures and counter-cultures as well as those of the elites and 'the people'.

Based on intensive fieldwork in an urban American junior high school, this original study explores the relationship between oral and written texts in everyday life by analysing tellings and retellings of local events, diaries, writings and discussions.

Originally published in 1987, the aim of this book is to advance a fresh perspective on the presentation, philology, analysis, and interpretation of oral literature and verbal art. Developed through commentaries and analysis of a range of texts from Native American communities, past and present, this original approach is centered on discourse, which the contributors take as being the richest point of intersection among language, culture, society, and individual expression. In discourse, individuals draw on their own artistry at the same time as they draw on the special and unique resources of the language and culture of their communities.

This collection of essays is a major contribution to the study of oral composition and ritual communication, and in particular to the use of 'parallelism' (the poetic ordering of words and phrases in alternative, duplicate form). The introduction by James J. Fox sets the topic in historical perspective, beginning with Robert Lowth's introduction of the term 'parallelism' in 1753 in his study of biblical language, demonstrating that what was once viewed as a form of composition unique to Ancient Hebrew is a feature common to many literatures around the world. The volume thus presents a remarkable picture of life in eastern Indonesia, which is both valuable in itself and useful for comparative analysis. All of the essays contain original texts with translations, together with detailed commentaries on their content and the context of their performance. The study of parallelism and its use in situations of formal communication has been receiving increasing attention from anthropologists, linguists, and all those interested in oral literature, as a topic of real theoretical and ethnographic interest. To Speak in Pairs represents an important advance in the study of oral literature in context.

Despite its written literature, ancient Greece was in many ways an oral society. This is the first serious attempt to study the implications of this view. Dr Thomas stresses the coexistence of literacy and oral tradition in Greece and examines their character and interaction. Concentrating on the plentiful evidence from Classical Athens, she shows how the use of writing developed only gradually and under the influence of the previous oral communication. Drawing on anthropological discussion, the author isolates different types of Athenian oral tradition, building up a picture of Athens' traditions about its past and examining why they changed and disappeared. This study provides crucial insights into the methods and achievements of the Greek historians. It also has major implications for the interpretation of ancient literacy.

Sir Raymond Firth is one of the most distinguished British anthropologists, and one internationally acclaimed. His work here forms part of one of the fullest and most professional ethnographic accounts by any anthropologist of a non-industrial people, an account which extends over many years. This book is about the songs of a Western Pacific people, the Tikopia, who not so long ago lived entirely on a small remote island of the Solomons. Their songs vary from lively dance chants to mournful funeral laments. All are novel to western ears. The book provides about 100 examples, in text and translation. It also discusses the relation of the songs to the social life of the people, and it includes an analysis of the structure of their music, by Mervyn McLean, a noted musicologist.

Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy, investigates the meanings and uses of literacy in different cultures and societies. In contrast to previous studies, where the focus of research has been on aspects of cognition, education and on the economic 'consequences' of literacy, these largely ethnographic essays bring together anthropological and linguistic work written over the last ten years. Accounts of literacy practices in a variety of locations, including Great Britain, the United States, Africa, the South Pacific and Madagascar, illustrate how these practices vary from one context to another, and challenge the traditional view that literacy is a single, uniform skill, essential to functioning in a modern society.

Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy, investigates the meanings and uses of literacy in different cultures and societies. In contrast to previous studies, where the focus of research has been on aspects of cognition, education and on the economic 'consequences' of literacy, these largely ethnographic essays bring together anthropological and linguistic work written over the last ten years. Accounts of literacy practices in a variety of locations, including Great Britain, the United States, Africa, the South Pacific and Madagascar, illustrate how these practices vary from one context to another, and challenge the traditional view that literacy is a single, uniform skill, essential to functioning in a modern society.

Despite its written literature, ancient Greece was in many ways an oral society. This is the first serious attempt to study the implications of this view. Dr Thomas stresses the coexistence of literacy and oral tradition in Greece and examines their character and interaction. Concentrating on the plentiful evidence from Classical Athens, she shows how the use of writing developed only gradually and under the influence of the previous oral communication. Drawing on anthropological discussion, the author isolates different types of Athenian oral tradition, building up a picture of Athens' traditions about its past and examining why they changed and disappeared. This study provides crucial insights into the methods and achievements of the Greek historians. It also has major implications for the interpretation of ancient literacy.

In l750, half the population were unable to sign their names; by l9l4 England, together with a handful of advanced Western countries, had for the first time in history achieved a nominally literate society. This book seeks to understand how and why literacy spread into every corner of English society, and what impact it had on the lives and minds of the common people.

This study looks at how oral histories are constructed and how they should be interpreted, and argues for a deeper understanding of their oral and social characteristics. Oral accounts of past events are also guides to the future, as well as being social activities in which tellers claim authority to speak to particular audiences. Like written history and literature, orality has its shaping genres and aesthetic conventions and, likewise, has to be interpreted through them. The argument is illustrated through a wide range of examples of memory, narration and oral tradition, including many from Europe and the Americas, and with a particular focus on oral histories from the Jlao Kru of Liberia, with whom Elizabeth Tonkin has carried out extensive research. Tonkin also draws on and integrates the insights of a range of other disciplines, such as literary criticism, linguistics, history, psychology, and communication and cultural studies.