Syllabus*
Monday, 9/21: Lecture 1 - What is Oral Tradition?
Topics:
• Background for the field, historical and contemporary survey of oral traditions, and a model for interpretation
• Foley, John Miles. 1988. The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rpt. 1992.
• -----. 1998. Ed., Teaching Oral Traditions. New York: Modern Language Association. Rpt. 2000.
• *-----. 2002. How to Read an Oral Poem. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. eCompanion at www.oraltradition.org/hrop
• *Oral Tradition, volume 18, issue 1. http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/18i
• *Oral Tradition, volume 18, issue 2. http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/18ii
Tuesday, 9/22: Lecture 2 - Epics from Oral Tradition
Topics
• Definitions of epic, small-scale and large-scale structure, focus on South Slavic epic and Homer
• Biebuyck, Daniel and Kahombo C. Mateene. 1989. Eds., The Mwindo Epic from the Banyanga. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Rev. ed.
• *Foley, John Miles. 1990. Traditional Oral Epic: The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Serbo-Croatian Return Song. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Rpt. 1993.
• *-----. 1991. Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• *-----. 1999a. Homer’s Traditional Art. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
• -----. 1999b. “Epic Cycles and Oral Tradition: Ancient Greek and South Slavic,” in Euphrosyne: Festschrift for Dimitris Maronitis, ed. Antonios Rengakos (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag), pp. 99-108
• -----. 2001. “L’épopée du retour et le/la vrai(e) héro/héroïne de l’Odyssée,” in La Mythologie de l’Odyssée: Hommages à Gabriel Germain, ed. André Hurst and Françoise Létoublon (Geneva: Librairie Droz), pp. 249-57
• -----. 2002. How to Read an Oral Poem. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. eCompanion at www.oraltradition.org/hrop
• *-----. 2004a. Ed. and trans., The Wedding of Mustajbey’s Son Bećirbey as Performed by Halil Bajgorić. Folklore Fellows Communications, 283. Academia Scientiarum Fennica. eEdition at www.oraltradition.org/zbm
• *-----. 2004b. “Epic as Genre,” in The Cambridge Companion to Homer, ed. Robert L. Fowler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 171-87.
• -----. 2005. “Analogues: Modern Oral Epics,” in A Companion to Ancient Epic (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 196-212
• Harvilahti, Lauri. 2003. The Holy Mountain: Studies on Upper Altay Oral Poetry. With the collaboration of Zoja S. Kazgačeva. Folklore Fellows Communications, 282. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica.
• *Honko, Lauri. 1998. Textualising the Siri Epic. Folklore Fellows Communications, 264. Helsinki: Academic Scientiarum Fennica.
• -----, with Chinnappa Gowda, Anneli Honko, and Viveka Rai. 1998a, b. Eds. and trans., The Siri Epic as Performed by Gopala Naika. Parts I-II. Folklore fellows Communications, 265-66. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica.
• -----. 2000. Ed., Textualization of Oral Epic. Berlin: DeGruyter.
Johnson, John William, Fa-Digi Sisoko, and Charles S. Bird. 2003. Eds., Son-Jara: The Mande Epic, 3rd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Koljević, Svetozar. 1980. The Epic in the Making. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• *Lord, Albert B. 1960. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2nd ed. with intro. by Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy, 2000. With CD.
• -----. 1991. Epic Singers and Oral Tradition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Parry, Milman, Albert B. Lord, and David E. Bynum. 1953-. Colls., eds., and trans., Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs. Cambridge, Mass. and Belgrade: Harvard University Press and the Serbian Academy of Sciences.
• Reichl, Karl. 1992. Turkic Oral Epic Poetry: Traditions, Forms, Poetic Structure. New York: Garland.
• Reynolds, Dwight F. 1995. Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes: The Ethnography of Performance in an Arabic Oral Epic Tradition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Smith, John D. 1991. Ed. and trans., The Epic of Pabuji: A Study, Transcription, and Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wednesday, 9/23: Lecture 3 - Non-epic Genres of Oral Tradition
Topics:
• Contest poetry from various cultures, non-epic genres from manuscripts, South Slavic non-epic genres
• Amodio, Mark C. 2005. Writing the Oral Tradition: Oral Poetics and Literate Culture in Medieval England. Poetics of Orality and Literacy, vol. 1. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Tedlock, Dennis. 1999. Finding the Center: The Art of the Zuni Storyteller. 2nd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Orig. ed. 1972.
• Armistead, Samuel G. and Joseba Zulaika. 2005. Eds., Voicing the Moment: Improvised Oral Poetry and the Basque Tradition. Reno: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada-Reno.
• Bender, Mark. 2003. Plum and Bamboo: China’s Suzhou Chantefable Tradition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• Chatwin, Bruce. 1988. The Songlines. New York: Penguin.
• Finnegan, Ruth and Margaret Orbell. 1995. Eds., South Pacific Oral Traditions. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Foley, John Miles. 1991. Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• -----. 1995. The Singer of Tales in Performance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• *-----. 2002. How to Read an Oral Poem. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. eCompanion at www.oraltradition.org/hrop
• -----. 2005. “Basque Oral Poetry Championship.” Internet article at http://oraltradition.org/articles/2006/01/03/basque-oral-poetry-championship
• *Garner, Lori Peterson. 2004. “Anglo-Saxon Charms in Performance,” Oral Tradition 19: 20-42. (http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/19i/Garner.pdf)
• Garzia, Joxerra, Andoni Egaña, and Jon Sarasua. 2001. Eds., The Art of Bertsolaritza: Improvised Basque Verse Singing. Donostia: Bertsozale Elkartea, 2001. Outline of contents at http://www.bertsozale.com/liburua/ingelesa/sarrera/
• *-----. 2007. Eds., Special issue of Oral Tradition on Basque oral poetry, 22, ii:
http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/22ii
• Jaffee, Martin. 2001. Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 BCE-400 CE. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• *Kaschula, Russell H. 1995. “Mandela Comes Home: The Poets’ Perspective.” Oral Tradition, 10: 91-110. Available at http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/10i/8_kaschula.pdf
• -----. 2000. The Bones of the Ancestors Are Shaking: Xhosa Oral Poetry in Context. Cape Town: Juta Press.
• Kelber, Werner H. 1997. The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• McCarthy, William B. 1990. The Ballad Matrix. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• -----. 1994. Ed., Jack in Two Worlds: Contemporary North American Tellers and their Tales. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Morrissey, Jane Frances and Cristina Maria Cañales. 1996. Eds. and trans., Gracias, Matiox, Thanks, Hermano Pedro: A Trilingual Anthology of Guatemalan Oral Tradition. New York: Garland.
• Niditch, Susan. 1996. Oral World and Written Word. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
• Obiechina, Emmanuel. 1992. “Narrative Proverbs in the African Novel.” Oral Tradition 7: 197-230. Available at http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/7ii/3_obiechina.pdf
• O’Keeffe, Katherine O’Brien. 1990. Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Opland, Jeff. 1983. Xhosa Oral Poetry: Aspects of a Black South African Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• -----. 1998. Xhosa Oral Poets and Poetry. Cape Town: David Philip.
• Pihel, Erik. 1996. “A Furified Freestyle: Homer and Hip Hop.” Oral Tradition, 11: 249-69. Available at http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/11ii/8_pihel.pdf
• *Rosenberg, Bruce A. 1986. “The Message of the American Folk Sermon,” Oral Tradition, 1: 695-727. Available at http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/1iii/Rosenberg.pdf
• -----. 1988. Can These Bones Live? The Art of the American Folk Preacher. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Thursday, 9/24: Lecture 4 - Methods for Approaching Oral Traditions
Topics:
• Historical survey of approaches; focus on performance theory, ethnopoetics, immanent art
• *Bauman, Richard. 1977. Verbal Art as Performance. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press.
• -----. 1986. Story, Performance, and Event. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• -----. 1992. Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments. New York: Oxford University Press.
• ----- and Donald Braid. 1998. “The Ethnography of Performance in the Study of Oral Traditions,” in Teaching Oral Traditions, ed. J. M. Foley (New York: Modern Language Association), pp. 106-22.
• ----- and Charles L. Briggs. 1990. “Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 19: 59-88.
• ----- and Charles L. Briggs. 2003. Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• *----- and Pamela Ritch. 1994. “Informing Perfomance: Producing the Coloquio in Tierra Blanca,” Oral Tradition, 9: 255-80. Available at http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/9ii/5_bauman.pdf
• ----- and Joel Sherzer. 1989. Eds., Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• *Bradbury, Nancy Mason. 1998. “Traditional Referentiality: The Aesthetic Power of Oral Traditional Structures,” in Teaching Oral Traditions, ed. J. M. Foley (New York: Modern Language Association), pp. 136-45.
• Foley, John Miles. 1988. The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rpt. 1992.
• -----. 1991. Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
• -----. 1992. “Word-Power, Performance, and Tradition,” Journal of American Folklore, 105: 275-301.
• *-----. 1995. The Singer of Tales in Performance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• -----. 1998. Ed., Teaching Oral Traditions. New York: Modern Language Association.
• *-----. 2002. How to Read an Oral Poem. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. eCompanion at www.oraltradition.org/hrop
• *Hymes, Dell. 1975. “Breakthrough into Performance,” rpt. with Appendix and Postscript in Hymes 1981: 79-141.
• -----. 1981. “In Vain I Tried to Tell You”: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• -----. 1989. “Ways of Speaking,” in Bauman and Sherzer 1989: 433-51, 473-74.
• *-----. 1994. “Ethnopoetics, Oral-Formulaic Theory, and Editing Texts,” Oral Tradition, 9: 330-70. Available at http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/9ii/9_hymes.pdf
• -----. 2003. Now I Know Only So Far: Essays in Ethnopoetics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
• Lord, Albert B. 1960. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2nd ed. with CD, 2000.
• *Tedlock, Dennis. 1983. The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• -----. 1990. “From Voice and Ear to Hand and Eye,” Journal of American Folklore, 103: 133-56.
• -----. 1999. Finding the Center: The Art of the Zuni Storyteller. 2nd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. (original ed. 1972)
• *Zumwalt, Rosemary Lévy. 1998. “A Historical Glossary of Critical Approaches,” in Teaching Oral Traditions, ed. J. M. Foley (New York: Modern Language Association), pp. 75-94.
Friday, 9/25: Lecture 5 - Oral Tradition and the Internet
Topics:
• The analogy between the two word-technologies; illustration of Internet projects on oral tradition
• *Foley, John Miles. The Pathways Project. The evolving website for the project, at http://www.pathwaysproject.org/pathways/show/HomePage
• -----. 1986-. Oral Tradition, a journal: http://journal.oraltradition.org
• -----. 2002. “Post Script,” in How to Read an Oral Poem. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. With eComapnion at http://oraltradition.org/hrop/
• -----. 2004. Ed., Ed. and trans., The Wedding of Mustajbey’s Son Bećirbey as Performed by Halil Bajgorić. Folklore Fellows Communications, 283. Academia Scientiarum Fennica. eEdition at www.oraltradition.org/zbm
• *-----. 2008. “Navigating Pathways: Oral Tradition and the Internet,” Academic Intersections, 2: http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/story.php?itemID=13163
* The most important of the bibliographical items for each lecture are marked with an asterisk (*).
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas
Proyecto Literaturas y Culturas Populares de la Nueva España
Syllabus*
Monday, 9/21: Lecture 1 - What is Oral Tradition?
Topics:
• Background for the field, historical and contemporary survey of oral traditions, and a model for interpretation
Tuesday, 9/22: Lecture 2 - Epics from Oral Tradition
Topics
• Definitions of epic, small-scale and large-scale structure, focus on South Slavic epic and Homer
Wednesday, 9/23: Lecture 3 - Non-epic Genres of Oral Tradition
Topics:
• Contest poetry from various cultures, non-epic genres from manuscripts, South Slavic non-epic genres
Thursday, 9/24: Lecture 4 - Methods for Approaching Oral Traditions
Topics:
• Historical survey of approaches; focus on performance theory, ethnopoetics, immanent art
Friday, 9/25: Lecture 5 - Oral Tradition and the Internet
Topics:
• The analogy between the two word-technologies; illustration of Internet projects on oral tradition
* The most important of the bibliographical items for each lecture are marked with an asterisk (*).
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas
Proyecto Literaturas y Culturas Populares de la Nueva España
