Verbal Art Research Articles

Sobre a Lenha, Labareda Sou: Poética da Memória em um Canto Ritual Krahô

Apresento aqui a transcrição e a tradução da letra de um canto krahô, povo ameríndio falante de uma língua Jê e que vive no norte do estado do Tocantins. Este canto é um exemplar de um dos diversos gêneros de arte verbal encontrados entre os Krahô e que constituem formasexpressivas centrais em seu vasto e complexo sistema ritual. Proponho aqui um exercício cruzado em que o comentário etnográfico enriquece a tradução e o comentário sobre a tradução enriquece a etnografia, ambos movimentos contribuindo para uma compreensão mais detalhada do texto e de seu contexto. A partir disso, interpreto esse canto como uma reflexãosobre seu próprio processo de transmissão e como local de elaboração de uma poética da memória.

About the Originality of the Manifestation of the Aesthetic Function in Modern Dramatic Discourse

The article focuses on one - the key, in the author’s opinion - aspect of the analysis of the modern dramatic work, which allows to demonstrate the peculiarities of the aesthetic function in the works belonging to this literary genus: the consideration of the principles of the organization of the playwright of the compositional and speech zone of the characters. It is this part of the dramaturgic discourse, leading in the content-conceptual plan and prevailing in the spatial relation, that is seen as the most significant for the interpretation of the play as a fact of verbal art with the unconditional consideration of the syncretic character of dramaturgic form. The relevance of this topic is due to the fact that, despite the significant success of modern philology in the study of the specifics of artistic speech, dramatic speech is still the least studied of its sphere. The purpose of research - analysis of dialogical spheres of contemporary plays versus not artistic dialogue and partly as a dialogue in prose, allowing you to set the number of features forming the identity of contemporary dramatic dialogue speech. The material for the observations was the play of the modern author E. Cherlak «Mortgage and Vera, her mother» (2011). In the interpretation of the materials used methods: observation, compositional, contextual and semantic-stylistic analysis. In addition, the conducted observations suggest that the analysis of the manifestations of aesthetic function in the works of drama should be carried out taking into account the textual nature of this compositional and speech sphere, as well as paying special attention to the author’s principles of its system organization, since this approach helps to identify not only the distinctive characteristics of dramatic speech, but also the features of the individual author’s handwriting of the playwright.

Verbal Art and Identity Construct: A Study of Humour in the Songs and Poetry of the Ham of Nigeria

This study asserts that humour, primarily a verbal art, is a domain for identity construct among the Ham of the Nok culture from north-central Nigeria. To validate the idea that humour is linked to identity, we offer the context which illustrates how hilarity is orally deployed and provide examples of a variety of humour typical in the discourses of the Ham; their songs and poetry, all spoken art forms, engage with and embrace joviality as a field. Accordingly, the postulation is that humour, usually a fusion of subversion, puns, and context, is a potent tool for social and personal affirmation as it permits speakers to express views and ideas which could be viewed as “unsuitable” within everyday interaction. The view is that the Ham, by way of a verbal construct, could poetically signify humour through an enunciated joke, irony, anecdote, sarcasm, parody, or by direct insult. Yet, the humour is not aimed at scorn in the real sense of the word but is a stratagem to construct identity. In the end, the study exemplifies that every spoken language coherently organises its meanings, embedded in the verbal-linguistic features intrinsic to it, to represent the worldview of the speakers. Moreover, such an exemplification demonstrates how the Ham distinguish between contempt and a spoken humorous anecdote and that humour, in that way, generates expressions which indicate identity.

Postcolonial Literatures as Disrespected Literatures

EnglishThis essay focuses on the challenges as well as the joys of reading postcolonial literary texts that are composed and printed in multiple, alternating languages. What postcolonial texts make manifest through their syntax, vocabulary, and style is the wide array of creative expression that the simultaneous presence of multiple languages makes available to the writer. A literary analysis able to appreciate this creative potential is in order if we want to go beyond an outdated understanding of literature and its forms. It is in fact in the act of reading that a lot of the disrespect surrounding postcolonial literature manifests itself. Caribbean literature marks an ideal place to start exploring the possibilities of a postcolonial literary analysis. A region “once deemed the antithesis of civilization” has become one of the most creative laboratories of verbal art, both written and oral, thanks to its radical creolization of the colonial languages. In the second part of my essay, I will present a model of literary analysis that uses as its crucial categories those coming from the traditionally disrespected language of the region: Creole. Englishpostcolonial literatures; Creole writing; literary respect; accent; dialect; reading

P. ZAGREBELNY’S «EUPRAXIA»: ON THE QUESTION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PAINTING IN A WORD

The article proves the idea of a great degree of psychologization of nature images in P. Zagrebelny’s novel. It is named the names of the literary critics who learnt the different forms of visualization in a work of art. The researchers quote the views in regards to the dominance of psychologism in the writer’s works and, particularly, in the novel «Eupraxia».A review of the recent works led to the determination of the purpose of exploration — to understand the psychosemantics of landscapes in «Eupraxia». As a result, there are the tasks of the work: monitoring the situations in which a psychologized image of nature arises; discovering of techniques of the verbal landscape studies; establishment of varieties and functions of the psychological landscapes in the novel of P. Zagrebelny.During the process of the analysis the close correlation of the depicted landscapes with the image of Eupraxia is established. It is defined that the landscapes appear in the art world of the work to illustrate the pivotal moments of the lead character’s life. Except the marking of the place and time, the landscapes primarily reflect the mental states of the novel’s heroes. Also, the psychological pictures contribute to the expression of the characters, showing their mental and worldview.The methods of creation of psychological landscapes in «Eupraxia» are established: correlating the descriptions of the landscapes with the moods of the characters; a comparison of «their» and «alien» images of nature; introduction to the landscape of the symbolic details (trees, sun, earth, sky, stone); imparting the special meaning of coloristics to the image; the imposition of the various forms of sensation (vision, hearing, smell, tactile); building the associative series; creating the suggestion).The conclusions emphasized the possibilities of landscape creation in the works of verbal art. The psychological images of nature provide the imaging of a spatial, sensory and emotional expression plane, become an important factor of the influence to the reader and the perception of the work generally. It is summarized that the novel «Evpraxia» represents not just the most psychological historical prose, but also demonstrate a synthesis of the art of word and painting in the artistic world of the work.

New Media, Old Artistry: The Adaptation of Yorùbá Folktale Narrative Strategies in Video Films


 
 
 The argument of this study is that Yorùbá people continue to keep alive and sustain their society’s oral folkloric tradition and verbal art despite the changes undergone by Yorùbá folktales that have passed into written form and other (new) media. Verbal arts educate, reflect and promote culture, as well as, their well-known capacity to instil moral decency in a young audience. This paper explores the adaptation of Yorùbá folkloric form in film. The audience memory is reawakened through the conservation and propagation of folktale into drama form in the film, Ijàpá and Àjàntálá. Ìjàpá (tortoise) is well known for its trickish behaviour and nature while Àjàntálá is also known for his vicious behaviour. Their character was worn into human beings (artiste) to teach society moral lessons. These Yorùbá movies Ìjàpá and Àjàntálá were adapted from Yorùbá folktales to examine issues and themes that are germane to contemporary society. Ìjàpá was produced in 2011 while Àjàntálá was produced in 2015. The theory of intertextuality which is the way books, songs, films are linked or associated to one another is adopted for the research.
 KEYWORDS: YORÙBÁ ORAL FOLKTALE, ADAPTATION, INTERTEXTUALITY, FILM
 
 

Orality, Memory and the new African Diaspora Poetry: Examining Tanure Ojaide's Poetics


 
 
 The influence of traditional oral poetic forms on modern African poetry has been significant. Fascinated by oral forms which their respective communities relied on (to inform, teach, and correct erring members) before the advent of literacy, modern African writers borrow from these oral traditions and blend them with the features of the written Western literary forms. This appropriation of the oral poetic techniques by modern African poets continues today, as is clearly evident in the writings of many contemporary African poets, whose scripted works are seen to have drawn much in terms of content and form from the African oral poetic tradition. Following in this trend, the new African diaspora poets have also maintained the practice of skillfully blending the rich African verbal art and the modern (written) poetic forms to articulate the experiences of their African homeland as well as those of the diaspora, in order to construct and project their identities and visions of a new life in their lived world. In order to explore how through recourse to memory, “new African diasporas” (African-descended people who migrated out of Africa, during the postcolonial era and who live and practice their art outside the African homeland) utilize African oral art techniques in their writings, this essay analyses the poetry of Tanure Ojaide.
 KEYWORDS: ORALITY, ORAL TRADITION, MEMORY, NEW AFRICAN DIASPORA
 
 

Swearing and Cursing in San Juan Quiahije Chatino

Building on the work of Joel Sherzer, this article explores the ways in which a woman creates verbal art in Chatino by narrating a false accusation against her. The narrative contains parallelism, repetition, and narrative manipulations through which verbal art is created (Sherzer 2002 ). The narrator, Celia, is a woman who has an amazing capacity to argue and curse in Chatino, which has repercussions for her in the community. She demonstrates the arts of swearing, cursing, and humor in this narrative. I show that swearing and cursing share interesting structural features with ritual speech and political oratory (H. Cruz 2014, 2017).

A’ãma Mrémé: A Playful Window into A'uwẽ‐Xavante Language, Cognition, and Social Organization

A’ãma mrémé, or a’ãma speech, spoken by incumbents of a special ceremonial role within central Brazilian A'uwẽ‐Xavante society, illustrates Joel Sherzer's argument regarding the centrality of speech play to both linguistic and social analysis. A’ãma mrémé is a ludic code variant, a system of lexical substitution primarily at the level of nouns and verbs, spoken exclusively by a’ãma. Morphological analysis of of a’ãma mrémé reveals the existence of conceptual categories and perceptions that are not otherwise linguistically transparent. Further, a’ãma, who indexically make their ceremonial identity and role salient through the everyday practice of ãma speech, add an additional layer of complexity to A'uwẽ‐Xavante's complicated dualistic system of social organization. This complexity, heretofore overlooked by anthropologists of A'uwẽ‐Xavante, becomes apparent through attention to socially situated discourse and verbal arts. A’ãma mrémé enriches and adds complexity to understandings of A'uwẽ‐Xavante language, thought, and social organization. It is, as Sherzer contends, a place where language, cognition, perception, worldview and social structure come together in distilled form.

(Ethno)Poetics and Perspectivism: On the Hieroglyphic Beauty of Ambiguity

This essay honors the work of Joel Sherzer by using his discourse‐centered approach to language and culture as a way to investigate the place of speech play and verbal art in concerns with interpretative frameworks. An ethnographic and linguistic analysis of a brief poem by Navajo poet Rex Lee Jim is then presented as an example of such an approach. Sherzer's concern with ambiguity is highlighted as a way to contrast a discourse‐centered approach with Perspectivism.

Hup bi'id ɨd: Shamanic incantation at the nexus of language and culture

AbstractIn this paper, we explore the genre of shamanic incantation (bi'id ɨd) among the Hup people of the northwest Amazon. We consider the artistic features that characterize bi'id ɨd as both verbal art and powerful shamanic action – most notably the intersecting layers of parallelism, the leveraging of metaphor from both literal and figurative perspectives, and the strategic use of evidentials. We also consider the astonishingly complex taxonomy and cosmography the genre embodies, with its ontological classification of the plants, animals, and other beings within the diverse environments of the Hup world (rivercourse, forest, sky, water, etc.). As we lay out here, Hup bi'id ɨd provides an example par excellence of Sherzer's conception of discourse as the nexus of language and culture, and an illustration of the fact that a rich understanding of language and culture must make reference to both together.

Using Verbal Art to Deal with Conflicts: Women’s Voices on Family and Kinship in Kāmākhyā (Assam)

Analyzing two women’s rituals in which verbal art on family and kinship is prominent, this article explores situations in which tales and songs in Assamese are staged by newly married and about-to-be-married young women. Active participation in stories and song sessions, under the guidance of older storytellers or singers, imparts practical knowledge to young women about the possible ways by which to retaliate against male domination and domestic tensions with one’s mother-in-law. The young women who participate are not merely engaged in the performance but are also encouraged to place themselves in the story. This performance study, based on the ecology of Assam and the annual calendar of festivals at the great temple of the goddess Kāmākhyā, combines the exploration of these narratives with the observation of rituals. It also seeks to question whether social language practices endow women with the power to affirm themselves and with the knowledge, through ritual performance, to deal with conflict. Finally, it shows how the use of an original ritual object—a small house—can be put into perspective with the concept of “house” as understood in particular by Lévi-Strauss.

Fórmulas de apertura en la narrativa de tradición oral maya tojolabal

En este trabajo se analizan las fórmulas de apertura de un corpus de textos pertenecientes a la narrativa de tradición oral maya tojolabal, con una doble finalidad, describir sus elementos y la obligatoriedad de los mismos y analizar su función tanto literaria como pragmática. Este trabajo contribuye a probar que la narrativa tojolabal de tradición oral es un arte verbal que los propios narradores distinguen de la oralidad cotidiana mediante estas estructuras que enmarcan el comienzo y el fin de cada relato. También veremos cómo las fórmulas de apertura son estructuras convencionales con elementos comunes con cierto margen de variación compartidas por una comunidad cultural.

Linguistic Verbal Arts and the Problem of Overpopulation Growth in Nigeria

Linguistic verbal arts deals with the use of chants, statements and verses of oral and written materials in expressing feelings using one language or the other. Among the challenges militating against expected human and material development in many African countries is population explosion. Available social infrastructures can no longer adequately satisfy the needs of the people. At present, in Nigeria compared with what obtained many years ago, religious practices are taken as excuses for marrying many wives when in the actual sense, there are often misinterpretations of the doctrines of the religions. The findings of this paper is that though many Nigerians are either Muslims or Christians with few number of traditional religious faith, the lust for marrying more than one wife did not make them obey the doctrines of their religious practices. This paper derives its strength from collation of verbal arts as expressed in the Holy Books of the Muslims, Christians and Ifá Oracle, one of the African traditional religions. The paper posits that no religion in Nigeria advocates for many wives and many children. The implication of this paper among others is that it provides valuable information on Nigerian population particularly as this concept remains a great troubling issue for Nigerian and many African governments. It is yet an attempt aimed at discouraging Africans from creating more problems for themselves and the continent through production of more children than they can cater for.

Palmer Gus Jr (ed.), 2018, When Dream Bear Sings, Native Literatures of the Southern Plains, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 358 p.

The work under review here provides documentation and valorization of 29 different literary traditions representing 7 language families. When Dream Bear Sings is an anthology of Native North American literatures, edited by Gus Palmer Jr., and published in 2018 by University of Nebraska Press. The subtitle of this work, Native Literatures of the Southern Plains, indicates the geographical areas represented in this rich array of verbal art traditions and historical works. Among the written and ...

Cultural heritage, artistic innovation, and activism on Amazigh Berber websites

ABSTRACTNew means of communication and networking have intensified the contact among the Amazigh (Berber) communities in North Africa and diasporic locations, reinforcing pre-existent forms of transnationalism and deterritorialisation. The Internet, however, reinforces local identities as well. This article claims that historical memory and visual and verbal art interact with the social and political discourses on Amazigh/Berber websites, producing local, transregional, and transnational forms of identity. The issue is explored by examining Berber websites’ production of ‘heritage’ and artistic innovation linked to the criticism of national historical constructions and of ‘globalising’ approaches to the Maghreb. The online reactions to the label ‘Arab Spring’ and the artistic and political discourses of the online project ‘New World Embassy of Azawad’ are appraised as examples of interrelating political, artistic and identity dynamics. A second issue concerns the interpretation of Amazigh cultural and political discourse. The question is whether Amazigh websites create contradictory discourses to be interpreted in terms of new ‘mythologies’ or of ‘strategic essentialism’.

Construction of Feminine Ideology in Gusii Oral Poetry

Abagusii females of the Kisii community of Western Kenya are largely socialized through the community’s oral poetry to operate within the limits of a feminine ideology. The choice of Gusii oral poetry as a vehicle for studying feminine ideology of Abagusii is informed by the fact that this genre of Gusii verbal arts is the oldest and most versatile genres of Gusii orature. Equally, it has had a long and intimate relationship with human communities globally. This paper thus examines the Gusii oral poems as a semiotic system with encoded signs which embody the Gusii feminine ideology. The objective of the paper is to establish the construction and nature of the Gusii feminine ideology and its efficacy in shaping social relationships within Abagusii as a social entity. In the analysis of the purposively sampled oral poems, this paper uses a conceptual framework developed from the Chandler (1995) strands of semiotics in which he argues that a culture produces signs and attributes meanings to them. The tenets of semiosis are then linked to the sociological literary theory strands of Rosenblatt (1978) in which he argues that literature mirrors protocols of the society which produces it and serves given social purposes. Finally, strands from the two literary theories of semiotics and sociological are further interlinked with the Althusserian (1989) and Eagleton (1976)’s tenets of Marxism in which they argue that art is a product of a specific historical epoch and its purpose is to be an Ideological State Apparatuses which interpellates people into becoming subjects of specific ideologies. This paper has adopted the analytical study design. Secondary data was obtained from a review of published works and primary data was the textual analysis of Gusii oral poems collected from the Abagusii resource persons, copyrighted music stores and libraries. The sampling of data and resource persons was both purposive and through snowballing. The study is significant in the sense that it contributes towards celebrating the role of oral poetry as a vehicle for enabling humans to perceive themselves, their environment and their world in ways unique to them and enhancing of intercultural relations as well as forms a basis for related studies. Keywords : Construction, Feminine, Ideology, Oral poetry, Perceptions, Interpellation DOI : 10.7176/ADS/74-02 Publication date :June 30 th 2019

Guajá - Kamixatuhujaxa’amỹ jawajaxa’amỹ hajkaminũ ta xi haraka - O finado dono do jabuti queria transar com o finado dono do jaguar

A narrativa foi registrada em 2016 na aldeia Awa, Terra Indígena Caru (Maranhão), e é contada por Hajkaramykỹa Awa Guajá. Trata-se de um dos episódios do mito que tem como personagem principal Kamixatuhujaxa’amỹna, o dono do jabuti, e se passa em um tempo em que os animais eram “gente” e os jabutis podiam correr. Nesse mito, o jabuti e o jaguar se encontram, e o jaguar acaba enganado e morto. No episódio transcrito, o jaguar morre após ter uma relação sexual com o jabuti. Esta é uma narrativa cômica e é um exemplo de arte verbal dos Awa Guajá.

Tikuna - Fènǖèkǖ rǜ âi - El Cazador y el Tigre

El Cazador y el Tigre, o cómo un hombre se salvó de un jaguar... clavándole su fl auta en el ano. Desde una perspectiva antropológica, este pequeño cuento para niños narrado por Loida Ángel Ruiz constituye una muestra algo atípica del arte verbal de los tikunas, más rico en mitos y leyendas que en fi cciones carentes de enseñanza como ésta. A nivel discursivo, en cambio, este cuento ilustra de forma muy representativa los principales recursos gramaticales y estilísticos a los que recurre la narración en tikuna, un idioma posiblemente aislado del noroeste amazónico.

ФОЛЬКЛОРНЫЕ ТРАДИЦИИ В БАЛКАРСКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ 1930-1940-Х ГОДОВ (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ ТВОРЧЕСТВА С. ХОЧУЕВА)

The article studies folklore traditions role in artistic thinking formation at the initial stages of the Balkar literature development in the 1930-1940s. The object of the analysis is the creative work of one of the founders of professional national literature Salikh Khochuev, which contains the characteristic features of the literary process of the aforementioned period. The arsenal of figures of speech, compositional devices (epithets, similes, retardation, composition clamps, story in the story), motives, scenes, phraseological and paroemiological units borrowed from the aesthetic resources of folk art are considered in the comparative aspect. The study shows that successive connection of literature with folklore has contributed to the process of artistic thought evolution and has determined the trends in verbal art development.