A BAKHTINIAN APPROACH TO MAYA ORAL LITERATURE

José Alejos García (Unam)

doi:10.47295/mren.v9i3.2382

Abstract

This article discusses oral literature, as an old and well established term in ethnolinguistics and anthropology, but a controversial one in the field of literature. Recently, the issue has also become an ethical matter related to the cultural rights of native people in the American continent and by the same token, a major aesthetical subject for academic research. With that in mind, I consider the relevance of Bakhtinian literary theory, especially those concepts based on the aesthetics of verbal creation, as a way to approach the study of native oral literatures, the Maya poetics in particular, whose intellectual and artistic achievements stand out for their archaic backgrounds and their resonance in contemporary times. This discussion leads us to the issue of world literature as an artistic sphere whose canon is undergoing important critiques, in part coming from those indigenous voices the canon has left outside, but also from academic voices that aim for an inclusion of native oral poetics as literature. DOI: https://doi.org/10.47295/mren.v9i3.2382

Highlights

The dialogic thinking of Mikhail Bakhtin has become a major contribution to the development of theory and research in the humanities and the social sciences during the last decades, and its influence seems to be expanding in time
My main argument rests on the fact that in Bakhtin’s literary theory, the voice, the intonation, and the aesthetics inherent in oral discourse are of fundamental importance
Malcuzynski (1999) has emphasized the importance Bakhtin gives to intonation, as a sound component but at the same time as a social aspect that accompanies the word, and in a wider cultural sense, as the subtle musicality shared by each human community that is embedded in its own language, in the peculiar accents and manners of speech[8]

Summary

Introduction

The dialogic thinking of Mikhail Bakhtin has become a major contribution to the development of theory and research in the humanities and the social sciences during the last decades, and its influence seems to be expanding in time. My main argument rests on the fact that in Bakhtin’s literary theory, the voice, the intonation, and the aesthetics inherent in oral discourse are of fundamental importance. His acute observations about the legacy of mythology and folklore in the development of written literature, in his study of the European novel, is another aspect that deserves a careful consideration in our pursuit to advance a dialogic perspective on oral literature and to question the actual canon of literature

Orality and literature

Oral Literature and Bakhtinian Theory

Questioning the Canon

Conclusion

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