Vernacular Tradition Research Articles

“Taak op, wats yu (s)touri?”: Dancehall storytelling and Tanya Stephens’ grassroots feminism

In (re)considering the viability of Jamaican dancehall and reggae artist Tanya Stephens’ rejection of the label ‘feminist’, this paper uses her song, Wats Yu (S)touri, from her 2004 Gangster Blues album to trace several critical grassroots performativities which address popular forms of Jamaican grassroots women’s activism. These modes of activism are regarded as reflective of traditional feminist practices which carry over to dancehall. The paper is primarily concerned with the context of Stephens’ music, specifically regarding whether some of her storytelling practices conform with the vernacular tradition of taakin op (a strident retort). It offers a reading of feminism against Stephens’ claim, suggesting that dancehall practices like taakin op are also linked to longer histories of Jamaican grassroots performativities which extend beyond the dancehall itself. The aim is to understand how Stephens’ feminism, albeit disavowed, enlarges ideas about dancehall as a subversive hi/story of post/colonial Blackness in Jamaica. Accordingly, specific attention is paid to themes of romantic love, work and ‘gyangsta feminism’, a coinage following the title of a track on the same album.

Ralph Ellison, Democracy, and American Vernacular Culture

ABSTRACT This review essay examines In the Shadow of Invisibility: Ralph Ellison and the Promise of American Democracy (2022), by Sterling Lecater Bland, Jr. Eschewing the more expressly political approaches taken by recent Ellison scholars, Bland shows how Ellison mines the resources of vernacular traditions—far more than those of politics or ideology—to explore the formation of national culture. This was true, according to Bland’s first chapter, even during Ellison’s leftist years of literary apprenticeship. Subsequent chapters take up Ellison’s continued engagements with democracy and vernacular culture in his writings on jazz, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Black Arts movement, as well as in his never-completed second novel.

Looking back thinking ahead towards the vernacular architecture of Gurage, Ethiopia

In accordance with the culture and environment, vernacular architecture has provided suitable solutions. People are looking for more environmentally friendly structures in today's globalized world. To comprehend the sustainable qualities of indigenous housing tradition, thus it is important to look back in time. This article has used the idea of sustainable development to evaluate the worth of Gurage, an Ethiopian traditional architecture. The indigenous architecture of the Gurage communities is constructed in line with the community's history, culture, and surroundings. In light of this, the research investigates traditional houses and the socio-cultural practices of the locals that promote resilience. In order to find a scientific basis and encourage its implementation in the future, this paper analyzes the architectural expression in Gurage, holistically in light of the knowledge and experience of the local populace. Using a phenomenological research design and a qualitative research approach that involves observation, key informant interviews (20), and focused group discussions (3) with carefully chosen participants, an explanation for the vernacular architecture of the study areas was established. The outcome of the paper reveals how much the rich vernacular traditions of the study site are still relevant today in creating an environmentally and culturally sustainable settlement. It implies that the traditional building practices and cultural heritage of the Gurage people can contribute to the development of a sustainable settlement that is both environmentally friendly and culturally appropriate. By expressing concern about these issues, it highlights the importance of taking proactive measures to safeguard the environment, preserve cultural heritage, and ensure a sustainable future for generations to come.

Thresholds of Architectural Morphology of Yoruba Buildings in Southwest Nigeria till the Millenia

The literary materials on Yoruba architecture that are more common are descriptive. They dwell mostly on the massing of units, individual configurations within buildings and cultural patterns in ornamentation. The direct links between the living spaces and their socio-cultural implications are emphasized to explain the origin of the forms. The morphological chronology in the building patterns is regarded as vernacularisation processes especially from the traditional patterns to the vernacular traditions. There are hardly any publications of Yoruba architectural buildings beyond the later vernacular patterns like the Afro-Brazilian style. While these volumes of literature are mostly limited to the traditional and vernacular styles, the ethno-acculturation of more contemporary and foreign building patterns like the "international" and the "postmodern" styles into the body of indigenous architectural building patterns of the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria are not being investigated and published. The culture of a people is preserved in their architecture. If the culture of the Yoruba is preserved in their buildings, the cross-pollination of the Yoruba culture with different inputs from foreign cultures should be evident in the new indigenous buildings that are evolving up till the end of the twentieth century. This chapter material has organized the different lines of thought in the morphology of indigenous architectural building patterns of the Yoruba into a continuum that extends beyond the limits of the current body of literature on the topic. It attempts to decipher the new forms and elements of the buildings of later Yoruba indigenous architecture up till the turn of the twentieth century. The emphasis is on the definition of newer building patterns that can be termed as "indigenous" to the Yoruba culture in Southwest Nigeria. Having increased the ambit of the Yoruba architecture concerning the building patterns beyond the exposition of the previous publications, the current surcease on the morphology of Yoruba architecture in print can be broken to open up more research and publications on contemporary thresholds of the indigenous Yoruba architecture. The chapter is concluded with a guide on the identity of buildings of indigenous architecture of the Yoruba even within the morass of foreign building patterns that crowd the Yoruba towns in Southwest Nigeria.

Lived religion of the devotees of rural surbs in Armenia

The article analyses the beliefs and practices of rural surb worshippers in Armenia on the basis of lived religion approaches. Surb means “holy”, “sacred”, “divine”. It is a saint and a place of veneration. A surb can be a book, a khachkar, a church, a tree, an image, etc. – any revered object. The everyday religion of believers is a special relationship with the sacred and the divine power of the saints. People accept the power of the surb as real and experience its effects every day. Ritual practices in the surbahs are seen as a way of influencing the divine power to meet certain needs and perform certain tasks. Ritual practices in surbs have real physical and spiritual efficacy for the worshippers. Also important is physical contact with the shrine. The representations and practices of devotees of rural shrines are not approved by the Armenian Apostolic Church. In Armenia there is a vernacular tradition successfully operating in parallel to the official and canonical tradition.

Investigating pan-Romance prepositional adverbials

Abstract Complex adverbials built with the pattern ‘Preposition + Adjective (PA)’ such as Portuguese em especial ‘especially’ or Romanian de sigur ‘for sure’ display a remarkable frequency and pan-Romance consistency. Nevertheless, this pattern has been largely neglected by research. The ‘Third Way’ project intends to fill this gap, arguing that PAs are a relevant third way of constructing adverbials, aside with short adverbs and adverbs in -mente. It subjects prepositional adverbials to a historico-varietal analysis in a comparative pan-Romance approach to trace their trajectory from Latin up to now. This article presents an enquiry design for field research that allows examining the adverbials’ current usage and ongoing change in substandard varieties of all major Romance languages. The results are meant to help reconstruct the diachrony of PAs in Romance, especially in view of the spoken vernacular tradition.

Damage Risk Reduction using Indonesian Wooden Culture

Cultural Heritage can play a crucial role in fostering resilience by reducing vulnerabilities and providing precious assets for an affected region’s sustainable social and economic development during its recovery phase by attracting investment, creating employment, or providing renewable natural resources. Disaster Risk Management (DRM) strategies allow a systematic approach to identify, assess, and reduce disaster risks decreasing socioeconomic vulnerability. Extensive consultations with the different institutions involved in preserving and disseminating information often contribute to design mitigation measures that align the understanding of various risks among stakeholders and communities, particularly in risk monitoring and emergency response. This article shows a peculiar and exemplary context as that of Indonesia. We want to show that Indonesian wood, constructed following the vernacular tradition, is a source to reduce the risks in that framework. A brief introduction shows how disaster management in Indonesia’s plan is essential to protect the community and its tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

The Prophet Muḥammad between Lived Religion and Elite Discourse: Rethinking and Decolonizing Christian Assessments of the uswa ḥasana through Comparative Theological Aesthetics

ABSTRACT Previous Christian assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad generally fall within two categories. The first asks whether or how he may be considered a post-canonical prophet. In the second, both Christians and Muslims sidestep the inquiry and advocate for the ‘two Words’ analogy (comparing Muḥammad to Mary and the Qur’an to Jesus the incarnate Word). However, attending to Muslim lived religion in postcolonial and diasporic contexts reveals an alternative, emic account of the meaning of prophecy and revelation in Islam: the embodied, emplaced and enacted experience of Muḥammad through poetry in praise of the Prophet and Prophetic beauty. Theological aesthetics prepares us for decolonizing Christian assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad through Muslim popular piety and vernacular traditions. A decolonial understanding of the experience of the Prophet suggests that his place in the experience of Muslims is unlike the way Christians relate to prophets, generally, and more akin to how Christians relate to Jesus—in both lived religion and elite discourse. While the ‘two Words’ analogy still has an important role to play, Christians would do well to rethink and decolonize their assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad through the lived religion—and elite discourses—of poetry in praise of the Prophet.

The Wandering of the Mother of God with the Child in the Folk Tradition of the Border Between Slavia Orthodoxa and Slavia Catholica: Apocryphal and Folklore Motifs

The narrative of the wandering Mother of God with the Child is popular within the corpus of the Folk Bible circulating on the frontier between Eastern and Western Christianity. In vernacular oral traditions transmitted on the borderlands of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, we find not only interpretations of the canonical source of the New Testament motifs “Flight to Egypt” and “The Massacre of the Innocents” (Mat 2:13–19), but also some parabiblical motifs reaching back to apocryphal texts of the first centuries of Christianity (e.g. Prot. Jas., Arab. Gos. Inf.). The latter reflect traditional developments, incorporating portrayals of biblical characters into the native worldview of narrators. The motif of the wandering Mother of God with the Child is found in several types of oral transmission: a) The Nativity/Christmas ritual: carols, pastorals, church songs, sermons and homilies, fairground performances; b) in traditions relating to Marian devotion (folk Marian songs, iconography in Eastern Christianity); c) in axiological and moral traditions: songs, legends, charms. This paper presents collected variants of the motif of Wandering in folk culture and analysis of the origin of the motifs and their adaptation in the environment of vernacular tradition and of the social, religious and theological messages contained in the texts.

Cat Spirits in North-Western China: Worship Practices, Origin, and External Relations

Abstract This paper examines the cult of cat spirits in north-western China and their veneration by the Han Chinese, Tibetans, and Monguors. These spirits are revered as family spirits and guardians of wealth and property, but possess resentful and revengeful personalities. The paper explores the origins of the cult, local worship and summoning practices, protection methods, and links with other vernacular traditions in the region. The study uses a combination of research methods, including analysis of Chinese historical sources, published modern narratives, and the authors’ own fieldwork in Mongolia. The paper employs a qualitative and comparative approach to identify invariant features of cat spirits across various local traditions and highlights the assimilation of the cult into different traditional belief systems where it is enriched with new traits. The paper sheds light on the rich and complex tapestry of beliefs and practices associated with cat spirits. The article suggests that the cult of cat spirits may have had non-Han and non-Tibetan origins, possibly connected to Proto-Mongolic tribes.

Lyric Dispossession as Solitary Presence

Abstract While medieval literature offers many models of solitary thinking, vernacular lyric confronts the problem of solitude in a unique mode, grappling and coping with this phenomenon that gives shape and texture to ambivalence and vexation. Comparing the event of lyric dispossession with Petrarch’s idea of solitude, this essay examines solitary presence as a musicopoetic art form across various vernacular traditions, from the Occitan works of Bernart de Ventadorn, William IX, and Arnaut Daniel to lyrics of the Iberian Peninsula, including the Mozarabic kharja (final stanzas of poems written in Arabic or Hebrew in the Romance dialect of Andalusia) and a Galician-Portuguese cantiga d’amigo (songs in which a young girl laments the absence of her lover). Lyric dispossession can affirm female desire despite its dominance as a male solitary presence in the courtly tradition. In the poetic dynamics of the muwashshah, discourses of dispossession compete through the interaction of different languages and social registers. The muwashshah poetics illuminates how the female-voiced solitary presence is maintained not only in the cantiga d’amigo but also in other genres such as trobairitz cansos and Old French crusade departure lyrics from the perspective of women left behind.

Victoria Moul. A Literary History of Latin and English Poetry: Bilingual Verse Culture in Early Modern England

The Latin poetry of early modern English writers has typically been the preserve of classical reception studies; scholars of English literature have tended to regard it as tangential, inferior, or merely derivative. Moul’s groundbreaking study insists upon the inseparability of early modern English and Latin poetry and the impossibility of reading one without the other. Drawing extensively on her own recent investigations of early modern Latin manuscript holdings in English collections—the first such survey in modern times—as well as on early printed texts, she argues forcefully for the bilingualism of early modern English verse culture, demonstrating the constant counterpoint between the respective strands of Latin and vernacular poetry. For English literary scholars, the book’s most striking achievement is to demonstrate, as Moul puts it, ‘how English verse culture as a whole looks, feels, sounds and makes sense differently if we stop pretending that all that Latin is not there’ (p. 2). She shows not only the extent to which early modern readers and writers were steeped in classical literature but also how the classical canon as taught in humanist grammar schools differed from that of the modern curriculum and the generic, lexical, and thematic implications of that difference. In a valuable correction to a conventional view of Renaissance writers as determinedly ‘classicizing’, she demonstrates the importance of medieval and later Latin literature, as well as the biblical and vernacular traditions. By showing how the neo-Latin tradition feeds into the vernacular, and by setting vernacular poetry in its contemporary neo-Latin context, she is able to provide some new and arresting readings of familiar texts. Both Latinists and English scholars will welcome the array of virtually unknown authors who appear at every turn, offering tantalizing prospects for further study.

Kumlbúa þáttr, an Eschatological Event: The Traumatic Ontology of Being in Time in Medieval Iceland

<i>Kumlbúa þáttr</i>, an Eschatological Event: The Traumatic Ontology of Being in Time in Medieval Iceland

The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland, by Brian James Stone

The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland, by Brian James Stone

The Cosmopolitan Vernacular: Korean Shamans (Mudang) in the Global Spirituality Market

Cosmopolitanism has often been used to discuss religions that had been institutionalized, canonized, and then transmitted globally through premodern cultural flows. In contrast, vernacular religions have maintained their local uniqueness in terms of pantheons, belief systems, practices, and ritual objects—even into the 21st century. This article discusses the cultural and societal conditions that have enabled the vernacular traditions of Korean shamanism (musok) to travel globally in real and virtual worlds. Not all Korean shamans (mudang) work with foreigners, but the four ethnographic case studies that this article examines are cosmopolitan practitioners. They assert that spirits can communicate beyond spoken languages, that mudang clients do not have to be Koreans, and that media depictions are a vehicle for making the practice available to more people in Korea and worldwide. Such international activity has become an easily achievable task in hypermodern conditions. The vernacular is flexible in meaning and usage because institutions do not supervise it and it is often an undocumented oral tradition. Mudang constantly recreate musok practices from their personal interpretation of the religious experience. Thus, when musok goes global, it is reinterpreted and transformed to fit the cultural understandings of the target audiences.

The Sinitic poetry of Fujiwara Seika and his place in the history of early modern &lt;i&gt;kanbun&lt;/i&gt; literature

Fujiwara Seika (藤原惺窩, 1561–1619) has often attracted scholarly attention as one of the founders of Neo-Confucianism in Japan. Yet his substantial literary oeuvre, which includes works in both literary Sinitic (Jp. kanbun 漢文) and Japanese, remains largely unexplored. Just like most of his educated contemporaries, Seika was well-versed in kanbun composition and left us with a considerable number of Sinitic poems (Jp. 漢詩 kanshi), but the few modern scholars who have commented on his verse have been quite critical in their evaluation of his poetic prowess. According to such scholars, Seika’s kanshi suffer from several serious defects, including a derivative and uninventive diction, a lack of individuality, and an inability to fruitfully engage with indigenous poetic material.This study turns to a selection of Fujiwara Seika’s Sinitic poems to cast doubt on such claims. It begins by surveying scholarly opinion on Seika’s verse, proceeds to analyze his kanshi poetics by focusing on diction, tone, and the use of Japanese poetic material, and concludes with a brief discussion of Seika’s ideal of “living verse” (Jp. 活句 kakku). The study argues that, far from being a “bad” poet, Seika was capable of producing innovative, personal, and eclectic verse at a stage in the development of kanbun literature often described as one of blandness, literary mimicry, and slavish imitation of Chinese precedent. In so doing, this study challenges conventional scholarly narratives of Fujiwara Seika’s—and, by extension, other early Tokugawa poets’—place in the history of Japanese belles-lettres and points to the importance of treating the kanbun corpus as an academic subject no less serious than the vernacular tradition.

Solomon and Marcolf: Vernacular Traditions, ed. Jan M. Ziolkowski, with the assistance of Edward Sanger and Michael B. Sullivan. Cambridge, MA, and London: Department of the Classics, Harvard University Press, 2022, xxvi, 515 pp., 28 b/w and color ill.

The trickster figure can be found in literature from around the world, operating always as a clever, mocking, and provocative character. He is a rogue who tends to tell the truth although the authorities do not want to hear it. In the western world, especially in Germany, there were, above all, Pfaffe Amîs (Priest Amîs) by The Stricker (ca. 1220–1240) and Till Eulenspiegel, probably by Herman Bote (first printed in 1510). Another noteworthy trickster was Marcolf whose seemingly foolish but in reality smart sayings regularly counter comments or opinions by King Solomon. Although the latter is famous for his wisdom as already described in the Old Testament, Marcolf, Marcoul, Morolf, Melkólfr, Marolfus, or Bertoldo, among other adaptations, opposes him and can demonstrate that conditions are different, that people operate poorly or evilly, or stupidly. The original narrative might have emerged somewhere in northwestern Europe around 1200, but since the tree of the many different versions is so complex, many of the questions pertaining to authorship and dating are hard to answer. Ziolkowski and Margaret Ziolkowski first give full credit to two early scholars who shed much light on this matter, John Mitchell Kembole (1807–1857) and Aleksandr Veselovskii (1838–1906).

Dragon's Blood or the Red Delusion: Textual Tradition, Craftsmanship, and Discovery in the Early Modern Period

This article explores the plurality of referents associated with the term “dragon's blood” (“sanguis draconis”), a legendary substance that brings together Greco-Roman and Arabic medical knowledge, local vernacular traditions and artisanal practices, and new Spanish and Portuguese botanical discoveries. The study of dragon's blood reveals the interface between overlapping epistemic paradigms governing the definition, use, and circulation of complex material substances in early modern Europe, ranging from humanist learned discussions and artisanal experimentation to vernacular narratives of discovery, along with the shifting criteria of truth, authenticity, and value advocated by different communities of learning and practice.

Literature of the Black Diaspora and the Performance of Caribbean and African American Aural Texts

The second half of the twentieth century, witnessed a new kind of literature often referred to as "Literature of the Black Diaspora; its appearance and acceptance into mainstream world literature was not without hostilities: overcame what seems like a futile effort, and now a major world literature. One salient feature of literature of the black Diaspora is the representation of aural texts in its composition and reception. This paper is therefore designed to examine the concept and performance of Afro-Caribbean and African American aurality as African legacy and constituent of the Black Literature. This paper, with reference to specific oral and aural texts, discovers that the performance of orality and aurality is a veritable heritage of the Caribbean and African American poetry and this criticism of the black vernacular tradition ranging from the spirituals and blues to jazz, calypso, reggae, hip-hop, gospel, and other contemporary poetic forms indicates that African American and Afro-Caribbean music is particularly rich in mixture of African tradition. The tradition was heralded by the forceful movement of Africans from their native land, through the middle passage, and their ultimate adaptation to a new land. Thus, music is to Africa as the anvil is to the blacksmith, and slavery was the surface on which American and Caribbean music was forged no matter how refined they are now. Aside emotional needs, as with Baldwin and Du Bois, music gives black people ―ability to say ―things‖ that otherwise cannot be said- blurs that boundary between the white man and the black man‖.

PEDIATRIC PRACTICE AND RESEARCH IN AYURVEDA: THE RIGHT TIME

Kaumārabhr̥tya or Bālacikitsa has transcended the tests of time. It has been an area of proactive practice in several parts of the nation. Pediatrics is a promising field not only in Ayurveda but in Siddha (Kuzhantai maruttuvam/Bālavagadattiruṭṭu) and Unani (Amraz-e-Atfal) too. These traditional branches of pediatrics are at crossroads. The public notion that the indigenous, traditional interventions suit their children better has probably led to an increased preference towards these systems. On the other side, for these practices to remain current and find their deserving space in community health, it needs much more evidence. Health promotion and disease prevention Svarṇaprāśana is one of the most important contributions of Kaumārabhr̥tya to society. It is like presenting ‘old wine in new bottle’ – a new beacon in Ayurveda Pediatric practice. It is the experience of many learned practitioners of Ayurveda and research outcomes in specific that Svarṇaprāśana acts as a positive adjuvant to many existing therapies and boost the cure and recovery rate and many a times acts as a sure shot remedy too! Its use as a prophylactic immunomodulator and nootropic has become a widespread practice all over the country owing to its safety and effectiveness in these domains. In biomedicine as well, gold is an emerging broad- spectrum therapeutic agent in cancer, respiratory illnesses, pain, and cognitive impairments. Non- gold preparations having prophylactic and immunomodulatory actions are also common in practice as parts of vernacular traditions, like Uraimarunnu in the south and Janma ghunti in the north. Prākāra yogas are immunomodulators specific to children, mentioned in Ārogyakalpadruma (pediatric treatise).