Imagined States: Nationalism, Utopia, and Longing in Oral Cultures (review)

2003 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-287
Author(s):  
Jennifer Schacker
Keyword(s):  
Oral Cultures

TELLING THE TALE, TELLING THE NATION: TIV TALES, MODERNITY AND THE (RE)CONSTRUCTION OF NIGERIAN NATIONHOOD

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Tsaaior
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Intangible Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural Process ◽  
The Social ◽  
Oral Cultures ◽  
High Literature

Scholarship negotiating African folktales and the entire folkloric tradition in Africa has always been constituted as harbouring fundamental lacks. One of these lacks is the supposed incapacity of oral cultures to produce high literature. However, it is true that folktales and other oral forms in Africa can participate actively in the social, political and cultural process. In this paper, we engage folktales told by the Tiv of central Nigeria and situate them within the dynamic of history, culture, modernity and national construction in Nigeria. The paper adopts a historicist and culturalist perspective in its interpretation of the folktales which were collected in particular Tiv communities. This methodological approach helps to crystallize the historical and cultural lineaments embedded in the people’s experiences, values and worldviews. It also constitutes a contextual background for the understanding of the folktales as they offer informed commentaries on social currents and political contingencies in Nigeria. It argues that though folktales belong to a pre-scientific and pre-industrial dispensation, they are part of the people’s intangible cultural heritage and are capable of distilling powerful statements which negotiate Nigerian modernity and postcolonial condition. The paper underscores the dynamism and functionality of folktales even in an increasingly globalised ethos.

Catholic Written and Oral Cultures in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 383-402
Author(s):  
Tara Alberts
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Oral Cultures ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
The Many ◽  
Local Languages

Abstract This article explores how European Jesuit missionaries engaged with literary and oral cultures in seventeenth-century Tonkin and Cochinchina (Vietnam). It considers the many interactions between texts, oral cultures, and the sacred on the mission fields, and the challenges of communicating with the divine in a new language. Missionary projects to translate sacramental phrases—such as the baptismal formula—into local languages could be particularly controversial: missionaries had to ensure that the translation did not affect the validity of the sacrament. This article examines how missionaries attempted to preserve the spiritual potency of Catholic holy texts and sacred words in a new cultural context and uncovers the strategies they adopted to convey the sacrality of Catholic writings and speech.

The Immigrant Experience

Taking Flight ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 13-35
Author(s):  
Jennifer Donahue
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Events ◽  
Oral Cultures ◽  
Immigrant Experience ◽  
Haitian American ◽  
The Relationship

The first chapter examines physical and psychic fragmentation in Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak! In Danticat’s work, folklore and flight intersect to highlight the relationship between dissociation, flight, and transformation. The works position the navigation of trauma as central to the protagonists’ emotional growth. Danticat’s work illustrates the transformative nature of flight and features Haitian and Haitian American characters who learn how to reconcile the effects of traumatic events. The works showcase women in various states of imprisonment, with flight, whether imagined or literal, serving as the vehicle for escape. Danticat fuses print and oral cultures and positions folklore as a tool for communicating values, solidifying relationships, and navigating trauma.

The Postclassical Oral World and the Unity of Sūra 74

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-43
Author(s):  
George Archer
Keyword(s):  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Past ◽  
Oral Cultures ◽  
Rhetorical Methods ◽  
Key Questions

AbstractThis paper uses observations from studies of highly oral cultures to demonstrate the structural unity of Q 74, 30-31. That passage mysteriously says that over hell stands “nineteen”. This number is then followed by a strangely long aside that argues that this “nineteen” refers to angels and that “We have made their number only as a test for the disbelievers”. The reference to the nineteen has in the past been seen as unclear and the verse that follows as structurally bizarre in several ways, prompting many to argue that it is an interpolation. This article will use structural and oral rhetorical methods to suggest that this is not the case. Their content, style, and structure are all deliberate and are a response to various debates about numbers and numerology. More specifically, the passage is a correction of the Christological use of numbers by Near Eastern Christians in the Postclassical age. This article aims to show how the application of orality as a hermeneutical tool can resolve key questions regarding the coherence of the Qurʾānic text.

scholarly journals What kind of pen do I need to use to write my culture and my language?

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Satoru Nakagawa
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Intergenerational Transmission ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Childhood Memories ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Oral Cultures

Through a form of narrative inquiry involving the use of vignettes and ruminations about present and past, the author examines the role(s) of orality, literacy, and aurality in the intergenerational transmission of his language and culture. Weaving together stories from childhood, memories, and translations of his grandmother’s poetry, the author raises questions about how we, as Indigenous peoples, might ensure that we are able to teach our own next generations our spirits, hearts, being/knowing of the world and who we are as human beings now that oral cultures are being discarded--or worse, written down.

scholarly journals Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition

2003 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES D. G. DUNN
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Word Of Mouth ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Present Form ◽  
Oral Performance ◽  
Synoptic Problem ◽  
Oral Cultures ◽  
Classic Solution ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Default Setting

The literary mindset (‘default setting’) of modern Western culture prevents those trained in that culture from recognizing that oral cultures operate differently. The classic solution to the Synoptic problem, and the chief alternatives, have envisaged the relationships between the Gospel traditions in almost exclusively literary terms. But the earliest phase of transmission of the Jesus tradition was without doubt predominantly by word of mouth. And recent studies of oral cultures provide several characteristic features of oral tradition. Much of the Synoptic tradition, even in its present form, reflects in particular the combination of stability and flexibility so characteristic of the performances of oral tradition. Re-envisaging the early transmission of the Jesus tradition therefore requires us to recognize that the literary paradigm (including a clearly delineated Q document) is too restrictive in the range of possible explanations it offers for the diverse/divergent character of Synoptic parallels. Variation in detail may simply attest the character of oral performance rather than constituting evidence of literary redaction.

scholarly journals Imagined States. Nationalism, Utopia, and Longing in Oral Cultures

2002 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 238
Author(s):  
Barbara Boock ◽  
Luisa Del Giudice ◽  
Gerald Porter
Keyword(s):  
Oral Cultures
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