Orality

This book aims to provide the reader of Homer with the traditional knowledge and fluency in Homeric poetry which an original ancient audience would have brought to a performance of this type of narrative. To that end, Adrian Kelly presents the text of Iliad VIII next to an apparatus referring to the traditional units being employed, and gives a brief description of their semantic impact. He describes the referential curve of the narrative in a continuous commentary, tabulates all the traditional units in a separate lexicon of Homeric structure, and examines critical decisions concerning the text in a discussion which employs the referential method as a critical criterion. Two appendices deal with speech introduction formulae, and with the traditional function of Here and Athene in early Greek epic poetry.

Tsagalis, C., Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2008.01.25
Heath, M., Greece & Rome 55 (2008) 111–12
Clackson, J., Times Literary Supplement October 17 (2008) 33
Strauss Clay, J., Religious Studies Review 34 (2008) 289
Huxley, G. L., Hermathena 184 (2008) 93–5
Cook, E., Classical Review 59 (2009) 14–16
de Jong, I., Mnemosyne 62 (2009) 478–80
Blanc, A., Revue des études grecques 122 (2009) 237–9

In the municipality of Temixco, State of Morelos, there is a Nahuatl and a Spanish version of a tale of the Devil and the Jumil Hill. That folktale could be judged a fantastical or a wonder tale, but when we carefully examine its context and mode of production, we realize of that tlahtolli belongs to an oral tradition that makes a different sense to this tale-type, nearer to religious, social and realistic tale. It is a narrative made by collectivity whose aim is raising awareness of the threats that the community suffered and its responsibility for creating a cohesive, harmonious and sustainable place between the human beings and the noumenic-natural environment

In early modern Venice, a city replete with professionals of intelligence conveniently located mid-way between East and West, pharmacies were amongst the most important centres where people met to exchange news, discuss current affairs and occasionally criticise political trends. Parallel to their main activities, many apothecaries sold illicit pamphlets and newsheets behind the counter, offering their premises as a convenient – and comfortable – shelter for those wishing to discuss the news. Medical shops hosted different kinds of sociable activities, as reflected in the arrangement of space and furniture, as well as in the timing of the shops’ activities. As can be traced in contemporary descriptions, in inquisitorial records, and in intelligence reports, political and religious topics combined with medical ones in the pharmacy conversation of elites as well as ordinary people. The study of pharmacies reveals a different centre for the exchange of news than the coffee-houses made famous in Jurgen Habermas’ study of the “public sphere” – and it also allows us to revise that famous account by grounding communication and the exchange of ideas in their material context.
Contents:
Pharmacies and the Inquisition
The Inquisitors of State and the Pharmacy at the Sign of the Sun
Well-Known Meeting Places
A Socially Diverse Clientele
Information and the Apothecaries’ Business"

Santals are one of the highly significant and well-studied tribes of India which belongs to ProtoAustoroid community. (Guha, 1944). Creation myths of Santals revolve around the creation of
the world from the perspective of cosmology. Since the creation myths of santals are of human
civilization, it is important to look at the genesis of oral narratives on creation to trace the
historiography of the Santal tribe and their culture. At this juncture, most of the tribal
communities have been listed as endangered (Census 2011); scholars of humanities and social sciences in the contemporary scenario have started focusing on studying and preserving the tribal
languages and cultures in India. There have been several translations of the santal literature,
scholarships such as W.H.Archer’sThe Blue Groove, SitakantMahapatra’sThe Awakened Wind:
The Oral Poetry of the Indian Tribes. The scholarship has been focusing to locate and validate the
tribal literature as a genre. Santals are rich in oral narratives such as songs, poems, and stories on
cultivation, nature, marriage, and festivals but there is a lack of knowledge about the dawn of
human civilisation among the tribal scholarship. Since tribal community have come in contact
with several amalgamations of the colonial penetration, Hindu institution of idol worship,
Christian missionaries, and the dawn of technological advancement, it is important to be aware
of one’s root in order to conquer the identity conflict among the tribals. There are several
variations on the Santal creation myth, particularly in the process of telling, retelling and sharing
across generations and shifting socio-cultural environment. The study seeks to move backward to
the inception of the world as believed by the Santal tribe, focusing on Binti, literally translated
as ‘prayer’ or ‘plea’, a song of cosmology, generally recited by a group of three or more singers
at marriage ceremonies. This study primarily examines the creation myth called ‘Binti’,
documented and translated into English by Sitakant Mahapatra in his work ‘The Awakened
Wind: The Oral Poetry of the Indian Tribes’ focusing on re-stabilizing tribal identity and
analyses the Santal folklore tradition, oral narratives as performative arts and creation myths in
translation from the aspect of ethnic culture and its significance among Santals. The paper also
focuses on the historiography of the Santal world view and Santal culture.
Keywords: Santal tribe, Binti, Creation Myth, Tribal Culture, Identity.

This paper attempts to link two distinct representational practices, maps and narratives, with reference to long fieldwork in an Aegean insular community; it investigates how the experience of space permeates collectivity through narratives and how it ultimately, and largely, mediates the community’s values in terms of a system. Here, the concept of “narrative maps” acquires both the meaning of collective representations and of a complex cognitive function for memorising and mapping space through bodily transfers and collective memory. To what extent is a community able to preserve collective memory with its maps spontaneously, without imposing “realms of memory”?

In this article I analyze Basque oral poetry, or bertsolaritza, by four poets who live in the
United States. We start with a remarkable fact: all four bertsolaris come from the Spanish region
of Navarre. They include Jesus “Jess” Goñi, born in Oronoz in 1947; Martin Goikoetxea, born in
Gorriti in 1948; Jesus “Jess” Arriada, born in Arizkun in 1935; and Johnny Kurutxet, born in San
Francisco in 1946 but raised in Esterenzubi and resident there until the age of 20. The overall
situation in the USA has been well described by the researcher Joxe Mallea in several
publications (2003, 2005). Within that context this paper specifically examines the production of
the American bertsolaris.1 The corpus I will use for this analysis consists of a selection of 237
bertsos composed by these four oral poets and recorded and transcribed in the USA.

In The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life, Palmer laments, 'Mesmerized by technology……we dismissed the inner world' (2017). Yet technology (Tech rhtorik) as its etymology shows and Ong reminds us, encourages vibrant forms of expression, not least in a 21 st Century Emirati context (1982). The combination of a digitized voice to communicate an ancient poetic form with a modern twist is present in the Emirates in the form of the transmission of al Nabati. This is one medium that has straddled the centuries through its oral tradition. Pre-Islamic in composition, it has survived, indeed benefited from tribal sparring, as a vibrant art form today. This debating tradition, despite migratory diffusion, language contacts and generational leveling has circumvented what Steiner in 'Human Literacy' called for-a reconstitution of the 'great discourse with the living dead which we call reading' (1967). Using partially literate sources to stay alive in hearts and minds, the technical, ideological and political difficulties identified by Steiner are diminished. Complemented by modern digitization, the live voice in 21 st century communication, therefore, assists continuity with traditional educational methods and enhances their efficacy.Situating the curriculum in socio-cultural practices reduces barriers, increases participation and makes students and staff happier. It also brings in variety, movement and an extra-curricular dimension to study and to the workplace. Emiratis are today effective bilingual communicators, and the community co-translation of this oral medium bridges many cultures and may yet see its wider adoption in the West. In the UAE, despite some local language loss, partly due to the assimilation of Emirati dialects and the adoption of English, this genre has experienced renewed interest through televised, public and private gatherings. Consequently, both traditional and innovative forms of vernacular al Nabati survive, through networks that produce inter-cultural dialogue in World Englishes and Arabics. As a result, internal landscapes are not 'dismissed', but rather global education gives all a voice and shows how popular a cultural 'not merely a linguistic artefact' such poetry is (Sowayan, 2009).

This paper offers an introduction to 'multiforms' as associated systems of verbal elements that develop in the memory of an individual and are used in text production. It examines these in the highly conservative kalevalaic mythological poetry of Finns and Karelians, where such multiforms become are sufficiently conservative in social circulation that they can become referentially meaningful. This paper looks briefly at general variation in production, variation by dialect, variation by situation and also the meaningful application of kalevalaic epic multiforms in exceptional contexts to produce new meanings

This paper presents some of the same information in the Finnish language "Multiformit kalevalamittaisessa epiikassa" (2010), but it presents a more general introduction to the poetic system and does not open formal typologies of multiforms in this poetic system.

Dans cet article, nous décrivons l'expérience que nous avons réalisée lors de deux cours de formation continue en langues classiques dispensés à la Haute école pédagogique du canton de Vaud à Lausanne pendant les deux années académiques 2017-2018 (grec ancien) et 2018-2019 (grec ancien et latin). L'objectif des formations continues était d'encourager les enseignants du secondaire à introduire l'oralité dans l'enseignement des langues classiques. Nous avons présenté les avantages de l'approche orale aux enseignants et leur avons fourni les outils de base pour commencer à l'utiliser en classe. Les enseignants ont ensuite préparé quelques projets qu'ils ont présentés à leurs classes. Nous leur avons fait part de nos réactions en discutant avec eux des projets et des réactions des élèves.
Mots-clés : grec ancien, latin, oralité, enseignement secondaire

En hommage aux femmes déguisées en hommes pour accéder à la parole sur la place publique, sur les lieux  où les « halqa» sont l’unique  apanage des hommes
En hommage, aussi, aux hommes déguisés en femmes pour remplacer les femmes absentes(ifiées) de l’espace publique des « halqa »
FATIMA- ZAHRA SALIH

This essay reappraises the origins of French Quakerism based on new archival research conducted on both sides of the Channel. It identifies 34 Quaker missionaries in 17th- and early 18C France, sheds new light on the French reception of Quakerism and suggests possible connections with non-violent, charismatic movements in Languedoc.

This thesis examines Hip Hop as a genre of oral literature. To begin this study, I examine a wide range of scholarship on orality, including what is considered the canonical work, Orality and Literature, by Walter Ong. This theorist’s conclusion draws a binary opposition between orality and writing. Hip Hop music encourages a broader definition of orality that approaches what African author Ngugi wa Thiong’o calls orature. I use Hip Hop to push back on Ong’s conclusions, and demonstrate how orality and writing can coexist in a culture. I found that there were three categories of Hip Hop songs that demonstrated the link between orality and writing. First, there are two types of Hip Hop songs that that form an intertextual relation with other songs through sampling. The first kind features a DJ that samples words and phrases to make it appear as if they are speaking over the beat. The second kind, reinterprets what the original speaker’s message was by sampling their music in a new song. Second, there is a group of Hip Hop songs that feature unique vocal styles that demonstrate how the artist intends to give an oral performance, even though they wrote the lyrics before performing them. Through these examples, my thesis examines how Hip Hop acts as orature, and broadens the definition of orality. Third, there are certain Hip Hop songs that play off of the traditional storytelling form of Western culture, demonstrating how oral culture can influence written and oral styles of storytelling.

By Robert Cancel -- It is surprisingly difficult to tell a good story about storytelling. It is harder still to make the storytellers themselves come alive, helping their in situ oral performances flourish in text on a printed page. Robert Cancel achieves both of these goals, and more still. Storytelling in Northern Zambia is a masterful book in which Cancel grapples with collection, representation and fieldwork ethics, and a work that showcases the agency of his interlocutors (from the Foreword).

Na segunda metade do século XI, um áspero conflito entre a igreja romana e a
corte germânica levou o papa Gregório VII a decretar a deposição e excomunhão do
sucessor imperial. Tido pelos historiadores como o capítulo central da chamada
“Reforma Gregoriana”, este evento é usualmente encarado como um importante
marco de ascensão política do papado na História Ocidental e da instauração de um
amplo processo de institucionalização da igreja romana. O maior emblema desta via
de “estatização” pela qual teria enveredado o poder pontifício foi, afirmam os historiadores, a expansão do direito canônico, cujo avanço teria assentado as bases do trato legal que nos séculos seguinte se apoderaria do Ocidente. Portanto, um império da lei e das normas escritas teria sido ruidosamente anunciado através das ações gregorianas.

The Ifugaos seem to be the only people in the world who have developed peacemaking ideology in a typically aggressive genre of oral literature. The rich literature on epic traditions worldwide portrays a highly male-centered genre of song glorifying heroic values and warlike acts. Ifugao male epics represents aggressive ideology, which it shares with all the corresponding genres from India to Iceland. But what is specific of the Ifugao epic lore is that it contains two trends. The /hudhud/, female epic tradition of the Ifugaos, is a unique specimen of peacemaking, even pacifist ideology in epic form. This ideology has developed in the peak of headhunting period, i.e. it is genuine, not imposed by the influence of other cultures as, for instance, the motives of regret that appeared in Kalinga Ullalim under the influence of Christianization and American "order".

The paper discusses ways in which the song form known as isicathamiya mediates
subjectivity on a national and transnational scale in the new post-1994
era, known by isiZulu speakers as uhlel' olusha. Singers are constantly testing
the limits of the genre, both through the choice of subject matter for songs
and in their performance style. They take it in new directions and through
the "embodied knowledge" they display, they engage in emergent and established discourses on the nature of contemporary South African, and Zulu identity. Singers align themselves and their audiences to the global through commentary in song on events such as 9/11 and this itself becomes a shifting topic of choral conversation through time, reflecting, among other items, changing responses to America and to "Bin Laden." The paper also explores the different publics with which performers interact and argues that a group such as the famous Ladysmith Black Mambazo, which now performs mainly on global circuits, has to limit its discourse accordingly; it cannot engage with urgent and topical events that inform social consciousness within South Africa
as freely as groups more closely in touch with their local constituencies. The
paper also sketches the history of the genre and sets the overall discussion
within a paradigm of popular culture and the political; it draws on work by
Catherine Cole, Johannes Fabian, Veit Erlmann, and Louise Meintjes.

In the Islamic world where theatre has not developed as an independent art form, its orality has helped redress this imbalance by finding room for itself among the performing arts. Turkish meddah developed in accordance with the rules of nomadic life between the 11th and 19th centuries from the storyteller to one-man theatre. Absorbing the Central Asian shaman, singer of tales ozan (Tur.), Arabic maddah and the epic tradition of Persian Shahname, it has also gradually assimilated theatrical and dramatic elements. As an art form it combines orality with Turkish popular theatre. Books called ‘name’ (in Persian), like Battalname and Shahname, were spread orally and formed the basis of the repertoire of storytellers, as had been practised for centuries. This phenomenon reflects the complex interrelations between the ‘oral’ and ‘written’ culture models. As a new art form, storytelling, when viewed as a narrative performance, has developed its position in contemporary European off-theatre and has successfully proved itself in the arena of intercultural and interdisciplinary projects. In the context of being a part of Altaic and Middle Eastern oral traditions, the performing potential of storytelling art could be considered as a source of inspiration as it offers an example of a model of performance that provides equality between the performer and the audience. This chapter is the result of the personal experience of its author as a storyteller of Polish Storytellers Association ‘Grupa Studnia O’ (founded in 1997 in Poland, Warsaw), starting from academic research and on to the storytelling practice on the intercultural border between Occident and Orient.

Key Words: Meddah theatre, storytelling, orality, epic, identification, formula, written and oral mind, performance, Islamic.

Desde sus orígenes, la literatura española ha usado el refrán con diverso propósito, así como del cuentecillo. En ocasiones han aparecido en un mismo contexto. Algunos paremiólogos se han servido ocasionalmente de breves composiciones narrativas y otros las han buscado con fruición para glosar sus refraneros. Siendo un tema ya estudiado, hacemos aquí una brevísima aportación de refranes que a nuestro juicio se relacionan, o ya los paremiólogos han relacionado, con cuentos folklóricos.

Despite the need for more study on the theory, linguistic relativity may help towards understanding the inter-relatedness of society, culture, and language by looking at the phenomenon of linguistic relativity as it may have affected New Testament writers. The ideas discussed should provide useful information for further research into the application of modern linguistics to New Testament hermeneutics, systematic theology, and biblical exegesis.  The implications of linguistic relativity theory applied to this genre of literature are of extreme importance in light of resurgence in interest and work in biblical languages and modern linguistics in the last quarter of a century. This discussion circumscribes the salient elements of the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis and its application to New Testament autographs by focusing on: transcription of oral tradition, the influence of languages on the autographs, and the implications of linguistic relativity for exegesis.

While 'the search for the Anglo-Saxon oral poet' has sometimes been characterized as a quest for a chimera (and while sometimes it has been no more than that), there is abundant evidence for the existence of practicing oral poets in the pre-Norman period. Likewise there is evidence that literate Anglo-Saxons themselves cultivated the image of the bard (or Germanic 'scop') in a number of their writings, from Bede to the late tenth century, perhaps in a spirit of nostalgia for the native roots of their culture in a world of simpler ethical imperatives. The idea of oral poetry thus served both the Anglo-Saxons and their Norman successors as a kind of myth, helping to validate a desired social order through glimpses of an imagined past.

The substance of this article was reworked as chapter 4 (pp. 141-187) of my book 'Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts' (2007).

This article rethinks the presence of the lion in Bronze Age Crete and its participation in poetic culture in the Aegean. In the absence of living lions on the island, representational embodiments were the basis of people's encounters with the species, and the peculiarities of these object-bodies powerfully contributed to the characterization of the beast. Throughout the Bronze Age, the vast majority of Cretan lion representations occurred in glyptic. Seals were worn on persons' bodies, consistently placing the leonine in direct relation to the human; this juxtaposition had both physical and cultural dimensions and was invigorated by the spatiotemporal dynamism of seal use. This paralleling of human and beast is considered in its lived context, including its likely relationship to oral traditions , especially the comparison formulated by similes. In the period from Middle Bronze III to Late Bronze II, after centuries of development in Crete, the lion's association with glyptic extended to the early Mycenaean mainland. This was a moment of intense intra-Aegean sharing that had linguistic, practical, and material dimensions and that likely saw the birth of the epic tradition. I argue that the beast's persistent position in glyptic contributed to the formulation of Aegean poetic culture, configuring a lasting but fluid parallel between lions and humans. https://www.ajaonline.org/article/4109

Rabbi Judah Leib Alter of Ger, a famed nineteenth-century Hasidic master, wrote an influential collection of Hebrew homilies. But it seems that R. Judah Leib’s sermons were also transcribed by his students, some of whom recorded their teacher’s words in the original Yiddish rather than Hebrew translation. This monograph builds upon a newly-discovered Yiddish manuscript of sixty pages. It presents a synoptic edition of the Yiddish text alongside the Hebrew version, thus enabling comparison of the witnesses and demonstrating the development of the various texts. The introduction uses this manuscript to explore broader historical and theoretical issues such as the relationship between written texts and oral culture, the development of written Yiddish, the nature and boundaries of translation, and the complex pathways of transmission from teachers to their students.

Four stars in the night sky have been formally recognised by their Australian Aboriginal names. The names include three from the Wardaman people of the Northern Territory and one from the Boorong people of western Victoria. The Wardaman star names are Larawag, Wurren and Ginan in the Western constellations Scorpius, Phoenix and Crux (the Southern Cross). The Boorong star name is Unurgunite in Canis Majoris (the Great Dog). They are among 86 new star names drawn from Chinese, Coptic, Hindu, Mayan, Polynesian, South African, and Aboriginal Australian cultures.

This paper examines the formation and development of the Abu Saʿid Abuʾl-Kheyr hagiographic tradition. It shows how reports about the eleventh-century saint circulated within a shrine community of his descendants and disciples, both orally and in ad hoc notes, before being set down in writing. It argues that the Asrār al-towhid, the largest and best-known hagiography devoted to Abu Saʿid, is not a natural outgrowth of this oral material, but a reworking for a broad audience of outsiders in light of the shrine community’s destruction by the Ghuzz Turks in the 1150s. In the case of the Asrār, textualization involved substantial rhetorical and linguistic changes in order to open up the material to a literary public of non-initiates; it also implied a new understanding of how Abu Saʿid’s blessings would manifest themselves in the world.

https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341330

Δεδομένης της σημασίας το «να μάθεις να κλέβεις κάτι που άκουσες ή είδες» ως θεμελιώδους και διαχρονικού όπλου ενός «λαϊκού» μουσικού, το YouTube ήλθε να αντικαταστήσει το ραδιόφωνο, το τζουκ-μπόξ, είτε, αργότερα, το πικάπ και την κασέτα, που ανέκαθεν νομιμοποιούσαν μίαν έμμεση διδακτική διεργασία, στην οποία ο μαθητής δεν είχε ποτέ αντικρίσει το πρόσωπο του δασκάλου.
Σήμερα, θα υπογραμμίσουμε την αξία που θα είχε για τους σύγχρονους σπουδαστές μουσικής να συνδυάσουν τη χρήση των ευεργετικών ιδιοτήτων του ίντερνετ με την ταυτόχρονη παρουσία του δασκάλου.

We present 25 accounts of comets from 40 Australian Aboriginal communities, citing both supernatural perceptions of comets and historical accounts of bright comets. Historical and ethnographic descriptions include the Great Comets of 1843, 1861, 1901, 1910, and 1927. We describe the perceptions of comets in Aboriginal societies and show that they are typically associated with fear, death, omens, malevolent spirits, and evil magic, consistent with many cultures around the world. We also provide a list of words for comets in 16 different Aboriginal languages.

Fish traps and mazes were a widespread source of food for  across wide areas of inland Australia. This paper provides an overview of the type, dating and distribution of traps and mazes along with the distribution of associated fish species and compares Australian trap designs to other parts of the world.

We explore about fifty Australian Aboriginal accounts of lunar and solar eclipses to determine how Aboriginal groups understood this phenomenon. We summarise the literature on Aboriginal references to eclipses, showing that many Aboriginal groups viewed eclipses negatively, frequently associating them with bad omens, evil magic, disease, blood and death. In many communities, Elders or medicine men were believed to have the ability to control or avert eclipses by magical means, solidifying their role as provider and protector within the community. We also show that many Aboriginal groups understood the motions of the sun-earth-moon system, the connection between the lunar phases and tides, and acknowledged that solar eclipses were caused by the moon blocking the sun.

This celebrated book is a significant resource on how to enhance the capacity of your memory to make it remember more than the average person. Written in the style of a fascinating nonfiction novel, Joshua Foer takes the reader on an adventurous journey with his personal exploration on the terrains of memory building.