Textualization of Oral Epics by Lauri s> Honko (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS I09 Honko, Lauri (ed.). Textualization of OralEpics.Trends in LinguisticsStudies and Monographs, I28. Mouton de Gruyter,Berlinand New York,2000. viii + 390 pp. Bibliographies.Index. DM 258.oo. 'TEXTUALIZING oralepicsin writingis a missionimpossible.Oralperformance cannot be capturedin lettersandwords'(p. vii).LauriHonko's opening words direct us to the central issue of this splendid interdisciplinaryvolume how the 'impossible'taskhas in factbeen attempted.They alsointroducesome farreaching critical explorations of the once simple-sounding concepts of 'text' and literary'work'which will interestscholarsof many backgrounds,certainly notjust specialistsin 'epic'or 'orality'.How, afterall, do literarytextscome to be as they are?What can we learnfrom consideringtext asprocess? Readers of SEERwill particularlywelcome John Miles Foley's thoughtful unpickingof the far-from-neutralprocessesthroughwhich the South Slav oral epics variouslybecame textualized, from Karadzic to Parryand Lord, and of how decisions about what got collected/recorded, published and received shaped the nature and status of the printed collections. Arthur Hatto's 'Textology and epic texts from Siberia and beyond' surveysthe (varied)ways these multiple texts were written down, while Juha Pentikainen looks reflexivelyat his experiences of observing, video-recording, transcribingand translatingNanaj shamanicperformances.Karl Reichl's analysisof problems and strategiesin editing Turkicoral epics confrontsthe unavoidabledecisions about whichperformance to record, whether (and how) to notate phonetic, phonemic, prosodic and/or paralinguisticfeatures, and how far to indicate metrical, musical and macro-structuraldimensions. Any edition, he holds, 'transformsthe [living] event, and in doing so inevitablysilences the voice of the singer'(p. 123). Papers of more comparative interest include Minna Skafte Jensen's stimulatingre-examinationof how the Homeric epics might have got written, Joseph Harris on Old Norse, John Brockingtonand LauriHonko on Indian epics old and new, Dell Hymes on Native American ethnopoetics, AnnaLeena Siikalaon Cook Islandsepic tradition,and analysesof Africanepics by John WilliamJohnson, Jan Knappert and Dan Ben-Amos. Dwight F. Reynolds 's 'Creating an epic: from apprenticeship to publication' perceptively analyses the processes of textualizing an Arabic epic by a Nile Delta singer, both his experiencesof learningsome verbaland musicalperformancehimself and why he recorded ('created'?)one lengthy narrativetext rather than the usual performance units of short episodes. Overall the papers vary in length, substance and the degree to which they forward issues formulated by the editor, but between them illuminate a range of issues about textualization, performance and the still-heated questions of the definition and creation of 'epic'. The case studies are essential, but the jewel is Honko's introduction. His magisterial consideration of 'text as process and practice' highlights the current wave of interest in the multifacetedprocesses of textualization, both writtenand oral. He tellshow 'whatused to be an innocent objectof research, a verbal transcriptionof an orallyperformed song [... .] has been problematized from a variety of angles by questioning its boundaries, apparent fixity, 110 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 performative representativity, situational and cultural contextuality, cotextualand intertextualenvironment,discursivefunctionand ideologicalbasis [togetherwith] the collector'spurposiverole in the makingof the text and the editor's impact on the final form' (p. 3). His critical survey of approaches to text and performanceover the last century or so rangesfrom the paradigmof 'the text is king' to the current 'performanceis king' that in turn now due for problematizing.He tackleshead-on the ever-difficultquestion of how it is that while in one sense oral texts exist only in their episodic performances, often quite short and variable, a singer may neverthelessbe able to produce an integratedlong performanceeven when neverhaving done thisbefore. For this Honko utilizes his notion of 'mental text', a fertile (and controversial) concept applied in several of the papers here. It will doubtless attract much debate and scholarshipin the coming years. The forward-lookingcomparative work of Scandinavian literary scholars often seems relativelylittleknown in Britain.But for its theoreticalinsightsas much as its illustrativecases this volume should be in every library serving academic institutions engaged with literary and linguistic studies, anthropology , folklore, or cultural history. And for Slavonic and East European scholarsinterestedin recent approachesto epic, oralperformanceand literary text it will surelybecome obligatoryreading. Faculty ofSocialSciences RUTH FINNEGAN Open University Hawkesworth, Celia. Voices in theShadows.Women and Verbal Artin Serbiaand Bosnia. Central European University Press, Budapest, 2000. 28I pp. Illustrations.Maps. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?3I.95. HAWKESWORTH'S book containseight chapters,Conclusion, Bibliographyand Index. The author describesher project in the 'Introduction...