Art Of Storytelling Research Articles

The art of storytelling

The art of storytelling

The Effects of the Training of Life Skills and Positive Psychological Capital through the Art of Storytelling on Subjective Well-Being of Children with Visual Impairment

The Effects of the Training of Life Skills and Positive Psychological Capital through the Art of Storytelling on Subjective Well-Being of Children with Visual Impairment

Wondrous Brutal Fictions: Eight Buddhist Tales from the Early Japanese Puppet Theater trans. by R. Keller Kimbrough

Reviewed by: Wondrous Brutal Fictions: Eight Buddhist Tales from the Early Japanese Puppet Theater trans. by R. Keller Kimbrough Lorie Brau WONDROUS BRUTAL FICTIONS: EIGHT BUDDHIST TALES FROM THE EARLY JAPANESE PUPPET THEATER. Trans. by R. Keller Kimbrough. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Paperback edition, 2015. 273 pages. Paper, $27; cloth, $55. R. Keller Kimbrough’s lively translations of eight seventeenth-century sekkyō—bushi (sermon ballads) and ko-jōruri (old jōruri, predecessors of the later jōruri puppet plays)—introduce a dramatic literature that has heretofore received scant attention in English.1 The collection presents some of the most popular texts of Japan’s early modern puppet theatre, among them Sanshō Dayū (Sanshō the Baliff), the eponymous Karukaya, and Oguri. Sanshō Dayū and Oguri have enjoyed a vital afterlife. Mori Ōgai adopted the plot of Sanshō Dayū for his 1915 story, which served as the basis of Mizoguchi Kenji’s acclaimed 1954 film. The first of a number of Oguri-related kabuki plays was staged in 1682, and Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s jōruri play, Tōryū Oguri Hangan (Magistrate Oguri of the Present Day) was performed at the Takemotoza in Osaka in 1698 (Oguri Hangan n.d.). More recently, in 1983, Ichikawa En’ō II (Ennosuke III) produced a “super kabuki” version, which has seen numerous subsequent productions. While sekkyōbushi disappeared, “Absorbed into the burgeoning and evolving jōruri theater” (p. 2), the genre’s influence on early ningyō jōruri (commonly known today as bunraku) alone renders it worthy of the attention of scholars of Japanese theatre. In his brief introduction, Kimbrough describes sekkyō or sekkyōbushi as a medieval storytelling art that was revived in the early 1600s in a theatrical context. Sekkyō originally referred to a form of Buddhist lay preaching that centered on tales about the workings of karma and the origins of noted [End Page 518] Buddhist icons and temples (p. 1). Peripatetic performers living on the margins of society developed the earlier forms of the art. Like the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century blind singers and puppeteers whose descendants created ko-jōruri, these ancestors of sekkyōbushi chanters performed to the rhythm of a notched bamboo scraper on the street anywhere people congregated. As they developed, both genres incorporated the shamisen (three-stringed plucked instrument) as melodic and rhythmic accompaniment. Kimbrough attributes sekkyōbushi’s transformation from a genre of street performance into a puppet theatre patronized by paying customers to the emergence of celebrity chanters in the early seventeenth century (p. 1). The popularity and efficacy of the chanters’ performances are borne out in the illustrations included in the introduction to the translations, reproductions of seventeenth-century prints. Kimbrough also cites textual descriptions of performances from contemporary sources that portray the art as highly emotional and moving. For several decades in the mid to late seventeenth century, sekkyōbushi and ko-jōruri stood “shoulder to shoulder” in the major urban centers (p. 2). Each had “its own repertoire and distinctive linguistic conventions” (p. 3). Nevertheless, it is often difficult to tell the genres apart, and scholars differentiate on the basis of volume count (p. 9). Kimbrough’s translations follow the breaks of his original texts. Thus the last three pieces in Wondrous Brutal Fictions, which come from the ko-jōruri repertoire, are divided into six acts. The translations are based on seventeenth-century illustrated texts. Kimbrough writes that sekkyōbushi and ko-jōruri benefited from a “surge in theatre-based publishing” (p. 5). In the Kan’ei period (1624–1644), Kyoto publishers began putting out what came to be known as “true texts” (shōhon), some of which had musical notations in addition to illustrations. (p. 5). A few decades later, these books advertised their authenticity as exact transcriptions of the chanters’ performances (p. 7). Susan Matisoff, scholar of medieval Japanese literature and performance, has suggested elsewhere that they were published as “souvenirs to be read and relished after seeing a performance” (2011: 52). Even without knowledge of the performances on which they were based, the tales make for juicy reading in Kimbrough’s translation, despite all the Buddhist/Confucian moralizing, which may fall on deaf modern...

Jewish Law, Hasidic Lore, and Hollywood Legend: The Cantor, the Mystic, and the Jurist

Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt was offered an opportunity that would make any performer swoon: a star role in the ground-breaking film The Jazz Singer (1927). Yet Rosenblatt refused this artistic opportunity of a lifetime. This paper contextualizes Rosenblatt’s baffling decision, by exploring one possible relationship between the arts and law; in this case--the art of storytelling and the Jewish legal system. The study demonstrates where the two pursuits tread separate, unlinked paths to a common end. This vector is refracted through the lens of liturgical performances outside the religious synagogue service; specifically the propriety of cantorial concerts featuring prayers from the High Holy Days. This issue is addressed in legal writing and in storytelling, each modality using its own tools to tackle the trend. It is noted that legal systems without effective enforcement mechanisms--such as Jewish law in the late modern period--could use arts as compensatory media for achieving societal order. More significantly, however, arts and law are not umbilically connected; each cultural creation independently strives to fashion society.

The Storyteller in Rawlings's A MOTHER IN MANNVILLE

In telling the story of an orphan named Jerry, Marjorie Rawlings in “A Mother in Mannville” focuses on the art of storytelling. She uses a narrator who is a professional writer, and who chooses to ...

The Enchanted Storyteller: John Barth and the Magic of Scheherazade

During the fifties he was considered to be an existentialist, and absurdist and later a Black Humorist, yet, John Barth proved that he would never subscribe to any specific theory and would make his own world of/about fiction by himself. A traditional postmodernist as some of the critics calls him; he was obsessed with Scheherazade the narrator of the Thousand and one Nights and her art of storytelling. This essay aims to depict Barth’s employment of the frame narrative and embedding structure which are the main devices of Scheherazade’s mystifying narratives. Revealing the architectonic structure of his writing, we would demonstrate how traditional technique can bridge postmodernist aesthetics to recreate and replenish the exhausted materials in writings.

Arabs and the art of storytelling: a strange familiarity

Arabs and the art of storytelling: a strange familiarity

From Spoke to Hub

This article reports on a case study at an inner-city nonprofit service agency that inquired into the ways integration of storytelling and visual art as a method of adult learning and way of knowing might influence the process of strategic visioning and planning in a nonprofit organization. The case study focuses on data collected through interviews and observation in the context of an action research project, with an aim of better understanding the influence of presentational ways of knowing and learning on transformative learning at the organizational level. Findings of this case study point toward the possibility of such transformation, in particular a shift in meaning perspective manifested at the level of organizational vision and strategy that can affect the organization’s work all the way down to the operational level. Project background, process, and findings are discussed, followed by implications for practice.

Digital Storytelling Based on the Association for Library Service to Children Competencies: A Learning Activity to Promote Values Associated with Social Justice

Social justice is a thread that is woven into the values of librarians. Concepts such as equal access, diversity, and inclusion are central tenets of librarianship. The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) competencies (2009) strengthen the social justice fabric of the profession. In the Art of Storytelling, eighteen graduate students used digital tools to create and disseminate advocacy stories. A content analysis of the ALSC competencies and graduate students’ data shows that, although the term “social justice” is not used in those competencies, these professional standards provide support for aligning preservice education with concepts related to social justice.

The Art of Storytelling

This article is based on the idea that there is latent storytelling already in proposals. It explores the various ways in which storytelling functions as a pedagogical model of teaching the writing of proposals in business and technical writing courses. The central premise is that stories, like proposals, are forms of discourse that place events sequentially from beginning to end with meaningful and graspable connections in between. Stories take (identified) audiences into account by being selective of events that are carefully rearranged and described through composites of scenarios and characters. This article explores those storytelling patterns in theory and in practice. It aims to enhance the perspective of teaching proposal writing by calling attention to a seemingly inconsequential or unrelated notion – storytelling.

The Importance of the Storyteller in the Unfolding of Experience

This issue of Departures in Critical Qualitative Research asks us to attend to the importance of the practice of storytelling and the storyteller in our scholarship and in our lives. Walter Benjamin's prescient 1936 essay “The Storyteller” presents an argument for the role of the storyteller in communicating and meaningfully understanding experience in the age of “information.” Benjamin contrasts the relational and collaborative craft of the storyteller against the individualized, isolated, and ultimately untranslatable work of the novelist, noting that the storyteller “takes what he [sic] tells of experience—his own or that reported by others. And he in turn makes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale.”1 The co-constitutive force of storytelling and Benjamin's storyteller are beautifully illustrated and enacted in each of the essays in this issue. In “ Stranger Than Fiction ,” William K. Rawlins addresses the notion of offering counsel in the unfolding story of a life/our lives through a consideration of Mikhail Bakhtin's relational ethics of answerability. Answerability insists on the embrace of otherness and difference as essential to our ability to perceive ourselves and the attendant necessity of making choices in telling the stories that constitute and narrate a well-lived life. Rawlins locates his articulation of the importance of this ethics of answerability in the art of storytelling—of storytellers—through an analysis of Marc Forster's film Stranger Than Fiction .2 The analysis points to the importance of storytellers as craftspersons who approach life from “outside” human experience in order to render it useful to readers and listeners. The author's task is not to provide data to readers, but rather to fashion experience into something meaningful for and in the living of life—to seek …

Kamishibai Isn’t a City in Japan: Using Japanese Paper Theater in Storytimes

Japanese paper theater, or kamishibai, is one of the earliest popular forms of Japanese sequential storytelling art, with its Golden Age peaking in the early half of the twentieth century.

Of ladders and looms: Moving through Walter Benjamin’s ‘Storyteller’

In this article I take a closer look at Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘The Storyteller’ by connecting the craft of carpet weaving to storytelling. I reveal that Benjamin has encoded a ladder in his essay through his seemingly fragmentary ruminations or ‘philosophical observations’. I attempt a genealogy of ‘The Storyteller’, where I recognize that the ladder is an inspiration from Jewish mystical tradition, the Kabbala, where the cycle of life is realized and interpreted. I trace this ladder of experience through my own fieldwork on Persian carpets where I argue the importance of carpet weaving for the art of storytelling and vice versa, and in turn its implications and possibilities for recounting ethnographic accounts. By examining Benjamin’s writing on the craft of the artisan and his concept of experience, I explore the significance of storytelling as an ethnographic and experiential art.

GRADUAL CHANGE IN LIGHTS, STAGE MANAGEMENT AND COSTUMES IN KATHAK DANCE

Kathak dance is a prominent classical dance of northern India. Indian dances have seen enormous changes in the past few years, but the fact that remains is not only has there been a change in the movements and “abhinay prakar” or expressions but also light and stage management and the costumes.Kathak performing artists or the “kathakkas” as they were called were actually story tellers and were earlier the messengers of the king. Gradually this art of storytelling changed its track to become India’s most performed classical dance.In 10th century this dance became a way of tribute to the almighty and was popularly performed by the devdasis in various temples. Though they were not openly performed for the devotees at first but only for the idols of the deity. Since the dance was performed in privacy, there was no need of stage and light. It was assumed that the dance was performed to depict ones bhakti or devotion towards the god and for the god’s entertainment hence costume and jewellery were given special weightage. Blunt colours like red or green in fully covered lehenga; choli and dupatta were selected with loads of gold jewellery of all kinds.

English

English

In Conversation with Intizar Husain: Some Remembered, Some Imagined

In Conversation with Intizar Husain:Some Remembered, Some Imagined Alok Bhalla (bio) and Intizar Husain Meetings with Intizar Husain in Delhi are almost always interrupted. Old Urdu scholars, aspiring novelists, young students, or acolytes walk in and out of the room wherever he happens to be staying. Some have prior appointments; others knock and walk in. He greets everyone with courtesy, an enigmatic smile, and a gentle twinkle in his eyes. I think of him as the Bodhisattva of caravanserais who, like his favorite storyteller of the Jataka stories, always has a new tale in response to yet another question about his life, faith, craft, or times. But unlike the Bodhisattva—whose Jataka tales are always about his own birth, life sufferings, and death from generation to generation, time upon time, incarnation after incarnation— Intizar Sahib rarely talks about himself. I am among the very few who persuaded him, more than a decade ago in Berlin, to speak of his childhood and life history. I was lucky and grateful for that long, recorded interview. We had met before and have met since, but always informally. Even so, after every meeting, I returned home and wrote down a story he had told or his comments, because I always had the feeling that something important had been said, however casually. Now as I look over my notes, I find intimations of an ethic that might serve as a guide through our cities of labyrinths and nightmares. When you come to a forking path, he seems to say, always choose the direction that leads through a forest and into a city where people are free to ask questions, and where the answers they receive are grounded in reason. Any claim to one commandment, law, desire, or identity sanctified by mists of holiness is dangerous, for it always leads to genocide . . . I am never surprised when these days Asif Farrukhi refers to him as Master, with a self-conscious nod towards Henry James’s description of a great storyteller. Not that Intizar Sahib ever sets himself up as a teacher or a guru. He is much too self-effacing for that and always aware of life’s ironies. He understands that even if the Bodhisattva could be tripped, deceived, betrayed, puzzled, or confused, then . . . ! Bits and pieces of the conversation we had in Berlin—remembered and imagined—blended with another meeting recently in Old Delhi. On that [End Page 245] occasion, I drove Intizar Sahib to see the ruined arches of Dara Shikoh’s legendary library at Kashmiri Gate. In front of the arches, the empty strip of land was strewn with garbage. He said he was familiar with such ruins in Lahore, too. We bantered about which city had more garbage. In the vicinity of the library, I showed him the lovely, white Gothic domes of St. James Church, designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and built in imitation of the cathedral in Florence. In the church grounds, there is a graveyard for some of the British soldiers who died defending Kashmiri Gate during the 1857 rebellion. The rebellion—by Indian soldiers in the British army seeking an end to colonial rule—was led by the last Mughal emperor of India, Bahadur Shah Zafar. On the way back, we stopped at the remnants of a sixteenth-century stone gate of a citadel now known as Khooni Darwaza, the Gate of Blood. Its grim name has wandered out of horror tales and folk romances, and got mingled with Delhi’s brutal history. After all, when heads of rebels are hung from the ramparts, they summon ancient prophecies of revenge and doom. In Intizar Husain’s fictional world, historians and dervishes, storytellers and epic poets, Bodhisattva and Sufi singers, peacocks and ghosts wander over the sorrowing earth in search of another gate—not the gates of blood, khooni darwazas, but gates of peace, shanti darwazas. Intizar Husain Kahani to awara hoti hai. Story is a vagabond. For instance, my nani, maternal grandmother, from whom I learnt the art of storytelling, used to tell me a story in which a girl says to her father, “I love you as much as salt.” My nani didn’t know about...

Scandinavian Folklore and Fairy Tales: David Lang’s “The Little Match Girl Passion” and the Choral Art of Storytelling

Scandinavian Folklore and Fairy Tales: David Lang’s “The Little Match Girl Passion” and the Choral Art of Storytelling

The case for policy-relevant conservation science.

Drawing on the “evidence-based” (Sutherland et al. 2013) versus “evidence-informed” debate (Adams & Sandbrook 2013), which has become prominent in conservation science, I argue that science can be influential if it holds a dual reference (Lentsch & Weingart 2011) that contributes to the needs of policy makers whilst maintaining technical rigor. In line with such a strategy, conservation scientists are increasingly recognizing the usefulness of constructing narratives through which to enhance the influence of their evidence (Leslie et al. 2013; Lawton & Rudd 2014). Yet telling stories alone is rarely enough to influence policy; instead, these narratives must be policy relevant. To ensure that evidence is persuasive alongside other factors in a complex policy-making process, conservation scientists could follow 2 steps: reframe within salient political contexts and engage more productively in boundary work, which is defined as the ways in which scientists “construct, negotiate, and defend the boundary between science and policy” (Owens et al. 2006:640). These will both improve the chances of evidence-informed conservation policy.El Caso para la Ciencia de la Conservación con Relevancia PolíticaResumenA partir del debate “con base en evidencia” (Sutherland et al. 2013) versus “informado con evidencia” (Adams & Sandbrook 2013), debate que se ha vuelto prominente en la ciencia de la conservación, argumento que la ciencia puede ser influyente si mantiene una referencia dual (Lentsch & Weingart 2011) que contribuya a las necesidades de quienes hacen la política a la vez que mantiene un rigor técnico. En línea con dicha estrategia, los científicos de la conservación cada vez reconocen más la utilidad de construir narrativas con las cuales pueden mejorar la influencia de sus evidencias (Leslie et al. 2013; Lawton & Rudd 2014). Sin embargo, sólo contar historias rara vez es suficiente para influir sobre la política; en su lugar, estas narrativas deben ser políticamente relevantes. Para asegurar que la evidencia sea persuasiva junto con otros factores en un proceso complejo de fabricación de políticas, los científicos de la conservación pueden seguir dos pasos: rediseñar el marco de trabajo a partir de contextos políticos salientes y participar con mayor productividad en el trabajo fronterizo, que se define como los métodos con los cuales los científicos “construyen, negocian y defienden la frontera entre la ciencia y la política” (Owens et al. 2006:640). Estos pasos incrementarán la oportunidad de políticas de conservación informadas con evidencias.

Metode Pengajaran Sejarah Menurut Hamka

<p>This study aims at examining the Hamka�s concept of history education through a descriptive analysis of his life history and his historical works. Through reviewing Hamka life history, it is hope to know how did he make himself to became a historian. While by analyzing Hamka historical works, it is hope to know how did he use the methods of historical thinking in his works. Based on these the Hamka�s concept of history education is then reconstructed whit the emphasis on the goal and method of historical teaching. From the analysis of Hamka life history by framing how he established himself in the field of history, it is concluded that Hamka (1) has a high �interest� in the historical field that grow naturally being raised in an environment that is rich with the art of storytelling (<em>bakaba</em>) and (2) has a high �self efficacy� in independent learning that grow instead of failure in the formal school and then reinforced with a mastery of Islamic Jurisprudence and logic that deliberately was taught by his father in order not to mislead in learning all areas of his interest independently. Especially in the field of history Hamka learn by (3) �observing�, i.e. looking, listening, and asking about the origins of events and important figures in his surrounding environment and in other countries he journeyed, (4) �reading�, i.e. own attempting to gain an understanding of the various readings of history, whether written by the classical historian of Islam, the traditional local historians, and the modern historians including the orientalist and foreign writers, and (5� �writing� , which reproduces the understanding gained from the observations and readings by using his own angle of view, interpretation, and style. Further analysis using the framework of Seixas �historical thinking� on Hamka�s <em>Ayahku: Riwayat Hidup Dr. H. Abdul Karim Amrullah dan Perjuangan Kaum Agama di Sumatra Barat</em><em> </em>(�My Father: The History of Dr. H. Abdul Karim Amrullah and The Religious Struggle in West Sumatra�), it is clearly visible Hamka�s ability to use historical thinking. In this work Hamka successfully �demonstrate the significance of history�, �use of historical sources�, �analyze continuity and change in history�, �take a historical perspective�, and �presents a moral message of history�. As a self-taught in history, Hamka's ability intuitively derived from an intelligent reading of the historical works and present his own understanding of learning by way of writing it (writing to learn). What is achieved by this self-taught Hamka, should be achieved by anyone who studied history in formal education. Based on the life history of how Hamka establish himself as a student of history and an analysis of his original work <em>Ayahku</em>, it can be formulated concept Hamka�s history education that useful in developing an ideal history education. From Hamka�s life history, the keywords in his history education is �interest�, �self-efficacy�, �observing�, �reading� and �writing�. While from his historical work analysis the keyword is �think historically.� If all the keywords are formulated through a concise definition, then Hamka�s concept of history education is �fostering interest and self-efficacy of students in historical thinking through the activities of observing, reading, and writing about history.�</p><p>Keywords: Hamka, Metode Pengajaran, sejarah</p>

On Telling Tales and The Art of Storytelling

On Telling Tales and The Art of Storytelling