Oral Traditions Engl 337

Words

2005-04-13T20:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm striking out on a kind of philological bent with this post, but bear with me.

The words we talked about in class on Tuesday, univocal and polyphony, say alot about their relation to orality and literacy from their etymologies. Univocal comes from uni-, one, and voc-, voice. It refers to a single utterance, where in the utterance is a voice.

Polyphonal, on the other hand, comes from poly- meaning many, and phone, which means sound (as in a linguistic phoneme). Polyphony then is multiple sounds, not just multiple voices. It is far broader than the simple definition would apply.

This is interesting in though and depending on how much you buy into the theory that words and language structure your thoughts it could change the way you speak.

Auditory/Visual

2005-04-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

An interesting side note of the posting of the poems: I know can place faces to most of the blogs I have been reading. I didn't know everyones name (and still don't) but I can know attach the song/poem I heard with the lyrics written on a blog.

Triple Play

2005-03-27T21:40:00.000-08:00

Three thoughts for the day.

First, I doubt I will ever forget a few of the phrases I memorized from the oral poem. I figure in thirty years "capital counts of wood" will come to mind and I will have to idea what it means, but I will rememer it.

Second, orality and the Sipmsons.
I watched an episod of the Simpsons today in which part wants to go to a rap concert. He tells his mom that rap is "the music of the streets." He later engages a rapper on stage in flyting. It was interesting to apply Oral Traditions to the show.

Third, orality, time, and Tarantino.
The fact that oral stories would not necessarily follow a strict chronological order is still seen today in some secondary orailty, namely Pulp Fiction. For anyone who hasn't seen the movie (shame on you) the story follows no strict time line. Things will jump around time wise. The first scene is the same as the last. Unlike most oral stories, however, Tarantino had the lack of linearity planned out. He did not simply insert what was missed earlier into a later portion of the show. Rather, each piece builds off of a previous one in terms of dialogue or character development. Pulp Fiction is what oral stories would be with a script.

Oral Poem

2005-03-24T15:38:00.000-08:00

I Sing now of the praises of
The one of the land of the Son of Mat,
Assiduous Allison, always a-work,
The strong-willed and smartly seen,
The collector of capital counts of wood.

The Noble Born, in bold banter
Spoke of the twice ten-thousand sticks, seen
And gathered for great gain in youth,
When her years were but of twice three and one.
A quest quite uncontainable was undertaken,
To do the unsurmountable in order to attain the awesome
Possession of that which is prized beyond the plain.
The gemmed and jeweled, the joyous jade
Tiny troll, treasurable and wondrous toy
That was forbid from the forces that forever reign.

And so to an impossible task indomitable Allison entered,
To do battle with the place of the big birches,
To lift not leaves but loads of light sprigs
And set them in soft stacks of several thousand.

To this Assiduous Allison set herself strongly, her sights
Going to the great gift of gold at the close,
And her cast-iron strength coasting through calamity.
For in the land of the large lake a lasting wind blew
And spawned a storm of swirling sounds
Which struck the trees and sprayed the earth
With twigs of number measureless to tell.
But the Noble Born basely backed out not
And she came to the task in splendid form
And did what is taken to be a towering triumph of time.

For when twice ten-thousand sticks were treasured
Did four five-spots flow to her,
And they were price enough to purchase the prize
Of the gemmed and jeweled and jaded Troll,
Treasure beyond the arms of ten tens of trees.
And so I sing of such a strong will,
And wish to witness new works of wonder.

The Living Oral Poet

2005-03-23T21:24:00.000-08:00

I have witnessed (second hand) the actions of a living oral story teller of old tradition. One of my friends, returning from spring break on a bus, had two ten year old children to occupy, so she decided to tell them a story. She choose the one she knew best, Casablanca. An hour later and the entire story (complete with accents and song) she finished with "And they walked out of this story and into a nother which does not come into our tale."
Of course, the kids wanted to hear the second story. And so, after a few moments to prepare, she launched into her own story of the sequal to Casablanca. In true storyteller fasion it involved parts of The Dirty Dozed, The African Queen, and assorted pieces of WWII history. Another hour was captivated by this new tale, never before sung to the ears of man.

Dragnet

2005-03-19T20:11:00.000-08:00

I was watching a couple of episodes from the original TV Dragnet and noticed somthing interesting. The characters, particularly the ones who are being interviewed by the cops repeat themselves regularly. It reminded me very much of the aggregative quialities of oral poetry and such.

Humor

2005-03-18T16:08:00.000-08:00

While I was plaing around with the word *runar I began to wonder about humor and jokes in an oral culture. Do oral cultures have jokes as we know them? The closest I could get is either humorous stories or comedies (as in drama). Comedy doesn't really count because it is simply the movement from chaos to order (while tragedy is from order to chaos). Humorous stories, on the other hand, are like jokes but a think any presented in an oral culture will be much more like stories than like jokes. It also seems liekely that even the most dramatic piece had many elements of humor, laughter being one of the best ways of keeping an audience.

The Word and the Person

2005-03-13T21:24:00.000-08:00

Today I heard an interesting idea involving orality verses literacy. The speaker said that someone who chooses to write down their thoughts (i.e. an author) often has their personality forgotten or largely ignored while his or her writing is examined while someone who only speaks their thoughts (the oral poet) is remembered for their personality as well as their ideas. The examples given were Socrates and Plato. Much more is know of Socrates' personality than of Plato's.

On a side note, one more invented alphabet come mind this morning, that was writen by Sequoyah (often spelled Sequioa [the shortest word to contain all vowels]) for the Cherokee people in the 1800's.

Alphabets

2005-03-10T20:45:00.000-08:00

After discussing alphabets I though about man made alphabets. The primary two that came to mind were Korean, created in 1446. The other that came to mind where the Tengwar created by J.R.R. Tolkien in the forties for The Lord of the Rings. Both these are near perfect tongues because both were created to fit a language (in The Lord of the Rings an elf invented the Tengwar to fit their tongue). After a bit of thinking I realized the most perfect and exact alphabet is the IPA (http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/images/ipachart.gif). It is designed to cover all possible human sounds used in correct speech (there is also a expanded chart including all possible mistakes). The IPA is born more out of all alphabets than any single alphabet.

Words

2005-03-06T21:11:00.000-08:00

In some of my random playing around with of words I came across the idea of words in pre/post literate societies and the recreation of missing words. The fact that a preliterate tongue would have no need for the word 'write' or 'philology' does not mean we, as post literate people, cannot create that word from our knowledge of the tongue and the origins of languages. It is sort of a one way street, the ability to look back and alter what their language was intentionally, suddenly giving a preliterate people the ability to use literacy all in their own tongue. No borrowed words required.

Cinema

2005-03-02T16:49:00.000-08:00

"The day is not far off when everyone will possess a projector, will go to the local bookstore and hire films written on any subject, of any form, from literary criticism and novels to mathematics, history, and general science."
Alexandre Astruc, The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo

This short essay is a very interesting take on secondary orality. Earlier Astruc says Descartes would not be writing a novel, rather he would be making films. Films are as the literature of the future.

Agriculture and Nature

2005-02-24T22:41:00.000-08:00

A wonderful film which illustrates the change from nature to agriculture is Mononoke-Hime (Princess Mononoke). It is about a tries attempt to kill the Gods of the forest and end the dominion of nature so they can harvest more iron. Wonderful film which explaines beautifully the concept previously discussed.

Presences of Orality

2005-02-16T17:26:00.001-08:00

I noticed vestiges of the oral tradition, particularly that involing names, while watching "Spirited Away" on Sunday. Those of you who haven't seen the movie should. The bathhouse was a primarily oral cutlture but I noticed something interesting, which would be impossible for an oral culture. When Chihiro's name is taken away her new name becomes Sen. This is because the Japanese Kanji (Chinese character) for Chi can also make the sound Sen. With out literacy this distinction would be impossible.

2005-02-16T17:26:00.000-08:00

Lack of Post

2005-02-13T18:48:00.000-08:00

I was unable to post for the past week because my internet was completely down and it left me in an interesting situation, namely feeling out of place in a world that has moved way beyond just print.

On a side note, if any of you have read Eragon by Christopher Paolini take a look at the story told by Brom in the beginning. It seems wrong now that I have an understanding of Oral Traditions.

A short thought

2005-02-03T20:50:00.000-08:00

It came to me recently that an Oral culture cannot really have slang because there is no standard of words. I don't have any more thoughts on this at the moment, but more may come later.

What we take for granted

2005-01-28T18:24:00.000-08:00

I find it slight ironic that I am writing about what I take for granted within a literary world.

Anyway, one of the most obvious things is apparent as a sit at my desk. Directly in front of me is about a dozen books, and a couple hundred more lie on either side of me. While I am working I will often randomly stop and gra a book from the shelf to either read a little and relax or to look something up. This overabundance of, not just information, but also tales and worlds not our own is probably the one thing I most take for granted within our culture. The ability to have the lore of not only the Greeks but also the Norse and the Finnish and a thousand others within grasp is beyond comprehension to a non-literate society.

Of Myth and Memory

2005-01-26T19:40:00.000-08:00

Memory is an interesting thing. If I put my mind to it I can memorize almost anything, though it may take me a long time. Sometimes I am able to create some mnemonic to help, but usually I just mash all the information into a single blob and draw from it as I need to. I friend I have, on the other hand, is capable of hearing a story once and reciting it back in near identical form, though she usually improves it. There seems to be some genetic predeposition to being a bard.

Pre-writing Memories

2005-01-20T21:34:00.000-08:00

On my pre-writing memories (PWM): I honestly cannot come up with any PFM, nor can I think of the word I used to annoy my parents with (the second part of the query). I have always been a voracious reader and have written much. The earliest memory I can place with distinction involving writing or lack there of is of me, in Kindergarten, going over my letters. There is a second memory that I now think of. During preschool (this may have been the same time I was in kindergarten, though I am not sure) I went through the classroom and wrote the names of many things down. The next day, upon returning, I could not read anything I had written, whether for lack of reading skills or poor handwriting, I do not know.
The only memories prior to that time are vague images of myself, mostly results of photographs of me as a child. Absolutely no thoughts accompany those images beyond any tags describing the image, all of which were added at some later time in my mind.

Apology

2005-01-16T16:44:00.000-08:00

I apologize to all those who read my other blogs and are annoyed at my constant addition of new blogs, but this one is for class.