Orature

My paper seeks to locate Thomas Dekker's handling of underworld jargon at the interface of oral and literary cultures. The paper briefly looks at a play co-authored by Dekker and then examines two ''coney-catching pamphlets " by him to see how he tries to appropriate cant or criminal lingo (necessarily an oral system) as an aesthetic/commercial programme. In these two tracts (namely, The Bellman of London, 1608; Lantern and Candlelight, 1608) Dekker makes an exposé of the jargon used by criminals (with regard to their professional trappings, hierarchies, modus operandi, division of labour) and exploits it as a trope of radical alienation. The elusiveness and ephemerality of the spoken word here reinforce the mobility and deceit culturally associated with the thieves and vagabonds – so that the authorial function of capturing cant (whose revelatory status is insistently sensationalized) through the intrusive technologies of alphabet and print parallels the dominant culture's project of inscribing and colonizing its non-conforming other. Using later theorization of orality, the paper will show how the media of writing and print distance the threat inherent in cant and enable its cultural surveillance and aesthetic appraisal.

Abstract:
This article revisits the African novel by focusing on the writings of Chinua Achebe as a case study. This famous Nigerian writer who passed on in late March, 2013 is regarded as one of the pioneers of African literature who has left the younger generation of writers with particular literary aesthetics of which he is the founding father. He coined and developed the concept of “Africanisation” of the novel and the English language as well. The most telling appraisal of his arts is Phanuel Egejuru’s calling his style “Achebeism”. This article is written through a stylistics approach and it addresses the use of language with evocations of some controversies and criticisms over the language of the African novel. It brings to conclusions that Achebe has significantly contributed to the promotion anddevelopment of African literature as he belongs to the first generation
of writers whose early literary productions have been harshly
criticised, but have regained consideration over the years. Achebe’s literary adventure is acclaimed as a revalorisation of African folkloreand the redefinition of the literariness of African arts.

Oral literature is the vast field of knowledge through which cultural information and messages are transmitted verbally from one generation to another. It is the complex corpus of verbal arts created as a means of recalling the past. One major feature of oral literature, which relates to the nature of performance, is the involvement of the community in the creative process as well as in the criticism. Every performance is for and about the audience. Oral literature is steadily attracting scholarly attention in the post-colonial African context, which is more and more becoming saturated by the mass-media outlets. The researcher, therefore, intends to highlight the interface of orature, multimedia, ICT and globalization as well as the effect of mass media on oral literature, particularly in Africa through the lens of Post-Colonialism.

An African Condition in a European Tradition:
Chinua Achebe and the English Language of Native Narratives



Nabil Baazizi
University of Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle
France


Abstract:
This paper intends to investigate the passage from orature to literature in Africa, and the problem of the language used, in the context of the work of the Nigerian novelist and critic Chinua Achebe, whose novel Things Fall Apart (1958) is considered as the first African novel. The problematic dialogism that engaged the African writer with canonical literate traditions evokes the difficulty of writing an African history and narrative while the records are missing, for the Africans did not have a written tradition. It is true that writing about an oral society that did not know writing sometimes turns into a syncretic account, but the African writer is also faced with the paradox of representing the experience of oral societies using the colonizer’s literate language. Accordingly, we are led to question: how can such fiction do justice to the colonized culture? While this paper admittedly tries to figure out how the worldview in oral societies is cyclic since the past and the present are fused, it invites new perspectives by highlighting the empowering effects orature has had on African writers who learnt to revisit their oral tradition and make out of it their emancipating and decolonizing project.
Key words: decolonization, indigenization, notarization, Nigerianization, orature

The Circle of  African Women Theologians symbolises African women's space of transformative power of re-interpretation; of  intellectual invigoration and creative energy; of talking and of thinking amongst themselves in a friendly and life affirming style, while they keep the a  luta continua spirit of seeking and working out their resurrection to complete life.  For this long, challenging and exciting agenda, this paper seeks to map some of their  activities within other histories and conversations of libratory readers and seekers, namely:

1. Some Western Feminist Biblical Interpretations
2. Feminist Biblical Scholarship of the Past Few Years
3.  Biblical/Scriptoratural and Black Biblical Interpretations
4.  Cultural/Biblical and African Women’s Interpretations
5.  Emerging African Women in Biblical-Scriptoratures Studies
6.  Moving With/in the Circle
7.  Conclusion: Circle Biblical/ Scriptoratures Interpretative Practices
d.

In this book you will find riddle precedents and their answers arranged alphabetically according to the answers. These riddles were performed during different events and by different audiences. Nonetheless you will find some thematic string running through to tell you something about the Basoga people and Busoga in general.

Cette étude sur l’écriture romanesque de Louis-Philippe Dalembert articule approche des rapports entre paysage et littérature, notamment en ce qui concerne l’oraliture – dans sa condition de manifestation culturelle de matrice africaine, et réflexion sur les possibilités de traduire certaines pages-paysages de LPD fortement ancrées dans certaines pratiques culturelles ancestrales, méconnues dans le cadre de la culture cible. Louis-Philippe Dalembert est un de ces écrivains dont l’œuvre devient un vaisseau pour le passage d’idées et d’images symboliques autour de l’Histoire, de la Poésie et du sens de l’existence humaine. Ainsi, nous nous proposons à prospecter les formes de construction du paysage chez ce passeur d’imaginaires, en vue d’une lecture herméneutique qui conçoit l’œuvre littéraire comme un outil langagier qui permet d’induire, chez le lecteur, une « perception-conception » (Octavio Paz).

Cet article tend à examiner les stratégies adoptées par l'écrivaine algérienne d'expression française Assia Djebar afin d'inscrire l'orature féminine algérienne dans ses oeuvres, notamment dans Femmes d'Alger dans leur Appartement, L'Amour la Fantasia, Ombre Sultane, et Vaste est la prison. L'article soutient qu'à travers cette écriture, Djebar vise à revaloriser un riche legs ancestral qui a longtemps été dévalorisé et marginalisé par un discours aussi bien colonial-occidental que patriarcal. Djebar emploie en effet différentes formes d'orature en lien avec des expériences tant individuelles que collectives. Elle donne ainsi voix à des expériences longtemps gardées à l'ombre, et crée des passerelles entre différents univers d'hier et d'aujourd'hui.

Abstract: The article aims at examining the strategies adopted by Algerian francophone writer Assia Djebar to inscribe Algerian female orature in her works, mainly Femmes d'Alger dans leur Appartement, L'Amour la Fantasia, Ombre Sultane, et Vaste est la prison. The paper contends that through her writing, Djebar attempts to revalue a rich and ancestral heritage long marginalized and devalued by colonial-western and/or patriarchal discourses. Indeed, Djebar employs different forms of orature in relation to both individual and collective experiences. She then gives voice to long silenced experiences, and creates passages between different worlds, from past and present.

http://www.collegepublications.co.uk/cahiers/?00020
Entre l'orature et l'écriture

Relations croisées

Charles Zacharie Bowao and Shahid Rahman, eds

Voilà deux ans que le Réseau LACTO («Langage, argumentation et cognition dans les traditions orales») a été mis en place à l'initiative conjointe des Universités CDG-Lille 3 et MNG-Brazzaville. Des rencontres à caractère scientifique et organisationnel se sont tenues alternativement au Congo (du 19 au 21 janvier 2013) et en France (du 7 au 9 novembre 2013), avec l'implication d'autres universityés, en vue de circonscrire la complexité épistémologique du rapport entre l'oralité et la scripturalité, ou plutôt entre l'orature et l'écriture. Le présent ouvrage est, pour l'essentiel, le résultat des discussions issues de ces rencontres, en guise de tentative de réponse à la question principalement soulevée.

Ainsi, contre l'exclusion de l'une ou l'autre instance dans la définition des deux paradigmes du discours philosophique ou scientifique - le paradigme oral et le paradigme écrit - les contributions des uns et des autres s'accordent sur la vision que l'une ne saurait aller sans l'autre. Autrement dit, aucun paradigme ne saurait être pensé en totale exclusion de l'autre, si tant est qu'ils obligent le discours à s'implémenter dans l'espace et à travers le temps. Les catégories de l'espace et du temps constituent de ce fait tout à la fois une trame empirique et un cadre sémantique de déploiement du discours aussi bien oral qu'écrit, dans une optique qui se veut clairement et fondamentalement dialogique.

Il est par ailleurs une certaine lecture de la présente réflexion qui laisse entrevoir une triple articulation d'essence logique et herméneutique. Car c'est bien d'une quête de la connaissance et du sens qu'il s'agit : d'abord concernant les rapports épistémologiques de l'orature à l'écriture et de l'écriture à l'orature dans leur histoire, en ouvrant sur la dimension dialogique (Charles Zacharie Bowao, Marcel Nguimbi); ensuite relativement à la mise en situation de l'oralité, qu'il s'agisse du philosopher en langue orale africaine (Mahamadé Savadogo), de la parole proverbiale prise, dans sa dimension logique, mais aussi sociale et politique, tant dans son être que dans son expression sentencielle en contexte d'oralité et de néo-oralité (Mamadou Kabirou Gano, Gildas Nzokou), ou encore relativement à la temporalité propre à la prise de décision et à l'action aujourd'hui (Oumar Dia) ; enfin, relativement à la forme et au contenu du dialogue dans des perspectives herméneutique (Christian Berner), logique (Bernadette Dango Adjoua, Shahid Rahman) et psychanalytique (Dieu-donné Limikou).

Zora Hurston tornou-se amplamente conhecida na literatura norte-americana como romancista. Seus personagens, principalmente os femininos, opunham-se diretamente às representações estereotipadas de afro-americanos. Contudo, poucos sabem que a aclamada escritora também se graduou e realizou pesquisas de campo em antropologia, sob a orientação de Franz Boas. Este ensaio bibliográfico apresenta uma síntese da vida e da obra de Zora Hurston, a partir da análise de seu primeiro manuscrito, datado de 1931. Por quase noventa anos, Barracoon permaneceu inédito. Assim como a originalidade e o pioneirismo de Zora Neale Hurston, cuja obra ainda é pouco conhecida entre os antropólogos brasileiros.

Guimarães Rosa classifies his novel Grande sertão: veredas as an “irrational autobiography” – while this explicit reading protocol falls on deaf ears as far as scholars and critics are concerned. Riobard, its main character, is a poet that makes a Faustian deal in order to prevail over Hermogene (the Saussurian arbitrary sign) and, consequently, to “receive” Otacilia as an award (a literary one: “prêmio esse”, says the hero): the loss of Diadorim (the soul: “deo-doron” means “a gift of god”) is the price to pay for his achievements. Meanwhile, Guimarães Rosa declares that he usually writes under a “possession trance state”, postpones four years along his entrance into the Brazilian Academy of Letters, and finally dies mysteriously three days after the ceremony. An enigma or just another poetic puzzle? Why do the critics avoid these reading clues? By the means of factual indexes and through a freshly invented way in the world history of literature, the novelist lays the details of his own non-printable autobiography – a text to be actualized under the exclusive shape of oraliture – attempting to transform into a living legend his own life and evade himself from the finite condition of human beings (as well as from the limited nature of printed texts).

Com base na recolha feita por um aluno de licenciatura, relativa ao cancioneiro tradicional umbundo do Lobito e do Monte Belo (Província de Benguela - Angola), com apoio em traduções feitas por um ex-aluno de licenciatura e escritor, elaborei este curto cancioneiro e comentei os textos, quase todos relativos à defesa contra o colonialismo e à defesa de valores colectivos.

The 15th century opened up “new” worlds to Portugal and Spain and saw the
start of colonialism, which became global from the 17th century onwards. With
Enlightenment, one can find the foundations of Eurocentric modernity that gave
rise to the dark side of capitalism and imperialism: Europeans brought millions
of slaves from Africa to carry out the construction of America and cultural epistemicide caused unnamable losses on both continents. The orature (oral literature)
is a weapon used nowadays by the former colonized peoples of Latin
America and Africa for the rescue and strengthening of cultures and traditions.
In Angola, the writer Manuel Rui is a model in that ability to retransform the
literary text.

The arrival of printing in South Africa occasioned a great many social changes: it facilitated governance, participated in the production and propagation of anthropological and scientific ‘knowledge’ about the place and its peoples, required the development of orthographies for African languages, and served the spread of western education and of Christianity—with all of its attendant complex and ambiguous consequences. Print, Text & Book Cultures in South Africa explores the power of print and the politics of the book in South Africa from a range of disciplinary perspectives—historical, bibliographic, literary critical, sociological, and cultural studies. The essays collected here, by leading international scholars, address a range of topics as varied as: the role of print cultures in contests over the nature of the colonial public sphere in the nineteenth century; orthography; iimbongi, orature and the canon; book-collecting and libraries; print and transnationalism; Indian Ocean cosmopolitanisms; books in war; how the fates of South African texts, locally and globally, have been affected by their material instantiations; photocomics and other ephemera; censorship, during and after apartheid; books about art and books as art; local academic publishing; and the challenge of ‘book history’ for literary and cultural criticism in contemporary South Africa.

This volume is the most comprehensive and representative introduction to the study of print and of the book in South Africa, showcasing the best of current research (while problematising the nature of ‘the book’, and exploring the difficult conditions for print in the country). It takes the measure of the impact of book-historical and related fields of study on South African scholarship, while pointing the way towards avenues for future research.

Authors (in order of appearance): Leon de Kock, Isabel Hofmeyr, Meg Samuelson, John Gouws, Lucy Graham, Rita Barnard, Andrew van der Vlies, Jarad Zimbler, Patrick Flanery, Lize Kriel, Archie Dick, Hedley Twidle, Jeff Opland, Deborah Seddon, Lily Saint, Peter McDonald, Margriet van der Waal, Natasha Distiller, Sarah Nuttall, Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, Beth Le Roux.

*

Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa is a field-defining contribution to the country’s literary scholarship. Andrew van der Vlies’s introductory essay maps the conceptual terrain in a systematic and engaging way, illustrating its relevance to South Africa’s literary and cultural history. The essays that follow demonstrate the archival richness and liveliness of the field, while opening doors to future research. Beyond South Africa, the book will be exemplary in showing how book histories develop under postcolonial conditions.
-- David Attwell, author of J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing (1993) and Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History (2005), and co-editor of The Cambridge History of South African Literature (2012)

South African literary criticism has been rejuvenated by an emphasis on the materiality of book production and circulation, and the historical embedding of those institutions and practices that turned texts into ‘works’ considered worthy of our attention. This elegantly framed collection of readable, provocative essays examines the relations between the production and consumption of books to present a rich social history of South African print cultures. It is indispensible reading for anyone seeking to come to terms with the processes and practices, both national and transnational, that have fashioned this country’s literature and the ways in which it is read and understood.
-- Michael Titlestad, University of the Witwatersrand

This is an extraordinarily rewarding book. Its essays by key scholars and book-trade practitioners attend to the rich complexity of the varied trajectories and meanings of South African print culture. The introduction by Andrew van der Vlies offers a tour de force statement of the complex interplay between South African social, political, and economic realities and book history methodologies; each piece that follows charts a compelling course through the shifting contexts for South African print, whether to bring those contexts to bear on literary interpretation, or to highlight the interdependence of print and history.
-- Sarah Brouillette, author of Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace (2007)

Wide-ranging and sophisticated, this collection of essays does not simply add more case studies to the book-historical canon but contributes new models to the debate.
-- Leah Price, Harvard University

Thought provoking, wide ranging in its subject material, and dynamically edited, this collection marks a turning point in the study of book cultures in South Africa. These essays, exemplars of recently published work in the field, draw attention to the rich, interdisciplinary seams of material uncovered by key exponents of South African print culture history. The work as a whole demonstrates how one can engage with the confluence of text, people, history, culture, and print technology in South African contexts. It will prove one of the first ports of call for anyone wishing to undertake further journeys in this subject area in the future.
-- David Finkelstein, co-editor of The Book History Reader (2001) and The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland (vol. 4, 2007), and co-author of An Introduction to Book History (2005)

Abstract: Orature weaves many different literary genres into one. It is a type of literature in which the collective dimension subsumes individualities. This paper defines orature as a specific literary genre and also as a literary theory that favours a criticism of the literatures produced by writers of Western Africa, especially Titinga Frédéric Pacéré and Gnepo Werewere-Liking. It presents orature as an alternative to Western literary criticism and genre theory.

Resumo: Neste artigo discutirei as principais contribuições a uma poética da oralidade que levam em conta a produção, disseminação, e recepção da poesia oral sem vê-la como um subtipo da literatura escrita. Irei argumentar que, como demonstram vários estudos, alguns dos quais aqui discutidos, a poesia oral não se define nem como oposta nem como subordinada à poesia escrita, mas, sobretudo, por um sistema cognitivo e conceitual distinto, capaz de gerar textos que, mesmo escritos, preservam características típicas de obras vocais. Através de paradigmas oriundos de outras culturas, tanto antigas quanto modernas, e de estudos de cunho etnológico e linguístico, irei argumentar da vantagem de se reconhecer na literatura grega antiga uma oratura, isto é, um corpus literário marcado por uma oralidade conceitual primária ou secundária. Palavras-chave: oralidade; poesia oral; performance; recepção; poesia grega.

Abstract: In this article I shall discuss the main contributions to a poetics of orality that consider the production, dissemination, and reception of oral poetry by not framing it as a subtype of written literature. I shall argue that, as several studies have shown, some of which discussed here, oral poetry does not need to be defined as opposed or subordinated to written poetry, but, rather, by a distinct cognitive and conceptual system capable of generating texts that, even when written, preserve defining features of conceptually oral texts. By drawing paradigms from other cultures, both ancient and modern, and by referring to ethnological and linguistic studies, I shall argue for the advantage of recognising in ancient Greek literature an "orature", that is, a literary corpus marked by features of a conceptual, either primary or secondary, orality.

Neste artigo discutirei as principais contribuições à uma poética da oralidade que levam em conta a produção, disseminação, e recepção da poesia oral sem vê-la como um subtipo da literatura escrita. Irei argumentar que, como demonstram vários estudos, alguns dos quais aqui discutidos, a poesia oral não se define nem como oposta nem como subordinada à poesia escrita, mas, sobretudo, por um sistema cognitivo e conceitual distinto, capaz de gerar textos que, mesmo escritos, preservam características típicas de obras vocais. Através de paradigmas oriundos de outras culturas, tanto antigas quanto modernas, e de estudos de cunho etnológico e linguístico, irei argumentar da vantagem de se reconhecer na literatura grega antiga uma oratura, isto é, um corpus literário marcado por uma oralidade conceitual primária ou secundária.

Reflexiones sobre los rumbos de los estudios de la oralidad en literatura en Latinoamérica y en particular en Colombia, y algunas anotaciones sobre los desafíos y las posibilidades de trabajo en el campo. Conferencia central del 2 Encuentro Nacional de la Red Iberoamericana de Estudios de la Oralidad. Bogotá, 10 de octubre de 2014