Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 395-424.

Dans cet article, nous présentons et discutons de notre méthodologie pour la constitution d’un « petit corpus » comparatif de narration orale en occitan. Il s’agit d’un « petit corpus » nouveau et unique, dans une langue minorisée, ce qui soulève un certain nombre de défis particuliers : la complexité des rapports entre l’écrit et l’oral dans la pratique du conte d’une part, et d’autre part, de nombreuses difficultés méthodologiques (variations diatopique, diachronique et sociolinguistique ; absence de données (...) numérisées ; outils de traitement automatique des langues en cours de développement). Cet article propose non seulement une méthodologie pour la constitution d’un corpus permettant d’explorer divers degrés d’oralité, mais contribue aussi plus globalement au débat sur la problématique des « petits corpus » pour les langues minorisées. (shrink)

In this paper, we seek to explain the power of perspective taking in narrative discourse by turning to research on the oral foundations of storytelling in human communication and language. We argue that narratives function through a central process of alignment between the viewpoints of narrator, hearer/reader, and character and develop an analytical framework that is capable of generating general claims about the processes and outcomes of narrative discourse while flexibly accounting for the great linguistic variability both across and (...) within stories. The central propositions of this viewpoint alignment framework are that the distance between the viewpoints of participants in the narrative construal – narrator, character, reader – is dynamic and regulated by linguistic choices as well as contextual factors. Fundamentally, viewpoint alignment is grounded in oral narrative interaction and, from this conversation, transferred to the written narrative situation, varying between demonstration and invasion of the narrative subjects and guiding readers’ route of processing the narrative (experientialversusreflective). Our claim is that variations in viewpoint alignment are functional to the communicative context and intended outcomes of narratives. This is illustrated with the analysis of a corporate journalistic narrative that comprises both interactional and non-interactional aspects of storytelling. The concept of viewpoint alignment further explains the oral fundaments of narrative discourse in conversational storytelling and poses new questions on the relation between the dynamic processing of stories on the one hand and their static outcomes on the other. (shrink)

The volume provides an overview of the origins of early medieval aristocratic literature. Although there are regional, linguistic and formal differences, one can observe a number of similarities. Oral literature disseminates a range of themes that are shared by narratives in most parts of the continent. The authors address these similarities in Roman, Nordic, Anglo-Saxon and Germanic literature and use different methodologies to explain them.

The article analyses how the oral history of philosophy can be conceptualized as a genre and a discipline of the history of philosophy. The need for this kind of conceptualization arose due to recent spreading of interviews in the genre of the oral history of philosophy, which in turn became a subject for the special issue The Oral History of Philosophy in Filosofska Dumka. Analysing this issue, the author proves that the “dialoguing” nature of the interview builds (...) inflated expectations about the oral history as well as its boundaries as an approach in a historical-philosophical study. He also suggests distinguishing the interview as a genre of oral philosophy – dialogue, which is a traditional philosophical literary form, from a tool in historical-philosophical study. In the latter case, it is important to determine who will play a role of a historian: an author of historical narration, an interviewee or an interviewer. Depending on the answer to the previous question, the author distinguishes three possible perspectives of the oral history of philosophy development: an interview as a self-sufficient study in the history of philosophy, an interview as a self-sufficient source for historical-philosophical research and an interview as one of sources for historical-philosophical research. Each of them has its opportunities for a historian of philosophy and plays its role in recruiting students and doctoral students (who often are involved as interviewers) to research work. (shrink)

The classical Indian variety of history may be called ‘istory’. It is not completely true that no real importance was attached to istory in classical India. But much of oral istorical literature is lost since—perhaps—narrating istory was considered a performance. Unlike historical narratives, istorical narratives are presentative, not representative. Istory can be understood as a system of narrating past events that has a purpose and poetic beauty. Finally, the paper will argue that istory is based on cognitive tools of (...) two types: epistemic tools such as testimony, inference, tarka and aesthetic tools. Thus, it has a hybrid cognitive method. (shrink)

The current study collected orally-delivered autobiographical narratives from a sample of 44 undergraduate students. Participants were asked to produce both deceptive and non-deceptive versions of their narrative to two specific autobiographical question prompts while standing in front of a video camera. Narratives were then analyzed with Coh-Metrix software on 33 indices of linguistic cohesion. Following a Bonferroni correction for the large number of linguistic variables , results indicated that the deceptive narratives contained more explicit action verbs, less linguistic complexity, and (...) less referential coherence . The results support a theory that, in deceptive narratives, there is greater narrative distance between the self that narrates and the self that is narrated about. This suggests that narrative selves are constituted not as autonomous selves, but are subject to processes that are likely operating on a subconscious level. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article investigates the presence of heterodiscourse in narratives of oral tradition. Therefore, the theoretical foundation is based on the Bakhtinian perspective, which understands the discourse, in the literary narratives, as marked by heterodiscursivity, evidencing a diversity of social voices that signal ways of understanding and points of view about the world. The analysis of the corpus, composed of two narratives from the oral tradition, points out, therefore, that the voices of the narrator, of the traditional storytellers (...) and of the characters appear in constant dialogicity with the social voices, guided by axiologies, positions and evaluative centers of social, cultural and historical order. The study thus found ways of reflecting and refracting the events of existence, moral frameworks that guide them and the understanding of ways of being and acting in concrete situations of life in society, in line with the dialogic assumptions of the research. (shrink)

In the last half century, oral history has emerged as a historical approach that is being considered by archivists involved with the collection and accessibility of archival collections for researchers and interested members of the public. The approach to ethics by oral historians has emerged from two major fears: the fear of failing as researchers and the fear of failing the narrators and doing harm. Archivists also need to be cognisant of these fears when collecting oral history. (...) Confronting these fears makes it possible to understand the complex questions behind oral historians’ and archivists’ preoccupations and sheds light on how oral history has evolved and expanded as a field. The research objectives of this article are to determine the three principles identified from the Belmont Report that relate and should be applied to the collection of oral histories by archivists and historians from communities and individuals residing and working in and alongside the Kruger National Park. The theoretical framework for this article is the critical race theory to address historical accounts from communities and individuals sidelined by the mainstream media in South Africa. For the purposes of this article, the study was conducted with the Makuleka and Tsonga communities to determine what ethical implications need to be respected when conducting oral history projects with communities.Contribution: This article will contribute to ethics concerning social sciences and specifically the collection of oral history. (shrink)

Cette nouvelle enquête sur le patrimoine narratif de tradition orale dans les Alpes de la Savoie s’est inscrite dans la continuité des enquêtes de Charles Joisten, commencées dès les années 1950 et qui ont donné les recueils de contes et de récits de croyance rendus disponibles au tournant de ce siècle. Seul ce type d’enquête directe s’est révélé capable de nous permettre — en tirant parti des moyens disponibles de nos jours, notamment d’enregistrement — de donner le jour à de (...) nouveaux exemplaires de cette matière de l’oralité. Nous exposerons ici les aspects de notre expérience sur plusieurs années de terrain ayant abouti à plusieurs publications. Nous mettrons l’accent sur les questions de forme narrative et de fond dans l’univers de l’oralité, tout particulièrement en ce qui concerne la narration des croyances, dans leurs contextes historiques. Our new survey on the narrative heritage from oral tradition in the Alps of Savoy has been performed in the continuity of Charles Joisten’s opus, gathered since the 50s, which was made fully available in collections of tales and belief narratives about the turn of this century. This type of direct investigation in face-to-face interaction—taking advantage of current means of recording available today—has proved to remain still nowadays the only one able to elicit new data. The main aspects of our field experience in the long term which resulted in several publications about tales and belief narratives will be questionned. While putting the emphasis on narrative form and substantive issues in the realm of orality, we will focus particularly on belief narratives in their historical contexts. (shrink)

Reasoning may help solving problems and understanding personal experiences. Ruminative reasoning, however, is inconclusive, repetitive, and usually regards negative thoughts. We asked how reasoning as manifested in oral autobiographical narratives might differ when it is ruminative versus when it is adaptive by comparing two constructs from the fields of psychotherapy research and narrative research that are potentially beneficial: innovative moments (IMs) and autobiographical reasoning (AR). IMs captures statements in that elaborate on changes regarding an earlier personal previous problem of (...) the narrator, and AR capture the connecting of past events with other parts of the narrator’s life or enduring aspects of the narrator. A total ofN= 94 university students had been selected from 492 students to differ maximally on trait rumination and trait adaptive reflection, and were grouped as ruminators (N= 38), reflectors (N= 37), and a group with little ruminative and reflective tendencies (“unconcerned,”N= 19). Participants narrated three negative personal experiences (disappointing oneself, harming someone, and being rejected) and two self-related experiences of more mixed valence (turning point and lesson learnt). Reflectors used more IMs and more negative than positive autobiographical arguments (AAs), but not more overall AAs than ruminators. Group differences were not moderated by the valence of memories, and groups did not differ in the positive effect of narrating on mood. Trait depression/anxiety was predicted negatively by IMs and positively by AAs. Thus, IMs are typical for reflectors but not ruminators, whereas the construct of AR appears to capture reasoning processes irrespective of their ruminative versus adaptive uses. (shrink)

The type of ‘Al-isnād al-āli’ (higher chain of authority) which has great importance for the science of ḥadīths that constitutes the second best source of the Islam, expresses the value in terms of its proximity to the period of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). If ḥadīth has ‘al-isnād al-āli’ in the works of the scholars provides us with assurance on the intend of the ḥadīth. For this reason, the values of the works of those authors who have constructed (...) their works with al-isnād al-āli undoubted in the science of ḥadīth. However the work of Abu al-Jahm al-Bāhilī’s (d. 228/842) named al-Juz‘ had that kind of ḥadīth, it has not appreciated by scholars, he could not get enough attention in his period and after it. His work contains famous scholar al-Layth Ibn Sa‘d’s (d. 175/791) narrative who claimed by ḥadīth scholars that his students neglected and omitted his ḥadīths and knowledge. Al-Layth Ibn Sa‘d was known doing transmission by written copies. The similarity of al-Layth Ibn Sa‘d narrations in al-Juz‘ with al-Layth narrations, which are also found in other sources, strengthens the claims of the existence of a narrative process based on the written texts in the early periods. In this study, these transfers of Abu al-Jahm reflected on other works will be examined and tried to build narrations of his teacher al-Layth Ibn Sa‘d. country, we can say that the article will contribute to the studies of the history of religions.Summary: Ḥadīth works written in the third century of hijri are the most distinguished sources. The most fundamental works in the science of ḥadīth were written in this time. In the following period, numerous studies have been committed to paper on them. One of the eminent works is the named al-Juz’, which belongs to Abu al-Jahm al-Bāhilī (d. 228/842). The author was not a person that was taken into consideration much during his time. It is possible to that he has been criticized about his scientific proficiency (al-Jarh). Nevertheless, al-Juz’ attracts attention due to the fact that it contains the type of ‘al-Isnād al-āli’ (higher chain of authority). Al-Isnād al-āli, which means access with the least number of narration from the author to the Prophet has very major role to determining of being dependable and certainty of the ḥadīths. The work of Abu al-Jahm which contains the ‘al-Isnād al-āli’ did not attract enough attention. However, another value of the al-Juz‘ is that its been included the narration of famous muhaddith Al-Layth Ibn Sa'd (d. 175/791). He is one of the valued mujtahid imams who have played an active and important role in second century of hijri. Al-Layth's narrations have been available insufficient amount present day. At this point the al-Juz‘ of Abu al-Jahm has great important because it contains many narrations of his shaykh Al-Layth Ibn Sa'd.The Juz‘ seems to has attracted the attention of the ḥadīths scholars in the following period. Indeed, various authors had the get authorization to narrate al-Juz‘. Furthermore, it is also known that some scholar in his period utilized his narration in their own study. For in¬stance, it was declared by Ibn Ḥajar (d. 852/1449) that al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870) had a narra¬tion belonging to Abu al-Jahm in his work ‘al-Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī’ with a muʻallaq chain (Omit¬ting his name). In the following periods, we come across famous muhaddith such as Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), al-Ṭabaranī (d. 360/971), Abū Bakr al-Marwazī (d. 292/905), al-Dāraquṭnī (d.385/995) and al-Bayhaqī (d. 458/1066) who received qualify of Juz's narra¬tion. Although the narrations of Abu al-Jahm are included in the prominent works of schol¬ars, it is clearly seems that the Juz‘ had not enough value except being procure as a written text. As far as we determined there are eleven narration of Abu al-Jahm in the main ḥadīth sources. In addition, we detected that some studies which contain some ḥadīth of al-Juz’ are list them in the same layout and order. This situation indicates that al-Juz’ is owned by these people as a duplicated edition and they narrated by not only orally transmitted but also spread by writing copy. This inference strengthens the theory which conceived by Modern researcher Fuad Sezgin (1924-2018) that ḥadīth transmission had conducted not only through oral transfer but also through written copies.Even though he lived in a very active time of oral transmission of ḥadīth and the time of specific journey for learning and pursuing ḥadīth, it is seen that Abu al-Jahm formed his Juz‘ from the ḥadīths that he procured only from his six shaykhs. That was quite less amount in that period. Juz‘, has an ʿAlāʾ al-Rijāl classification (ranked according to narrators) as ex¬pected in his period method. Abu al-Jahm began his study with his shaykh Al-Layth Ibn Sa'd’s narration, then completed with Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna’s. Juz‘ includes 112 ḥadīths. Ex¬cept two muʻallaq isnāds (omitting one or more narrators), all of ḥadīth has muttaṣil isnāds (narrators in the chain connected each other without omitting). Al-Juz‘ available nowadays in a published form. It seems that some of ḥadīth datas included in the Juz‘ have content against Islamic juris-prudential judgements. For example, the Prophet’s sayings ‘One or two swallow of breast milk does not make haram’ and ‘Nobody can fast or pilgrimage for the benefit of someone else’; allowing to Subay‘a al-Aslamī to marry without waiting her ‘iddah (waiting period of a woman after the death of her husband or divorce); when she gave birth, ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān’s permission to al-Rubay‘a bint Mu‘avvidh not to wait her ‘iddah; when ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar has nasal bleeding he leaves the prayer, goes to wash, then back and continue where he leave off, without taking ablution; and describing marriage with polytheist women as for¬bidden (ḥarām). Of course, all this information must be examined within the framework of Islamic jurisprudence. However, Abu al-Jahm stands alone (tafarrūd) in such issues, it can be seen as the reasons to be recognized as a censured person (majrūḥ).Al-Juz‘ included 66 isnāds of Al-Layth Ibn Sa'd’s narration. Therefore it leaves behind all the works that compile the narration of Ibn Sa'd. That is why, we hypothesize that Juz‘ is a form of Al-Layth’s study that has survived to the present days. As a matter of fact, the muhaddiths who included the narrations of Al-Layth in their works, especially Ibn ḳuṭlūbughā could not ignore the Juz‘ of Abu al-Jahm; on the contrary, they took it as reference. In this case, it should be said that Abu al-Jahm al-Bāhilī is a loyal follower of Al-Layth and the word at¬tributed to Imām Shāfi‘ī and characterizing Al-Layth’s followers with disloyalty is invalid. (shrink)

Stories, in pictorial format, orally narrated, and later on as narrative texts, have played a key role in human evolution and to this day continue to surreptitiously teach us things and skills. In recent decades, psychologists and cognitive scientists have begun documenting the role of stories, and particularly fiction, in refining our sociocognitive skills. In this essay, I focus specifically on how stories, particularly written fiction, hone our emotion recognition skills. I present a brief overview of existing theorizing and research (...) findings, and propose the less-is-more hypothesis, according to which emotion recognition skills are sharpened by stories that do not tell us, but rather show us the emotional life of fictional characters. (shrink)

Human communication can be either monosemiotic or polysemiotic, depending on whether it combines ensembles of representations from one or more semiotic systems such as language, gesture and depiction. Each semiotic system has its unique storytelling potentials, which makes intersemiotic translation from one system to another challenging. We investigated the influence of the source semiotic system, realised in speech and a sequence of pictures, respectively, on the way the same story was retold using speech and co-speech gestures. The story was the (...) content of the picture book Frog, Where Are You?. A group of Finnish speakers saw the story in pictures, and another group heard it in matched oral narration. Each participant retold the story to an addressee and all narrations were video-recorded and analysed for both speech and gestures. Given the high degree of iconicity in depiction, we expected more iconic gestures (especially enactments) in the narratives translated from pictures than in those translated from speech. Conversely, we expected greater narrative coherence in the narratives translated from speech. The results showed that more iconic gestures were produced in the narratives translated from speech, but these were primarily not from the enactment subtype. As expected, iconic enactments were more frequent in the narratives translated from the story presented in pictures. The narratives produced by participants who had only heard the story did not have a greater variety of connective devices, yet the type of devices differed slightly between the groups. Together with some additional differences between the groups that had not been anticipated, the results indicate that a story presented in different semiotic systems tends to be translated into different polysemiotic narratives. (shrink)

En este artículo describiremos la vitalidad del sistema fonológico del mapudungun hablado por escolares pewenches de la Provincia del Biobío, VIII Región. Específicamente, nos hemos propuesto: a) Determinar los fonos/fonemas, y su fonotaxis, que se relevan como indicadores de vitalidad, b) Identificar las transferencias fonético-fonológicas presentes en la fonología del pewenche hablado por estos escolares y c) Interpretar las transferencias encontradas en términos del grado de vitalidad de la fonología de la lengua. La muestra está conformada por un grupo de (...) 20 escolares bilingües de entre 12 y 15 años de edad, que se encuentran cursando 7° y 8° año básico en escuelas rurales pertenecientes a dos comunidades pewenches del valle del Queuco, en la comuna de Alto Biobío. Para la recolección del material fonológico, se aplicó a los participantes una lista léxica de 65 ítems, material que se complementó con la narración oral en mapudungun de un cuento. Según nuestros datos, hemos podido constatar la existencia de una serie de rasgos fónicos en el mapudungun hablado por los escolares pewenches que obedece a la influencia de las estructuras fonológicas del castellano. Sin embargo, el grado y la difusión de los fenómenos de transferencia se desarrollan de manera heterogénea en ambas comunidades en estudio, debido, entre otros factores, a la intensidad del contacto. In this article we will describe the vitality of the phonological system Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren from the Biobío province, VIII Region. We intend: a) To determine the phones/phonemes, and their phonotactics, which are revealed as vitality markers. b) To identify the phonetic-phonological transferences which are present in the Pewenche spoken by these schoolchildren, and, c) To interpret the transferences found in terms of the degree of the language phonological vitality. The sample is composed of 20 bilingual schoolchildren from 12 to 15 years old, who are in 7th and 8th grade in rural primary schools belonging to two Pehuenche comunities from Valle del Queuco, in the city of Alto Biobío. To collect the phonological material, we applied a 64-item lexical list, which was complemented with the oral narration of a tale in Mapudungun. According to our data, we have been able to verify the existence of a series of phonic features in the Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren, which originate because of the influence of the Spanish phonological structure. However, the degree and spread of the transference phenomena develop in a heterogeneous way in both of the studied communities. due to the contact intensity, among other possible factors. (shrink)

En este artículo describiremos la vitalidad del sistema fonológico del mapudungun hablado por escolares pewenches de la Provincia del Biobío, VIII Región. Específicamente, nos hemos propuesto: a) Determinar los fonos/fonemas, y su fonotaxis, que se relevan como indicadores de vitalidad, b) Identificar las transferencias fonético-fonológicas presentes en la fonología del pewenche hablado por estos escolares y c) Interpretar las transferencias encontradas en términos del grado de vitalidad de la fonología de la lengua. La muestra está conformada por un grupo de (...) 20 escolares bilingües de entre 12 y 15 años de edad, que se encuentran cursando 7° y 8° año básico en escuelas rurales pertenecientes a dos comunidades pewenches del valle del Queuco, en la comuna de Alto Biobío. Para la recolección del material fonológico, se aplicó a los participantes una lista léxica de 65 ítems, material que se complementó con la narración oral en mapudungun de un cuento. Según nuestros datos, hemos podido constatar la existencia de una serie de rasgos fónicos en el mapudungun hablado por los escolares pewenches que obedece a la influencia de las estructuras fonológicas del castellano. Sin embargo, el grado y la difusión de los fenómenos de transferencia se desarrollan de manera heterogénea en ambas comunidades en estudio, debido, entre otros factores, a la intensidad del contacto. In this article we will describe the vitality of the phonological system Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren from the Biobío province, VIII Region. We intend: a) To determine the phones/phonemes, and their phonotactics, which are revealed as vitality markers. b) To identify the phonetic-phonological transferences which are present in the Pewenche spoken by these schoolchildren, and, c) To interpret the transferences found in terms of the degree of the language phonological vitality. The sample is composed of 20 bilingual schoolchildren from 12 to 15 years old, who are in 7th and 8th grade in rural primary schools belonging to two Pehuenche comunities from Valle del Queuco, in the city of Alto Biobío. To collect the phonological material, we applied a 64-item lexical list, which was complemented with the oral narration of a tale in Mapudungun. According to our data, we have been able to verify the existence of a series of phonic features in the Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren, which originate because of the influence of the Spanish phonological structure. However, the degree and spread of the transference phenomena develop in a heterogeneous way in both of the studied communities. due to the contact intensity, among other possible factors. (shrink)

En este artículo describiremos la vitalidad del sistema fonológico del mapudungun hablado por escolares pewenches de la Provincia del Biobío, VIII Región. Específicamente, nos hemos propuesto: a) Determinar los fonos/fonemas, y su fonotaxis, que se relevan como indicadores de vitalidad, b) Identificar las transferencias fonético-fonológicas presentes en la fonología del pewenche hablado por estos escolares y c) Interpretar las transferencias encontradas en términos del grado de vitalidad de la fonología de la lengua. La muestra está conformada por un grupo de (...) 20 escolares bilingües de entre 12 y 15 años de edad, que se encuentran cursando 7° y 8° año básico en escuelas rurales pertenecientes a dos comunidades pewenches del valle del Queuco, en la comuna de Alto Biobío. Para la recolección del material fonológico, se aplicó a los participantes una lista léxica de 65 ítems, material que se complementó con la narración oral en mapudungun de un cuento. Según nuestros datos, hemos podido constatar la existencia de una serie de rasgos fónicos en el mapudungun hablado por los escolares pewenches que obedece a la influencia de las estructuras fonológicas del castellano. Sin embargo, el grado y la difusión de los fenómenos de transferencia se desarrollan de manera heterogénea en ambas comunidades en estudio, debido, entre otros factores, a la intensidad del contacto. In this article we will describe the vitality of the phonological system Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren from the Biobío province, VIII Region. We intend: a) To determine the phones/phonemes, and their phonotactics, which are revealed as vitality markers. b) To identify the phonetic-phonological transferences which are present in the Pewenche spoken by these schoolchildren, and, c) To interpret the transferences found in terms of the degree of the language phonological vitality. The sample is composed of 20 bilingual schoolchildren from 12 to 15 years old, who are in 7th and 8th grade in rural primary schools belonging to two Pehuenche comunities from Valle del Queuco, in the city of Alto Biobío. To collect the phonological material, we applied a 64-item lexical list, which was complemented with the oral narration of a tale in Mapudungun. According to our data, we have been able to verify the existence of a series of phonic features in the Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren, which originate because of the influence of the Spanish phonological structure. However, the degree and spread of the transference phenomena develop in a heterogeneous way in both of the studied communities. due to the contact intensity, among other possible factors. (shrink)

En este artículo describiremos la vitalidad del sistema fonológico del mapudungun hablado por escolares pewenches de la Provincia del Biobío, VIII Región. Específicamente, nos hemos propuesto: a) Determinar los fonos/fonemas, y su fonotaxis, que se relevan como indicadores de vitalidad, b) Identificar las transferencias fonético-fonológicas presentes en la fonología del pewenche hablado por estos escolares y c) Interpretar las transferencias encontradas en términos del grado de vitalidad de la fonología de la lengua. La muestra está conformada por un grupo de (...) 20 escolares bilingües de entre 12 y 15 años de edad, que se encuentran cursando 7° y 8° año básico en escuelas rurales pertenecientes a dos comunidades pewenches del valle del Queuco, en la comuna de Alto Biobío. Para la recolección del material fonológico, se aplicó a los participantes una lista léxica de 65 ítems, material que se complementó con la narración oral en mapudungun de un cuento. Según nuestros datos, hemos podido constatar la existencia de una serie de rasgos fónicos en el mapudungun hablado por los escolares pewenches que obedece a la influencia de las estructuras fonológicas del castellano. Sin embargo, el grado y la difusión de los fenómenos de transferencia se desarrollan de manera heterogénea en ambas comunidades en estudio, debido, entre otros factores, a la intensidad del contacto. In this article we will describe the vitality of the phonological system Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren from the Biobío province, VIII Region. We intend: a) To determine the phones/phonemes, and their phonotactics, which are revealed as vitality markers. b) To identify the phonetic-phonological transferences which are present in the Pewenche spoken by these schoolchildren, and, c) To interpret the transferences found in terms of the degree of the language phonological vitality. The sample is composed of 20 bilingual schoolchildren from 12 to 15 years old, who are in 7th and 8th grade in rural primary schools belonging to two Pehuenche comunities from Valle del Queuco, in the city of Alto Biobío. To collect the phonological material, we applied a 64-item lexical list, which was complemented with the oral narration of a tale in Mapudungun. According to our data, we have been able to verify the existence of a series of phonic features in the Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren, which originate because of the influence of the Spanish phonological structure. However, the degree and spread of the transference phenomena develop in a heterogeneous way in both of the studied communities. due to the contact intensity, among other possible factors. (shrink)

En este artículo describiremos la vitalidad del sistema fonológico del mapudungun hablado por escolares pewenches de la Provincia del Biobío, VIII Región. Específicamente, nos hemos propuesto: a) Determinar los fonos/fonemas, y su fonotaxis, que se relevan como indicadores de vitalidad, b) Identificar las transferencias fonético-fonológicas presentes en la fonología del pewenche hablado por estos escolares y c) Interpretar las transferencias encontradas en términos del grado de vitalidad de la fonología de la lengua. La muestra está conformada por un grupo de (...) 20 escolares bilingües de entre 12 y 15 años de edad, que se encuentran cursando 7° y 8° año básico en escuelas rurales pertenecientes a dos comunidades pewenches del valle del Queuco, en la comuna de Alto Biobío. Para la recolección del material fonológico, se aplicó a los participantes una lista léxica de 65 ítems, material que se complementó con la narración oral en mapudungun de un cuento. Según nuestros datos, hemos podido constatar la existencia de una serie de rasgos fónicos en el mapudungun hablado por los escolares pewenches que obedece a la influencia de las estructuras fonológicas del castellano. Sin embargo, el grado y la difusión de los fenómenos de transferencia se desarrollan de manera heterogénea en ambas comunidades en estudio, debido, entre otros factores, a la intensidad del contacto. In this article we will describe the vitality of the phonological system Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren from the Biobío province, VIII Region. We intend: a) To determine the phones/phonemes, and their phonotactics, which are revealed as vitality markers. b) To identify the phonetic-phonological transferences which are present in the Pewenche spoken by these schoolchildren, and, c) To interpret the transferences found in terms of the degree of the language phonological vitality. The sample is composed of 20 bilingual schoolchildren from 12 to 15 years old, who are in 7th and 8th grade in rural primary schools belonging to two Pehuenche comunities from Valle del Queuco, in the city of Alto Biobío. To collect the phonological material, we applied a 64-item lexical list, which was complemented with the oral narration of a tale in Mapudungun. According to our data, we have been able to verify the existence of a series of phonic features in the Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren, which originate because of the influence of the Spanish phonological structure. However, the degree and spread of the transference phenomena develop in a heterogeneous way in both of the studied communities. due to the contact intensity, among other possible factors. (shrink)

En este artículo describiremos la vitalidad del sistema fonológico del mapudungun hablado por escolares pewenches de la Provincia del Biobío, VIII Región. Específicamente, nos hemos propuesto: a) Determinar los fonos/fonemas, y su fonotaxis, que se relevan como indicadores de vitalidad, b) Identificar las transferencias fonético-fonológicas presentes en la fonología del pewenche hablado por estos escolares y c) Interpretar las transferencias encontradas en términos del grado de vitalidad de la fonología de la lengua. La muestra está conformada por un grupo de (...) 20 escolares bilingües de entre 12 y 15 años de edad, que se encuentran cursando 7° y 8° año básico en escuelas rurales pertenecientes a dos comunidades pewenches del valle del Queuco, en la comuna de Alto Biobío. Para la recolección del material fonológico, se aplicó a los participantes una lista léxica de 65 ítems, material que se complementó con la narración oral en mapudungun de un cuento. Según nuestros datos, hemos podido constatar la existencia de una serie de rasgos fónicos en el mapudungun hablado por los escolares pewenches que obedece a la influencia de las estructuras fonológicas del castellano. Sin embargo, el grado y la difusión de los fenómenos de transferencia se desarrollan de manera heterogénea en ambas comunidades en estudio, debido, entre otros factores, a la intensidad del contacto. In this article we will describe the vitality of the phonological system Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren from the Biobío province, VIII Region. We intend: a) To determine the phones/phonemes, and their phonotactics, which are revealed as vitality markers. b) To identify the phonetic-phonological transferences which are present in the Pewenche spoken by these schoolchildren, and, c) To interpret the transferences found in terms of the degree of the language phonological vitality. The sample is composed of 20 bilingual schoolchildren from 12 to 15 years old, who are in 7th and 8th grade in rural primary schools belonging to two Pehuenche comunities from Valle del Queuco, in the city of Alto Biobío. To collect the phonological material, we applied a 64-item lexical list, which was complemented with the oral narration of a tale in Mapudungun. According to our data, we have been able to verify the existence of a series of phonic features in the Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren, which originate because of the influence of the Spanish phonological structure. However, the degree and spread of the transference phenomena develop in a heterogeneous way in both of the studied communities. due to the contact intensity, among other possible factors. (shrink)

En este artículo describiremos la vitalidad del sistema fonológico del mapudungun hablado por escolares pewenches de la Provincia del Biobío, VIII Región. Específicamente, nos hemos propuesto: a) Determinar los fonos/fonemas, y su fonotaxis, que se relevan como indicadores de vitalidad, b) Identificar las transferencias fonético-fonológicas presentes en la fonología del pewenche hablado por estos escolares y c) Interpretar las transferencias encontradas en términos del grado de vitalidad de la fonología de la lengua. La muestra está conformada por un grupo de (...) 20 escolares bilingües de entre 12 y 15 años de edad, que se encuentran cursando 7° y 8° año básico en escuelas rurales pertenecientes a dos comunidades pewenches del valle del Queuco, en la comuna de Alto Biobío. Para la recolección del material fonológico, se aplicó a los participantes una lista léxica de 65 ítems, material que se complementó con la narración oral en mapudungun de un cuento. Según nuestros datos, hemos podido constatar la existencia de una serie de rasgos fónicos en el mapudungun hablado por los escolares pewenches que obedece a la influencia de las estructuras fonológicas del castellano. Sin embargo, el grado y la difusión de los fenómenos de transferencia se desarrollan de manera heterogénea en ambas comunidades en estudio, debido, entre otros factores, a la intensidad del contacto. In this article we will describe the vitality of the phonological system Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren from the Biobío province, VIII Region. We intend: a) To determine the phones/phonemes, and their phonotactics, which are revealed as vitality markers. b) To identify the phonetic-phonological transferences which are present in the Pewenche spoken by these schoolchildren, and, c) To interpret the transferences found in terms of the degree of the language phonological vitality. The sample is composed of 20 bilingual schoolchildren from 12 to 15 years old, who are in 7th and 8th grade in rural primary schools belonging to two Pehuenche comunities from Valle del Queuco, in the city of Alto Biobío. To collect the phonological material, we applied a 64-item lexical list, which was complemented with the oral narration of a tale in Mapudungun. According to our data, we have been able to verify the existence of a series of phonic features in the Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren, which originate because of the influence of the Spanish phonological structure. However, the degree and spread of the transference phenomena develop in a heterogeneous way in both of the studied communities. due to the contact intensity, among other possible factors. (shrink)

Oral history is more than an epistemology of the subaltern who do not have any other avenues of narrating and preserving their ontologies. It transcends the academic domain and ventures into the field of therapy as it heals the broken hearted, the subjugated, the bereaved and in the process oscillating to an archive of memory and feelings. It is an epistemology that offers therapeutic healing not only to the downtrodden of the earth but also to the affluent members of (...) the community. In this era of COVID-19 where people have suffered untold and unbearable pain, oral history comes handy as an epistemic memorialisation tool that can be used to offer therapeutic healing to the survivors, the affected, the infected and the nations. The article is based on the author’s views on how South Africa may memorialise COVID-19 through oral history and memorials among others. The article reviews literature on the world’s intentions in memorialising the pandemic and how South Africa can learn or unlearn from the proffered examples. The article also interrogates how oral history approaches, such as crowdsourcing of COVID-19 stories, can be manipulated so that it accommodates the pandemic’s narratives of the commoners found in the locations of South Africa. Research findings reveal that South Africa can learn a lot from the countries that have started to memorialise the pandemic in the sense that it has the experience, skills and infrastructure to do so. Contribution: The study contributes to the ongoing debate about how to memorialise the COVID-19 pandemic taking into consideration the memory politics of inclusion and exclusion. The study is linked to the scope of the journal in the sense that it touches on the national memorialisation of the COVID-19 pandemic through oral history and memorials among others. (shrink)

Society's understanding of “suffering” and disaster determines how it will be encountered. In the present study, we apply a constructivist approach and study the understanding of November 12, 2017 earthquake in Zahab at the context of the traumatic history of the region. Applying critical ethnography, oral history, field research and in-depth interviews, we found out that the event is understood in the continuation of a history of irrationality and injustice. Narrators share a common fear among marginalized groups: fear of (...) betrayal, to be forgotten and to be ignored. There exists a vital need for creating collective narratives and identities, hearing them, recognizing them and establishing a meaningful relationship between them. (shrink)

This article engages with Adriana Cavarero’s analysis of the Muse of Greek oral poetry to rethink the relationship between mimesis and narration, and the shaping power of the act of narration on the subject. I suggest that Cavarero’s reading of the Muse provides an understanding of mimesis that moves beyond representation to a form of contagion between embodied and temporal subjectivities. To clarify this, I show how Cavarero’s Muse anticipates her critique of rectitude in Inclinations and makes (...) it clear that the inclined subject is not only the vulnerable and open subject as opposed to the vertical and autonomous one, but also the subject that has the power to incline the narratives that mimetically straighten it. The aim is to understand mimetic inclinations as destabilising voices of vertical narrations. As a concrete example of the troubling power of mimetic inclinations, I propose a rereading of Cavarero’s technique of theft presented in In Spite of Plato as a strategy of mimetic resistance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MIMETIC SADISM IN THE FICTION OF YUKIO MISHIMA Jerry Piven New York University Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) was one ofthe mostenigmatic authors of the 20th century. Novelist, playwright, actor, exhibiionist —his novels are rife with homoerotic and violent imagery, while his fanatical and nihilistic philosophy calls for a return to a Samurai ethos. Mishima thus attained infamy in Japan and in the West, as his shocking novels inspired hordes ofyoung (...) Japanese into a cult ofMishima worship, while critics who acknowledge his genius are still nervous about his sadistic homosexuality and his suicide. Mishima's works are suffused with erotic bloodshed and misogyny, and Mishima finally ended his life by ritually disemboweling himself. I will make the case that Mishima was incessantly plagued by torturous mimetic frustrations, and that his final act of spilling his blood and intestines can be interpreted as the result of mimetic hatred against his rivals. I also argue that Mishima was fundamentally schizoidal; in Girardian terms, a man whose hypocrisy for the sakeofdesire rendered him an exhibitionistic maskdisguisingmimetic rage and fear. Having previously written about Mishima from a psychoanalytic perspective, I believe that a Girardian approach would often yield drastically different interpretations of identical biographical and literary materials. ' 1I initially wrote on Mishima for several diagnostic assignments at my psychoanalytic institute, the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP). After considering the psychoanalytic and Girardian approaches, I expanded these original essays using identical material to determine whetherthe interpretations orconclusions would differ; I was struck by the way the same details could provide both remarkable congruences and vast divergences ofperspective. Read side by side, one can find compatible conclusions, but one also finds perceptions ofthe same details that would be difficultto conceive or articulate 70Jeremy Piven Mimesis, misogyny, and maculacy Kimitake Hiraoka was a frail, sickly child before he became the muscular and exhibitionistic novelist Yukio Mishima. His brutal and helpless childhood inaugurated his mimetic complexes: his need to escape the suffocating and diseased environment of his grandmother, his rivalry with her, and his mimetic ideal ofbeauty and muscular invulnerability. Mishima was an unhealthy youth, taken from the arms of his mother before he was two months old, and confined to the sickroom of his grandmother for the first twelve years ofhis life. Under the auspices ofhis tyrannical and ostensively psychotic grandmother, Mishima lived in the dark, could play only female friends (becausetheywere deemed harmless), and could eat only gentle foods. He thus lived an imprisoned life away from his parents, amid the excrescences of his sick and hysterical grandmother until adolescence, when his father "reclaimed him." Mishima later rebelled against this sickly nature, sculpting himself into a statuesque ideal of masculine beauty. He became obsessed with martial arts and the eroticism ofhis own engraved body. His fiction and philosophy were permeated by misogyny, glorification ofGrecian male sexuality and aesthetics, and the repudiation ofanything weak or feminine. He finally killed himselfbefore age could wither his masculine beauty. Mishima's fiction prominently features protagonists who mirror his sickly youth. The autobiographical Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no Kokuhaku) describes the homoerotic development ofthis frail child. Such fraiIcharacters inMishima'sfiction arealwaysdrawneroticallytobeautiful males as both mimetic rivals and models. The narrator of Confessions describes his sexual attraction to a sewage collector, a "ladler of excrement"(8). Thehandsomemanwith "ruddycheeks" and "shiningeyes" fascinates the narrator, and he is filled with desire lookingathistightjeans. using psychoanalytic perspectives andjargon. Two ofthe original essays will be published inthePsychoanalyticReview in comingmonths: "PhallicNarcissism, Anal Sadism, and Oral Discord: The Case ofYukio Mishima (part I)," and "Narcissistic Revenge and Suicide: The Case ofYukio Mishima (part H)." I am currently translating these articles for publication in Japan. I included a brief discussion of Mishima in the introduction to Psychological Undercurrents ofHistory (Piven and Lawton, eds.), to explore the complex methodological and psychological dynamics of the field of psychohistory. A commentary on Mishima's traumaticchildhood entitled "The Pathology ofGenius," will appearin aforthcomingedition ofTapestry: TheJournalofHistoricalMotivations andtheSocialFabric, and afinal article, "Voyeurism and Rage in The Sailor Who Fellfrom Grace with the Sea," will appear in Psychological Undercurrents ofHistory, Volume II (2002). Mimetic Sadism in the Fiction ofYukio Mishima71 The narrator thus emerges into a burgeoning homosexuality, but he also fantasizes about dying dramatically. His... (shrink)

Recent work on enculturation suggests that our cognitive capacities are significantly transformed in the course of the scaffolded acquisition of cognitive practices such as reading and writing. Phylogenetically, enculturation is the result of the co-evolution of human organisms and their socio-culturally structured cognitive niche. It is rendered possible by evolved cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily learning mechanisms that make human organisms apt to acquire culturally inherited cognitive practices. In addition, cultural learning allows for the intergenerational transmission of relevant knowledge and skills. (...) Ontogenetically, enculturation is associated with neural plasticity and the development of new motor routines and action schemas. It relies on scaffolded learning that structures novice-teacher interactions. The acquisition of reading and writing are paradigm examples of enculturation. Based on an empirically informed analysis of the components of enculturation, I will apply the emerging account of enculturated cognition to narrative practices. To date, research on the impact of narratives on the constitution of the self and our understanding of folk psychology has not paid much attention to the question how narratives are influenced by cumulative cultural evolution and our capacity to acquire reading and writing during ontogeny. I will argue that textual narratives, above and beyond oral narratives, provide genuinely new ways of narration. Therefore, the enculturated interaction with textual narratives has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of ourselves and other cognitive agents. (shrink)

The traditions about isrāʾīliyyāt that were seen almost in all the types of Islamic sciences appeared in the sources of tafsīr from early periods. These traditions that were generally used to explain the Qurʾān were seen problem and critisized by some exegetical specialists. Even though corresponding to a relative later period in the classical era, an approach was tried to put forward in view of the traditions about isrāʾīliyyāt. This methodological concern for isrāʾīliyyāt in classical period has increased and been (...) influential for many researchers from east and west to work on this issue in modern times. There has been reached to important results about the issues of the definition of isrāʾīliyyāt, the source of it, its spread in Islamic sciences, its aim of usage, the progress of these positive-negative attitudes against these traditions in historical process. But it is important to discuss some evaluations and analysis again that put forward in this process when different cases about the issue are taken into consideration. According to this, a series of problem, such as how the isrāʾīliyyāt can be defined in tafsīr, when the criticism of isrāʾīliyyāt started, whether Biqāʿī was the first exegete who made reference to Bible or not will be discussed considering relevant resources in this article.Summary: Since the early periods, isrā’īliyyāt narratives were used as a source of information in tafsīrs. These narratives, which are transmitted in various tafsīrs of the Qur’ān, one of the main sources of Islamic religion, have also taken the methodological interests of some exegete since the early periods. This interest continued in the modern period, and both Western and Eastern researchers made research on isrā’īliyyāt. Some of the findings, analyses, and claims available in researches on this subject will be reexamined in this article. The first of these is the problem of the definition of isrā’īliyyāt. In contemporary research, inclusive definitions are made for isrā’īliyyāt, seen in all sources. These definitions do not allow for a refined description of isrā’īliyyāt which is handled in terms of different intentions in the sources of each different field and which varies in terms of the issues it covers, leading to the underestimation of some of its aspects in relevant fields. In the definitions, it is stated that isrā’īliyyāt is mostly learned from the Ahl al-Kitāb, (the People of the Book) it became widespread along with Islām and it included narratives about caliphs, dynasties, and Mahdī, as well. Another issue is to be emphasized that they are fictive or mythological. In classical tafsīrs, isrā’īliyyāt is observed to be related mainly with the history of the Ahl al-Kitāb or with the subjects they know about. In the modern era, the narratives about the ancestors of the Arabs have been identified as isrā’īliyyāt. If some of the isrā’īliyyāt narratives are related to the history of Arabs, then their resource should be the historical-cultural memory of Arabs. However, as almost all Qur’ānic stories were somewhat known before the revelation period and relations with the Ahl al-Kitāb dated back to times long before the Islamic period, the claim that these narratives became widespread along with Islām should be revised. It is also problematic to emphasize the legendary nature of some of the isrā’īliyyāt and to make that as a reason to reject all. Such emphasis also leads to the underestimation of the functions of narratives in tafsīrs. In isrā’īliyyāt, tafsīr was used for i) interpreting the ambiguous words in the stories, ii) to bring evidence to the Ahl al-Kitāb, and ii) tarhīb-targhīb (encouragement-warning). These narratives can be used as a source in tafsīr unless they are explicitly falsified by the data of fields such as history, history of religions and archaeology as well as the Qur’ān and the true Sunnah. The first criticisms of isrā’īliyyāt are claimed to belong to exegete like Ibn al-‘Arabī (d. 543/148) or Ibn ‘Aṭīyah (d. 541/1147). However, criticism of isrā’īliyyāt is also observed in the tafsīrs of earlier exegete, such as al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058) or al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067). They do not necessarily have to use the term isrā’īliyyāt explicitly in their criticism like the later ones. If the narratives they criticize and the reasons for their criticism are the same as those of the later exegete, it will be necessary to date the criticism of isrā’īliyyāt back to the 4th Century of the Hegira. The understanding that "the expression in the story is sufficient, it is unnecessary to deal with the ambiguities; instead, it is necessary to deal with the lesson and wisdom in the story" is one of the criteria that Muḥammad ‘Abduh (d. 1905), who is deemed to be the pioneer of the strict criticism of isrā’īliyyāt in the modern period, took as basis in this criticism, is valid for the exegete of the classical period, as well. Although exegete, such as al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), al-Māturīdī, al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), and Abū Ḥayyān (d. 745/1344) who had this understanding, gave place to isrā’īliyyāt, these people recognized that "these narratives were not final, binding or necessary”, indeed. The understanding that such expression in the story is sufficient, which is one of the reasons for such awareness in the classical period, seems to have turned into a strict rejection in the modern period. Another issue is the claim that Biqā‘ī (d. 885/1480) was the first exegete to systematically benefit from the Bible in tafsīr in the classical period. However, al-Daylamī (d. 593/1197) before Biqā‘ī, is also observed to have used the Old Testament systematically in tafsīr. He cited the Tanakh in his period in two ways. He either directly quoted from the translation of Tanakh or the Hebrew text written in Arabic letters. Another exegete who used the Tanakh as a source in his tafsīr was al-Ṣafadī (d. 696/1296). He enriched his tafsīr with systematic quotations from the Tanakh. Therefore, the use of the Bible as a source of interpretation in the classical period should not be started with Biqā‘ī. The reason why the pioneer exegete of the classical period did not directly use the Bible is claimed to be the fact that they falsified it and deemed the isrā’īliyyāt narrated from the predecessors to be more reliable. However, it is known that a significant portion of the isrā’īliyyāt, which was orally transferred from the predecessors, is based on written sources, particularly including the apocryphal texts. So just like the Bible, isrā’īliyyāt, which was orally transferred from the predecessors, is problematic in terms of authenticity. This allows us to argue that classical exegete have an inconsistent attitude, indeed. On the other hand, when we take into account the fact that classical exegetes criticize these narratives from time to time and believe that they are not final or binding, the problem of potential inconsistency disappears. Accordingly, they did not deem chain transmission of these narratives from the predecessors by reliable transmitters to be a sufficient reason for their acceptance and adoption for good and all. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to establish the existence of a significant difference, in a number of respects, between the style of the narrated portions of Homer and that of the speeches which are recorded in the two epics; and to offer some explanations for this fact. It will require the presentation of some statistics: I suspect that not all of the figures are absolutely accurate, but I feel confident that such inaccuracies as they may contain will not affect (...) the validity of the inferences drawn from them. The mere fact of differences in vocabulary, while not without interest, is not extremely interesting or surprising. The hope of this paper is that patterns will appear, and that the ‘reticence’ or ‘objectivity’ of Homer, more often praised than investigated, will be illuminated by them; that particular passages in the poems will be shown to be stylistically interesting or unusual; and that some general considerations will emerge which suggest that the difficulties confronting the oral theory of Homer are rather more complex than is often supposed. (shrink)

L'étude de la communication peut offrir une perspective sur le contexte de la théologie, un examen de sa structure, et une reflexion sur son contenu. La communication est primordiale pour la société contemporaine, affectant la façon dont les gens utilisent leur temps, façonnant les informations qu'ils reçoivent, influençant la manière dont ils pensent , et les rendant plus soupçonneux vis à vis de l'autorité. L'histoire de la théologie montre les effets des formes de communication, reflétant la narration, la rhétorique, (...) et les structures polémiques des cultures orales, aussi bien que les instruments analytiques de l'écriture et l'imprimerie. Finalement, l'étude de la communication suggère une façon différente de considérer des sujets théologiques traditionnels. Le salut divin, par exemple, peut se concentrer sur la communication en interprètant l'histoire du salut comme une histoire de l'auto-communication de Dieu et la restauration de la communication humaine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Three Moments in the Crisis of Exemplarity: Boccaccio-Petrarch, Montaigne, and CervantesKarlheinz StierleIn his recent book History as Topic Peter von Moos denies that there was any crisis for the exemplum in the Renaissance. 1 He strongly argues against my essay on “History as exemplum,” where I pointed out that in Montaigne, as earlier in Boccaccio, the pragmatic form of exemplum is put into question. 2 My main interest in (...) this essay, however, was not to mark a break between Middle Ages and Renaissance but to understand the way in which the correlation between sententia and exemplum was transformed into a more complex relation between moral reflection and particular case. Undoubtedly, since Valerius Maximus and his Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri, there has always been, as in John of Salisbury’s Policratius, the possibility of questioning the exemplary truth of the exemplum by opposing it to a never-ending wealth of counter-examples. This, however, never puts into question the idea of exemplarity itself. The validity of the exemplum as a rhetorical form of narration that tends towards its own conceptual or ideological structure has an anthropological basis. It presupposes that over time, there is more analogy in human experience than diversity, or that in all situations of civil and political life the pole of equality is stronger than that of difference.Boccaccio’s novella is precisely the narrative form that puts this anthropological basis into question. Each novella in the Decameron is essentially a [End Page 581] particular variant of a more general conceptual scheme. The stress of narration, however, is not on the scheme itself but on the autonomy of the variant. Basically the novella is a form of rewriting in the mode of retelling, thus bringing an elementary narration to higher complexity. 3 Each of the “vari casi,” mostly of love-affairs, is a confrontation of exemplarity and contingency. It is the power of contingency or fortuna that brings forth the specific particularity of each novella. The art of the writer Boccaccio, whose primary fiction is oral story-telling, consists in giving aesthetic evidence to this particularity. Reading, not listening, is the form of reception that corresponds to this structure. That Boccaccio adds the other title “Il Prencipe Galeotto” to the Decameron is an allusion to Dante’s Divine Commedy where in the famous episode of Paolo and Francesca (Inf. V), Galeotto becomes the personification of the allegory of reading and its seduction.Contingency, or, in Boccaccio’s own medieval terms, fortuna, is the real poet of the novella. That is why the most important scenes of the novellas are those where the power of contingency comes to light: at the sea and in the city. The particular shape of novella, which results from a balance between contingency and significant configuration, emerges from contingency itself. Its configuration is a particular case of contingency, one that by its immanent structural elegance is aesthetically gratifying. It nevertheless leaves open the question whether there might not be a power of a superior kind behind contingency. Because there is an ambiguity between contingency and sense, the exemplary status of each story is, ironically, placed in question. Contingency overcomes exemplarity; however, it never triumphs definitely. The impact on the exemplum by contingency not only gives to each narrative case its difference or even autonomy, it also opens up a new temporal dimension. The exemplum seems to move in an essential time where all time-aspects are controlled and functionalized by a dominating conceptual structure. In the novella time becomes a primary structure. “Or avviene che” is the narrative formula for this new quality of narrative time, becoming a time of disruption and instability where things and situations may change in a moment for the better or for the worse.I would like to illustrate the structure of the Boccaccian novella by at least one exemplary case. Almost in the middle of the book—which means in the middle of its temporal space of ten days—we find the novella of Federigo degli Alberighi, considered to be one of Boccaccio’s finest (V, 9). Federigo, in a world of merchants and trade, is the perfect nobleman who ruins himself by his... (shrink)

The article observes how critical times, conditioned by events concurrent with Soviet power and World War II, are currently reflected in life histories of newly independent Estonia. Oral history analysis comprises texts from southern Läänemaa: oral life history interview (2005), written responses to the Estonian National Museum’s questionnaire “The 1949 Deportation, Life as a Deportee” (1999) and a written life history sent to the Estonian Literary Museum’s relevant competition “One Hundred Lives of a Century” (1999). Aiming at historic (...) context, materials from the Estonian Historical Archives and Läänemaa County Archives have been used. The treatment focuses on two issues. First, whether oral and written narratives only differ by the form of presentation or do they also convey different messages (ideologies). Secondly, whether memories and history documents solely complement each other or do they more essentially alter the imaginations obtained from the events. The public is presented with experience narratives on coping under difficult circumstances, both at practical and mental levels. Narratives are presented from a certain standpoint, pursuant to narrators’ convictions, with the main message remaining the same in different presentations. The addition of history sources enables to better observe the evolving of narrative tradition (narration rules) and highlight new questions (hidden in the narrative). (shrink)

Dede Korkut Stories are a national cultural heritage that narrates about events and challenges of Oghuz Turks in 10th-11th centuries. This period of time is important, as it was the times when Turks became Muslims. In this work, heroism, customs, habits and traditions, socio-cultural and moral life of the Turks before and after becoming Muslims are analysed. One of the topics addressed in this work is religious beliefs and worships of the Turks after became Muslims. In this context, the belief (...) in Allah appears to be the most emphasized type of belief in the stories. The theme of fate, which is included in the subjects of Tawḥīd (oneness of Allāh) is another theme mentioned in the stories. The stories also includes some expressions regarding particularly the Prophet Muḥammad as well as some other prophets. Jibrīl and ʿAzrāʾīl angels are also mentioned. As for the Divine Books, only the Qur’ān is namely addressed and other divine books are not mentioned. The beliefs regarding afterlife, such as death, resurrection, heaven, hell, pool of al-Kawthar (abundance) are also referred to in the stories. The Book of Dede Korkut is not a didactic work written to teach Islam. On the contrary, in the stories, Islam is discussed as an element of the spirit/essence of individual and society. The aim of this study is to investigate the representations of the beliefs of tawḥīd, prophecy and hereafter of the Turks, especially the Oghuz Turks with reference to narrations in Dede Korkut stories. It aims to discuss them in the context of six pillars of faith and evaluate from the Islamic belief point of view.Summary: The Book of Dede Korkut consists of twelve epic stories created within the oral tradition of Turkish Folk Literature. It is said that the origins of these stories, which are one of the oldest works of Turkish Folk Literature, went as far as 7th century. It is generally accepted that the Book of Dede Korkut, which narrates about Oghuz Turks who lived in 10th-11th centuries was transferred to writing after 15th century. There is no information found about writer/s of the Book. Dede Korkut, who considered being the narrator of the stories, is in fact a character in the stories. Dede Korkut plays qobuz, reads poetry, names children, mediates in marital affairs, resolves disputes, and leads religious rituals in the stories. Therefore, he stands out as a saint figure and considered to be wise man of the Oghuz Turks in almost every story, especially regarding social events. In this work, there are many expressions about heroism, customs, habits and traditions, socio-cultural and moral experiences of the Turks before and after becoming Muslims. The stories bear many traces from the earlier Turkish beliefs. However, these are not the issues of this study. The dates of the emergence of the stories, 10th and 11th centuries, coincides with the times when the Turks became Muslim. This situation makes the stories more important as they include rich narratives about the fundamental beliefs of Islam. Especially the belief in Allāh, which is one of the six pillars of faith, appears to be the most emphasized in the stories. In these stories, Turkish and Persian names of Allāh as well as His Arabic names and attributes are mentioned directly or indirectly.The belief in predestination and casualty related with Allāh's eternal knowledge and determination is another faith object that takes place in the stories. The issues regarding the predestination discussed in the stories as follows: the deeds occur with the wish of Allāh; Allāh decides whether the child male or female; Allāh predestines human lifetime, livelihood, time of death and calamities.There are also narrations about the belief in the prophets in the stories. Particularly the Prophet Muhammad's prophecy is prioritised. Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses are the other prophets mentioned in the stories. The successive authority of Adam and His story with Iblīs; the wife and donkey of Noah, not burning of Abraham when he was thrown into the fire, the speaking of Allāh with Moses and the staff of Moses are some of the expressions related with prophecy in the stories. Nimrod against Abraham and Pharaoh against Moses are described as negative personalities in the stories. In the stories, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is handled in a position that intercession is demanded from Him. Greetings and prayers are read for Him. His intercession is sought for forgiveness of sins and acceptance of prayers. He is exalted with some attributions, such as the holly Prophet Peace be upon Him, friend of Allāh, the leader of religion and the headman of religion. When the Prophet Muhammad is mentioned, it is felt that there is a high respect and an enthusiastic love. When he is addressed, the expressions indicating respect and affection, such as "His name is magnificent Muhammad" and "His name is magnificent Muhammad Mustafa" are used in the stories.In the stories, only the Qur’ān is mentioned among the divine books, none of the Torah, the Zabūr and the Injīl is mentioned. It is referred that the Qur’ān descended from the heavens and it is the word of Allāh and His knowledge, and it was copied (collected) by Uthman. It is described as "Magnificent Qur’ān".It is seen in the stories that there is also a place for the belief in angels and only two of the four great angels are mentioned. One of them is ʿAzrāʾīl, the death angel. It is one of the main heroes in the story of Deli Dumrul. ʿAzrāʾīl is described as an angel from the sky, who has red-winged, who takes the souls of living beings by the command of Allāh and kill them. It is also narrated that ʿAzrāʾīl takes the form of human and pigeon, and the struggle of ʿAzrāʾīl with Deli Dumrul. The other great angel mentioned in the stories is Jibrīl. In the story of Emre, the Son of Begil, it is described as an angel fulfilling the commandments of Allāh. Apart from these, there is no information about other angels and their characteristics, such as not being gendered, not to sin, and being created from light. Within the scope of invisible beings, the Devil is also narrated in the stories as it did not prostrate itself to Adam, and therefore it was repelled and cursed.The principle of the belief in Hereafter, which is one of the pillars of faith, is also dealt with in the stories. The ending, death, resurrection, reckoning, Heaven, Hell, seeing Allāh's face in Heaven, drinking water from the pool of al-Kawthar are some of the topics addressed in relation to this principle. While talking about Heaven in the stories, the words "Uçmak" (flight) in Turkish and "Behesht" (paradise) in Persian are mentioned in addition to Arabic "Jannah" (heaven).The Book of Dede Korkut is not a religious book written to teach the ʿaqāʾid (beliefs) of Islam or its practices. On the contrary, it is a work that narrates about people’s lives and social experiences. There is neither any specific verse from the Qur’ān nor sayings or the deeds of the Prophet (ḥadīth) included in the stories. However, the contents of many issues stated in the Qur’ān and ḥadīth are expressed in the stories. For instance, the statements from the surah (chapter) al-Ikhlāṣ (sincerity), such as al-Aḥad (the one), Allāh begets not, nor was He begotten, and not being any equivalent to Him are mentioned in the stories. Likewise, not burning of the Prophet Abraham when thrown into the fire, speaking of Allāh with Moses and giving the stuff to him as a miracle are also stated in the Qur’ān. As for the pool of al-Kawthar, the believers’ seeing Allāh in Heaven, ineffectiveness of the deeds without saying in the name of Allah are mentioned in ḥadīths. However, some information that is not rooted in the Qur’ān and ḥadīths, such as the stinging of Nimrod's arrow is also encountered in the stories. Based on the narrations in the stories, it seems possible to draw the conclusion that the Oghuz Turks mentioned in the Book of Dede Korkut adopted Ahl al-Sunnah (people of Sunnah) interpretation of Islam. However, it should be reminded that this implication will lose its meaning if it is proved that the original versions of the stories were redesigned according to the interpretation of Ahl al-Sunnah in the process of transferring them into writing. (shrink)

À partir des contextes homériques, cette recherche situe l’arrière-plan de la formule ἢ οἵη parmi les genres du discourslittéraire de l’oralité archaïque. Son emploi est réservé aux récits enchâssés ou aux propos qui thématisent l’exemplum d’une femme . L’étude caractérise ensuite la structure narrative et les particularités d’une diction traditionnelle, dans les cinq livres du Catalogue « hésiodique » des femmes. Par l’entremise de nœuds conflictuels, le réseau des généalogies déployait la mythopoïèse d’une Hellade légendaire, avec ses héroïnes et leurs (...) descendants, demi-dieux ou personnages fabuleux, qui sont souvent les éponymes ou les hypostases personnifiées des régions et des cités.The Typology of the Ehoae Catalogues. A Thematised Genealogical Network. The aim of this paper is to determine the typological framing of the “Hesiodic” Catalogue of women. The formula ἢ οἵη is submitted to a thorough examination, with the background of its Homeric use, most of the time introducing an embedded narration. Furthermore, various arguments foster the reconstruction of an archaic stage in the oral transmission of the Ehoae , perceived as an independent genre or – in any case – singled out as a bundle of legendary topoi. At a certain point , the ‘Hesiodic’ poem succeeded in interweaving an overall story of the dispersed heroic lineage, in order to expatiate through the Achaean past using an original narrative device: the catalogic digest of stories of heroines and demigods referring to various eponymic entities of the demes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle’s Phantasia in the Rhetoric:Lexis, Appearance, and the Epideictic Function of DiscourseNed O’GormanIntroductionThe well-known opening line of Aristotle's Rhetoric, where he defines rhetoric as a "counterpart" (antistrophos) to dialectic, has spurred many conversations on Aristotelian rhetoric and motivated the widespread interpretation of Aristotle's theory of civic discourse as heavily rationalistic. This study starts from a statement in the Rhetoric less discussed, yet still important, that suggests that a visual (...) aspect inheres in Aristotle's theory of rhetoric. Near the beginning of book 3, which deals with lexis (style, sometimes subsuming delivery1 ), Aristotle conjoins lexis and phantasia with the copula "is" (eimi): "The subject of expression [lexeôs], however, has some small necessary place in all teaching; for to speak in one way rather than another does make some difference in regard to clarity, though not a great difference; but all these things are forms of outward show [phantasia] and intended to affect the audience" (1404a).2 Whereas scholars exploring the relationship between rhetoric and dialectic have compared and contrasted the Rhetoric and the Topics, I explore rhetoric's relationship with phantasia by reading the Rhetoric alongside De Anima. De Anima is Aristotle's seminal account of the senses and their relationship to psychê (often translated "soul"). It addresses topics intimately connected to rhetoric: perception, cognition, deliberation, visualization, imagination, and the image. Phantasia is integral to each of these psychic processes and to Aristotle's understanding of the function of appearance in human experience. Hence, itis a lens suitable for exploring the relationship between Aristotle's conception of civic discourse and his notions of sight and appearances as they relate to perception, interpretation, deliberation, and judgment. I find in Aristotle's phantasia a tie between his art of rhetoric and his psychology and phenomenology (anachronistic though these terms are). Aristotle's psychological works, as Richard McKeon points out, are foundational to Aristotle's philosophy, and thus to his Rhetoric. [End Page 16] "Psychological inquiries occupy an extremely important position in the philosophy of Aristotle, for the conception of the psychê lays the foundation for the continuity of functions in nature" (1947, 142). De Anima, especially, articulates the psychological and phenomenological conceptions often tacitly at work in the Rhetoric.The importance of phantasia for the trajectory of ancient rhetorical and aesthetic theory is seen in the parallels between the visual arts, rhetoric, and poetics in Greek and Roman thought.3 As David Freedberg states (perhaps, slightly overstates), parallels between painting and poetry are "to be found everywhere in classical literature" (1989, 50). With respect to such visual-verbal parallels in Aristotle, D. Thomas Benediktson's reading of Aristotle's psychological, poetic, and rhetorical works concludes that phantasia ties together the visual and the literary. "[Aristotle's passages on phantasia] do help to see why Aristotle took for granted the similarity, almost the identity, of literature and the visual arts. Both types of art are imagistic; they present to the viewer either an image, as in visual art, or as in literature, a set of moving images that the soul then uses as raw data (phantasia) to enable thought to occur" (2000, 170). Phantasia developed a legacy in Hellenistic aesthetics, where it came to designate suprarealism in painting, moving art "beyond imitation" (Fowler 1989, 180–81). In later Greco-Roman works, phantasia was used to designate vivid imagery in written and oral discourse, imagery that could create sights and scenes in the minds of audience members. As Quintilian noted in his discussion of forensic rhetoric, in Latin phantasiai were termed visiones. Here, phantasiabecame a mode of displacing narrative in rhetorical discourse:There are certain experiences which the Greeks call phantasiai, and the Romans visions [visiones], whereby things absent are presented to our imagination with such extreme vividness that they seem actually to be before our very eyes.... From such impressions arises that enargeia which Cicero calls illumination [illustration] and actuality [evidential], which makes us seem not so much to narrate [dicere] as to exhibit [ostendere] the actual scene.(Institutio Oratoria 4.2.29, 32)Quintilian's invocations of phantasia and enargeia can be traced to Aristotle's discussion of rhetorical style in book... (shrink)

The aim of this article is to reveal with an overall approach, how the psycho-social background, starting from woman image in first periods and reach modern day, is embraced by outstanding theorists of modern psychology, and also how these collected works are reflected in their definitions of woman. If it is considered that woman has been discussed with reflections against and not from primary sources throughout history, it can be seen that the most essential roots of woman narrations can be (...) found in oral culture and the parts of written texts are made over symbol, metaphor, proposition and story. However myths (stories) that take place in oral and partly written culture about primitive man, are sacred tales, they will also present data regarding human image. Therefore with a limited effort of human being to understand the infinite, it can be understood what human being think, feel and how they interpret rather than gods/goddesses ontology. From this point of view, this article that consists of two parts, first of all will mention especially about perception of Goddess in those reflected to image of God, maintaining its efficiency in conscious or unconscious as a system of symbols intrinsic to human nature and cultural code background and then the woman image will be roughly discussed with a descriptive style over the world of mythology, psychology and faith. In the second part, it will be examined in detail how all the written and oral information about understanding woman by modern anthropologists are interpreted with the perspective of modern psychology specific to theorists such as Freud, Jung and Fromm. Eventually, it will be emphasized that past and future are integrated with information, experience and feelings with an active relationship; perception and approach of woman have stayed up to date in time continually; mythology, psychology and religion are important factors within this matter.Summary: Human being has also used historical, temporal and spatial attributions for God. Infinite human being has expressed their thoughts about the finite God by analogy. Despite the dominance of male gender in the images of God in these analogies which are the products of human experience, female Gods that is to say Goddesses are not few. The matter of how the image of goddess come to the fore in a distinctly male-dominant society is a noteworthy matter. The narration of Earth Mother over female symbol in myths in which the harmony is constantly secured within the inner and exterior world and mention about living in harmony with the universe is an important data in order to understand female characteristics attributed to God. Human being has also used historical, temporal and spatial attributions for God. Infinite human being has expressed their thoughts about the finite God by analogy.The woman subject is influenced by transferred life experience within the historical process, and it is an undeniable fact that ancient “woman perception” has reflections to the present day. Within the history of humanity, striking definitions about woman can be seen in sacred statements in symbol language. Therefore, it is proper to examine primarily the image of sacred and then examine female meaning that is charged on that image. The aim of this study can be summed up with two themes: a) try to understand the general framework of reflections of the present image of woman, style of narration and comprehension in psychological, sociological, and religious terms by getting help from myths which mention about ancient image of God, although there is centuries old difference between those stories and us, b) reveal the image of woman in Freud, Jung, and Fromm’s approach which establishes a bond between mythology that is a system of symbols special to human nature and human psychology and discuss this subject by using psychology of religion.When reviewed ancient Far East and Middle East myths and also Ancient Greek mythology, it can be seen that gods are not cloistered supernatural beings who do not have abstract personalities and also do not lead a wholly metaphysic life. The crucial issue here is; the reality that Gods and Goddesses are shown as a model to both man and woman. Psychologists who examine religion in terms of psychology state that first outcomes about the image of God come up not with behavior but with emotion. The attributions of gender, related to the emotion in question are cited during the transfer of those emotions as well. Therefore; philosophers, culture and religion historians, theologians, anthropologists, archaeologists, psychologists, and sociologists have contributed to this transfer when they discuss the cult of God or Goddess throughout the history. It is interesting that the usage of the term of God maintains while the usage of the term of Goddess decreases. Civilization historians claim that the appearance of divine religions particularly quickens the course of transition from goddess to god. According to them, during this period in which there is a transfer from polytheist image of God to monotheist image of God, the quantitative change in the perception of God comes with a qualitative change. According to Fromm, during this power gathering period, there has been a transfer from mother and feminine (woman) centered religion to father and masculine (man) centered religious experience/ God image. According to him, in the second stage of humanity development, “the children of Earth Mother turn into the children of divine father”, there is a transition from unconditional love of mother to authoritarian sympathy of father, from an image of supplemental and surrounding Goddess to authoritarian image of God who makes requests by his nature, lays down principles and laws, and supports the power and search for a successor to deliver the power.The perception of women who led to Prophet Adam deviated from the truth and expelled from heaven is spread around especially the regions of one-God religions. This has strengthened the idea that divine religions have a negative view towards women. Including Islam, the reason of all divine religions’ encountering with claims that they have a negative approach against woman stem from applying to that religions’ human resources rather than essential religious sources which are existing or lost earliest forms.Oedipus complex is an important thesis of Freud which explains the development of religion and morals; establish the base of his psychology, and in fact, important in terms of his making connection with difference of kinds and flow or non-flow of request and needs while explaining human behaviors. According to Freud who points to sexuality and aggression which are the most powerful two instinct in the biology of male or female; the first three or five years of a newly born human- this is the period in which the basic part of personality is formed- the definition of self is extremely influenced by his/her gender (in both biological and sociocultural terms). Freud who put forward father-son conflict in the struggle to survive between Zeus and his sons in Moses and Monotheism (1998c) and Totem and Taboo (1998a), makes an explanation about the origin of religion and humanity over two male characters. Jung pays attention to goddess image as much as the image of god and do not approach this situation only as a polytheism or sociocultural explanation or childish appearances of a primitive mind. He accepts goddesses as a reflection of archetypes in human. Male has a feminine side, female has a masculine side, and a unity occurs when both complete each other. According to Fromm, a taxonomy referring to woman and man is primarily a sociology-based approach rather than a biology-based one. Fromm (1995) thinks that the whole depiction shows individuals’ own desire and needs, that is to say, their psychology rather than a theology. Transition from mother (woman) centered religion to father (man) centered religious experience and God image is essentially one of the most important breaking/inversion points of human being, not humanity. As a result, it can be said that it is an important point to clearly understand the story of mankind to examine that intense freshness at hand and centeredness of quantitative and qualitative changes of divine or God image of ancient societies come down after psychological, sociological, religious, economic, political, and cultural changes. (shrink)

This article deals with a possibility to express experience through language in a philosophical talk. Effect of a philosophical talk is revealed through the analogy of an impact of artwork. Aspects of an artistic experience are given as a basis for application of the same mechanism when thinking about a philosophical talk. Dimentions of a „weighty“ talk as opposed to an empty one are described and analysed. A talk as creation is opposed to a mere comment referring to George Steiner; (...) memorization of a text or a talk is put as a condition for true interpretation and hence a „weighty“ talk. However, character of memorizing is questioned in analysis of G. Steiner’s suggested vigilant memory and patterns of memorization in oral culture, discussed by Walter Ong and Albert Lord. It is suggested that unconscious aspect of our memory could be effectively used in stimulating a vivid interaction between words and experience, thus helping to reveal their meaning. Another aspect important for the topic is dimention of narrative and dialogue. Talking as narration is considered not as a direct transfer of experience, but as a seed for it. Talking as dialogue is related to creating experience in the moment of talking, also having a great effect on perception of the issue and is further related to the question of ethics. On the whole, the topic of this work could be described with a question: „how is it possible to say more than words?“. (shrink)

This article deals with a possibility to express experience through language in a philosophical talk. Effect of a philosophical talk is revealed through the analogy of an impact of artwork. Aspects of an artistic experience are given as a basis for application of the same mechanism when thinking about a philosophical talk. Dimentions of a „weighty“ talk as opposed to an empty one are described and analysed. A talk as creation is opposed to a mere comment referring to George Steiner; (...) memorization of a text or a talk is put as a condition for true interpretation and hence a „weighty“ talk. However, character of memorizing is questioned in analysis of G. Steiner’s suggested vigilant memory and patterns of memorization in oral culture, discussed by Walter Ong and Albert Lord. It is suggested that unconscious aspect of our memory could be effectively used in stimulating a vivid interaction between words and experience, thus helping to reveal their meaning. Another aspect important for the topic is dimention of narrative and dialogue. Talking as narration is considered not as a direct transfer of experience, but as a seed for it. Talking as dialogue is related to creating experience in the moment of talking, also having a great effect on perception of the issue and is further related to the question of ethics. On the whole, the topic of this work could be described with a question: „how is it possible to say more than words?“. (shrink)

This paper analyses biographical narratives as a possibility of getting access on how individuals interpret their life-world, that is, the subjective interpretation in biographies of actors on their social context. Here biography is understood as the description made by the individual himself. It is of processes and experiences that extended through the course of life, that is, written or oral presentation of the history of life. In this sense, biographies and biographical trajectories are not purely individual phenomena, but social (...) ones. The biographical narrative offers important elements for the analysis not only on the narrator´s life, but especially on the connections between the individual and his group or community, considering however that any narrative is an interpretation based on a specific biographical situation. In this sense, the access to the experiences accumulated and consolidated in their biographies permits the analysis of the subjective interpretation of the actors. (shrink)

Durant l'entre-deux guerres, en France, suite aux changements sociaux répercutés dans le champ littéraire, nombre d'écrivains, de critiques, de grammairiens s'interrogent sur la place du «peuple» dans la représentation littéraire. Non seulement sur le rôle des personnages populaires dans le roman, comme le suggère le mouvement populiste né en 1930, mais également sur celui de la représentation de la langue parlée par le «peuple». Plusieurs solutions s'ébauchent et font l'objet de débats , dont la plus audacieuse peut être décrite comme (...) une nouvelle narration oralisée, sanctionnée par le succès de Voyage au bout de la nuit , de L.-F. Céline.During the 1919-1939, many writers and critics think about the representation of popular language in the modern novel, and their political consequences. Not only about the popular characters, not only about the dialogues, but also about the techniques of narrative transposition of orality. Many solutions exist, and create violent debates between the critics and the writers. For example, Giono, Ramuz, Queneau or Cendrars use forms of oralisation in their narration. L. F. Celine is the most famous of these writers, because of the success of "Travel to the end of Night". (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 6–21. The French philosopher and novelist Tristan Garcia was born in Toulouse in 1981. This makes him rather young to have written such an imaginative work of systematic philosophy as Forme et objet , 1 the latest entry in the MétaphysiqueS series at Presses universitaires de France. But this reference to Garcia’s youthfulness is not a form of condescension: by publishing a complete system of philosophy in the grand style, he has already done what none of us (...) in the older generation of speculative realists has done so far. His book is sophisticated, erudite, rigorous, imaginatively rich, and abundant in worldly wisdom– despite the author’s conclusion that wisdom does not exist. The quality and scope of Forme et objet took few observers by surprise, since Garcia has been treated as an emerging philosopher to watch across half a decade of Parisian oral tradition. But Garcia was not just the subject of rumor, being already well known to the French public as a writer of fiction. His debut novel, La meilleure part des hommes , 2 was awarded the 2008 Prix de Flore 3 and has already appeared in English as Hate: A Romance . 4 His follow-up novel, Mémoires de la jungle , 5 made clever use of a chimpanzee narrator. Nor was Garcia only published as a novelist before last November: his philosophical study L’Image 6 had already appeared when the author was just twenty-six, a year before he was crowned by the muses at the historic Café de Flore. And then in 2011, just months before the appearance of Forme et objet , Garcia published a widely distributed work entitled Nous, animaux et humains , 7 with its focus on Jeremy Bentham’s ideas about animals. Given this prolific and versatile track record, an optimistic scenario might envisage the young Garcia as one of those combined literary/philosophical talents who appear intermittently in France across the centuries: Jean-Paul Sartre is merely the most famous recent case. While more time is needed to see how Garcia will channel his impressive mental energies, Forme et objet displays such breadth of insight that its author has a good chance to emerge as one of the leading philosophers of his generation. If we accept Aristotle’s dictum that the peak mental age is fifty-one, then to read Garcia’s massive book is to gain some idea of what European philosophy might look like in the futuristic-sounding 2030’s. The present article is confined to Forme et objet . At 486 pages, the work is obviously daunting in size. Indeed, it is even longer than it sounds, given that many of its early sections are printed in a smaller typeface to designate them as supplemental commentary to the main flow of the argument. But while the length of the book reportedly led to delays in French publication, and will probably slow the inevitable appearance of an English translation, the length of the book should not deter interested readers– much of it results from Garcia’s teacherly writing style. Whereas Quentin Meillassoux’s prose displays an arctic economy of means, Garcia’s style is reminiscent of the repeated lessons of oral classroom proceedings. Rarely is the reader given fewer than three or four chances to master an idea before the author moves on to the next. In practice, the style feels welcoming rather than long-winded. Otherwise, the structure of Forme et objet is surprisingly simple. There is a useful Introduction of less than twenty pages. Then comes Book I: Formally , running to approximately 135 pages. Here Garcia outlines the most basic features of a thing “no matter what it is,” or n’importe quoi , an everyday phrase that Garcia shapes into a technical term. This part of the book feels at times like a more amiable version of Hegel’s Science of Logic , a parallel emphasized further by the threefold articulation of its theme: 1. Thing; 2. Thing and World; 3. Being and Understanding. This is followed by the much longer Book II: Objectively , totaling more than 300 pages. It contains sixteen essay-like meditations on specific kinds of objects—including time, animals, humans, history, gender, and death. Here each chapter rolls smoothly into the next, making this second part of the book feel more like a different work of Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit . But these are merely analogies. Garcia is no Hegelian, even if the book contains a few dialectical flourishes that seem to reflect his early enthusiasm for the Frankfurt School. Forme et objet ends with a six-page Coda, followed by the usual page of acknowledgments. In what follows, I will briefly summarize each of these four parts of the book before ending with some more general remarks. Before doing so, it will be useful to situate Garcia biographically (as much as I am able) and philosophically. Though Toulouse is his native city, his formative years were spent largely in Algeria, where his family has deep roots. During our sole private conversation, Garcia mentioned that his parents are professors of literature. 8 As a student of philosopher Garcia flourished so early that many of his current ideas date to his teenaged years: “There are sentences in Forme et objet that I wrote when I was seventeen,” he said in response to a question on that cold night on the Canal St.-Martin. I recalled that remark when reading his brilliant account, late in the book, of the central role of adolescence in contemporary culture. While many prodigies blow through their formal academic training without serious obstruction, Garcia’s student memories are rich in tales of isolation and struggle, though equally rich in gratitude for a half-dozen or so exceptional teachers who provided the intellectual space he needed: Meillassoux and Alain Badiou are simply two of the most prominent figures on that list. Though there are many points of agreement between Garcia’s philosophical position and my own, he not only reached his position years before reading my work, 9 he arrived along a rather different path: not through phenomenology, but via the Frankfurt School, which may be one of the reasons for his profound fascination with aesthetics. Garcia’s cultural background is as broad as one could wish: he is no less informed about punk rock and European football leagues than about the spiritualist roots of Bergson’s philosophy. Curious about everything and contemptuous towards nothing, Garcia can be expected to write insightfully on dozens of topics in the years to come. Given that his philosophy is so personally tantalizing in its agreements and disagreements with my own, and given the great internal richness of Forme et objet itself, the present review is no better than a first effort at coming to terms with the challenges posed by this minstrel from the rising generation. This is especially intriguing for older Generation X’ers like me, since confrontation with the younger generation is one of the many themes treated insightfully in Garcia’s book. 1. Introduction Garcia begins in defense of a so-called “flat ontology,” in which all things are equally things. While Roy Bhaskar 10 used this term pejoratively to refer to anti-realist philosophies that flatten everything onto an epistemic plane of human access, Manuel DeLanda 11 (an admirer of Bhaskar) reversed it into the positive principle that all realities are equally realities. Similar notions can be found in the “absistence” of Alexius Meinong, 12 the “irreduction” of Bruno Latour, 13 and my own critique 14 of the undermining/overmining pair. Also noteworthy is Levi Bryant’s use of the term “flat ontology” throughout The Democracy of Objects 15 and his earlier essay “The Ontic Principle.” 16 But for Garcia, flatness is only one face of the cosmos, and one that he ultimately declares to be rather impoverished. Even so, he always remains an advocate of a flat ontology. Insofar as everything is equally something, no matter what it is ( n’importe qui ), everything is equally a thing, equally solitary in its relation with world. This is why his book abounds in those long lists of random, ontologically equivalent entities that Ian Bogost has playfully termed “Latour Litanies.” 17 The first litany in Garcia’s book runs as follows: “We live in this world of things, where a cutting of acacia, a gene, a computer-generated image, a transplantable hand, a musical sample, a trademarked name, or a sexual service are comparable things.” (7) Yet Garcia is frankly dualistic; his flat ontology only lasts until page 159 and the end of Book I (entitled “Formally”), which deals entirely with things that are equally things. Thereafter Garcia turns his attention from things to objects, which are not flat in the least, but engage in hierarchical relations with one another. In agreement with both DeLanda and the speculative realists, Garcia proclaims that his book “proposes to put to the test a thought about things rather than a thought about our thought about things .” (8) Just as ducklings are “imprinted” (9) after hatching and treat the first creature they see as their mother, philosophers are imprinted by the idea with which they begin. Hence, philosophies that begin with human access will never truly find their way back to things. This makes Garcia rather suspicious of twentieth century philosophy, since “the twentieth century—to which in some way this work proposes to bid adieu—has been a period of theorizing modes of access to things rather than things...” (9) Among other possible benefits of the philosophy of things that Garcia proposes, it is fully able to account for thought as a special variant of things, while the reverse is not possible.(10) In Book I of Forme et objet , Garcia’s “things” are so flat, so de-determined, that he is forced to renounce some of the most basic features ascribed to things by most realists. As he tells us in his foreboding third footnote: “We will maintain that the solitude [of things] is less than unity, less than identity, and that it does not imply acceptance (any more than refusal) of the principle of non-contradiction.” (11) In a contemporary world cluttered with too many things, Garcia’s flat and formal plane provides us with some breathing room: “The formal plan of thought enables or re-enables us to cut short all accumulation—whether of knowing, experience, or action—by a simplicity, an impoverished surface...” (13) As Garcia says elsewhere in responding to a Deleuzian critic of the book, his starting point in flat ontology is designed to obstruct the claims of both analytic philosophy and Hegelianism: “Hence, this work seeks to protect each thing—real, imaginary, inconsistent, contradictory—both against Ockham’s Razor and against the Aufhebung or dialectical process.” 18 Yet contrary to the equalizing spirit of many flat ontologies, “we will add to our formal ontology of the equal, an objective ontology of the unequal.” (13) But initially, Garcia joins all flat ontologists in holding that everything is irreducible: “this irreducibility, which we will term the ‘chance’ of each thing... also marks the refusal of a positive thought that reduces things exclusively to natural things, or social things, or historical things, etc.” (15) This irreducible “chance” of a thing emerges as an important technical term in the book, always paired with its inverted brother, the “price to pay” ( prix à payer ). On pages 17-19, we find the only diagrams in the book. What they illustrate is that Garcia wishes to avoid two equally dangerous extremes. The first is the philosophy of substance, featuring the thing-in-itself as a mighty river fed by attributes as if by subordinate tributary streams. This model can be found in many of the classic thinkers of West and East alike. In it, “there is obviously a hierarchization between that which is dragged towards something other than itself, and this other which serves it as an ontological support while supporting its proper being.” (16) For Garcia, the second extreme worth avoiding is the philosophy of events: “One thus conceives trajectories of being, identified as events, facts, powers, intensities, or intentionality. These vectors of being come first, bearing and supporting being, displacing it, but without ever finding a stopping point, a buffer, an objective consistency.” (17) The first model gives us a thing too wrapped up in itself, too compact . This word “compact” (the French and the English are the same) is another technical term for Garcia. But if the “compact” model of things leads us to something more than things, the philosophy of events gives us less than things, by dissolving them into a play of vectors. Garcia’s alternative lies midway between these two extremes: Being enters the thing, being comes out of it. And a thing is nothing other than the difference between the enters and the being that comes out. Thus, the circuit of being is never halted. In the thing, there is never the thing-in-itself. And the thing is never in-itself, but outside of itself. Nonetheless, being is not eventally “pollinated” by vectors: it possesses an objecting halting-point... (19) This single idea is the key to Garcia’s book: the thing is neither a self-contained durable lump nor some sort of evental flux. Instead, the thing is the difference between its various components and its relations with its environment. Or stated differently: “the price to pay for this disposition is a circulation of being that systematically distinguishes two senses of things: that which is in the thing , and that in which the thing is , or that which encompasses it and that which it encompasses,” (19) translating comprendre here as “encompass.” 19 In a beautiful description of a piece of black slate, Garcia sums up the various minerals, qualities, and shapes that compose [ comprend ] it, and calls them “that which is in the thing,” (20) noting that this tells us nothing about “that in which [the slate] is”—namely, all the various situations in which the black slate can be found. Instead, the slate is the difference between these two: the most characteristic principle of Garcia’s philosophy. 2. Formally Book One of Forme et objet , “Formally,” is concerned with the formal equality of all things in a flat world. “Two questions mark the boundaries of reflection: of what is everything composed [ composé ], and: what do all things compose?” (27) Looking downward, we wish to know what everything is made of; looking upward, we want to know the ultimate result of the combination of all things. Here we must turn our attention to the thing n’importe quoi— no matter what it is. (30) Anything with finite qualities is obviously too specific to be relevant to global ontological questions. To an equal degree, something possessing all qualities (think of Whitehead’s God) 20 would not be n’importe quoi either, since it would still be too definite, even if incredibly vast. The same holds for contradictions, since these all differ from each other. The square circle, the non-white black white, and the non-city city are all too distinct to count as the thing no matter what it is. The n’importe quoi must be devoid of all specific qualities, including contradictory ones. In one of the more intriguing points in his book, so reminiscent of Meinong, Garcia proclaims that “the ‘no matter what it is’ is neither a reality nor an abstract construction, nor both of these at once; the ‘no matter what it is’ is simply the plane of equality of that which is real, that which is possible, that which is inexistent, that which is past, that which is impossible, that which is true, that which is false, that which is bad.”(39-40) Since everything has two faces, it would be a grievous mistake to focus on just one of them at the expense of the other, as physicalism or materialism do when reducing the world to minuscule physical underpinnings. For scientistic materialism, “it is either atoms, particles, or fields of force... which are the things.” (47-48) Moreover, “these more-than-things are accompanied by less-than-things: for example, ideas or facts of consciousness are determined by the state of matter and are not autonomous things, but manifestations reduced to secondary effects of material processes...” (48) On this point, Garcia’s position is in complete accord with my own critique of undermining and overmining. 21 Where we disagree is that Garcia is more deeply suspicious of the notion of substance, which I view as salvageable with a few needed changes, while Garcia sees this operation as hopeless: “A substance, in the history of philosophy, is the more-than-thing par excellence.” (51) Another agreement between our positions is visible when Garcia claims (correctly, in my opinion) “that it is vain to distinguish between things which are material and those which are not.” (52) Yet we also find an even more important disagreement, since for Garcia withdrawal cannot be the quality of a thing. Instead, the absence of a thing is simultaneous with it, embodied in all that is not it– the absence of the sculpture of a woman is to be found in the mold that appears at the same time as it, and thus withdrawal must be viewed as an “event” rather than as something pertaining to an object. For Garcia, nothing withdraws beyond access. Since we must distinguish between “that which is something” and “that which something is,” and since the former is identified with “no matter what it is is” and the latter with “ not no matter what it is,” we can say that “everything is thus a milieu, a fragile link between ‘no matter what it is’ and ‘ not no matter what it is.’” (62) And here we find Garcia’s critique of the thing-in-itself: “A thing is never defined en bloc . We can affirm that a thing is this or that, but that does not suffice. It is still necessary to state precisely that which is this thing .” (62) Stated differently, “something is not in itself : for that which is in the thing is not the thing, and that in which the thing is is not the thing.” (62) And here Garcia and I, facing the same evidence, draw opposite conclusions. For me, the fact that nothing can be identified with either its components or its concrete location means that the thing must be something in-itself distinct from both of these. Yet for Garcia, to be in-itself would mean to be identified with just one of these two extreme terms, and hence the thing can only be the difference between them. Garcia is equally suspicious of the classical tendency to view “unity” as a property of the thing, since in his eyes unity is too relational a property to belong to things. (65) While specific things are situated determinately with respect to other things, we are still speaking here about the thing no matter what it is, and this can be viewed only in terms of solitude, which all things share: a human being, a hand, or a chair or all equally things insofar as they are on their own , not insofar as they are one . (64) A thing is alone, and relates only to the one thing that is not another thing: world. In a striking parallel to my own argument for a partial revival of occasionalism, Garcia tells us that “the things communicate only by their solitude: it is because everything is equally on its own in the world that things can be together, enmeshed in one another.” (67) Alone in their solitude, things all relate to world, which serves as a mediator allowing them to become mixed up in one another. As we have seen, one reason that nothing can be in itself is because everything is in something else. For Garcia, “to be in something and to be something are equivalent.” (69) Stated more broadly, “being is thus the difference between the two aspects of each thing: that which is it, and that which it is.” (70) And even more vividly: “a thing is almost like a sack: there is that which one puts in the sack and that which remains outside the sack.” (70) But not quite like a sack, “since a thing is not a thin skin or film. Instead, a thing is comparable to a sack that is immaterial and without thickness: it is nothing other than the difference between that which is this thing and that which thing is, between content and container.” (71) Nothing can be in-itself because everything is two selves at once. For example, we cannot say that our self is defined by our consciousness: “Everything has a self because nothing is in itself. The self is not the quality of that which is related to itself (which is conscious, for example) or which thinks itself related to itself. Nonetheless, for an entity called ‘conscious’ to be related to itself, it is necessary that this very relation should be another thing than the self to which it is related.” (71) Consciousness cannot be the self, precisely because it is other than that of which it is conscious. Nothing is able to grasp itself. The self is “the function by which being and composition [ compréhension ] are mutually excluded...” (72) The self is “the point of shadow of everything that projects some light...” (72) The in-itself faces two opposite dangers: “For something to be in-itself is to be a self. Something which is a self flies out through one of its two sides... Stated differently, being in-itself is simply the possibility of a double failure.” (73) The in-itself can be termed compact : “There remains to us a means of thinking that which does not fully enter into the world, though without exiting from it. This means is what we call the compact.” (76) In a sense, the compact is the opposite of the world. For in the case of the world, everything enters it and it enters nothing; as for the compact, it enters the world (since it is something, after all) while nothing enters it. (77) The compact marks the presence of the impossible in the world. (78) It is not impossible, but possible only on the condition that it fails. (78) The time has come to speak of where a thing is located. “The sole condition of a thing is that of being in another thing than itself, and thus in another thing than something.” (78) A condition is “that which determines something, that which forms something, that in which something is.” (78) As for humans, “the condition of someone is his situation; my social condition is that which socially determines me, my place and my function...” (79) More generally, “to be conditioned is to find oneself reduced to that in which one is.” (79) Everything is conditioned, but nothing is reducible to this condition. To determine the condition of something is to determine in what it is. A thing is located in that which contradicts it, just as a statue exists in its mold, which is precisely that which it is not. Since the thing is finite and definite, its condition or form must be infinite and indefinite. That in which all things are is the world, which Garcia also terms “the whole.” (81) “To try to be in-itself is to attempt to remain outside the world. And indeed, to try to be in-itself is only a path of entry into the world.” (83) For Garcia, “the world is not the pre-existent container of the things it contains, a priori , nor the construction by the mind of a fictional ensemble of all things, a posteriori .” (85) Instead, the world is simultaneous with all things; the two always go together. The world cannot be a determinate world, such as the physical universe or mathematical space, since these are already too specific and limited. “Every determinate world, which is in fact a universe , is a ‘big thing’ [ grosse chose ]: it is a set, however vast, of composite things which itself embodies a thing.” (85) Every determinate world is really just a “big thing.” Stated differently, “it is nothing other than a balanced milieu between the things that compose it and the thing that it composes.” (85) We generally picture the world as a physical univer. (shrink)

This paper analyses biographical narratives as a possibility of getting access on how individuals interpret their life-world, that is, the subjective interpretation in biographies of actors on their social context. Here biography is understood as the description made by the individual himself. It is of processes and experiences that extended through the course of life, that is, written or oral presentation of the history of life. In this sense, biographies and biographical trajectories are not purely individual phenomena, but social (...) ones. The biographical narrative offers important elements for the analysis not only on the narrator´s life, but especially on the connections between the individual and his group or community, considering however that any narrative is an interpretation based on a specific biographical situation. In this sense, the access to the experiences accumulated and consolidated in their biographies permits the analysis of the subjective interpretation of the actors. (shrink)

L’analisi di un periodo storico attraverso la sua narrazione, sia esso il Medioevo o persino un’epoca più recente, considera una moltitudine di fonti, assai eterogenee e di forma non sempre immediata. In alcuni casi uno studioso può nutrire un interesse perfino secondario per un documento storico in sé, rivolgendo l’attenzione alle _motivazioni_ e al _contesto_ che hanno portato alla creazione e alla conservazione di una testimonianza, sia essa scritta, orale o iconografica. La lettura del passato apre diverse prospettive: è possibile (...) rintracciare un genere narrativo che più di ogni altro meglio descrive il Medioevo? In quale senso una fonte arricchisce la nostra conoscenza del passato? È sensato estendere lo studio a testimonianze non strettamente testuali o iconografiche, come le mappe geografiche? La riflessione che poggia su questi quesiti rivela un Medioevo in parte inventato, una fantasia che non è tuttavia l’ombra del passato storico, bensì il suo complemento. _Analysing an historical period, such as the Middle Ages, or a more recent era, through its narration, must take into consideration many heterogeneous sources, whose form is not always immediately identifiable. In some cases, scholars may even have a secondary interest in a specific historical document, preferring to study the _motivations_ and _context_ behind its creation and conservation of historical testimony, either written, spoken or iconographic._ _Interpreting the past opens up different perspectives: is it possible to determine a single narrative genre able to describe the Middle Ages better than others? In what sense does a historical source enrich our knowledge of the historical past? Does it make sense to include in the study of history, sources that are not strictly textual or iconographic, such as a geographical map?_ _Reflecting on these questions reveals an invented aspect of the Middle Ages, a fictional portrait that not only brings into view history__’s shadow but also complements it_. (shrink)

The Philippines, a treasury of oral folk epics, gives us opportunities to research epics in transition, which implies documenting and introducing them to wider audiences. The losing of living epic tradition attracts national and international attention and becomes a concern of the state and the educational system. This study is focused on the literary characteristics Ricaredo Demetillo’s Barter in Panay: An Epic in which his materials were gathered from Maragtas, a semi-legendary recordof the Bornean settlement in Panay. The study (...) is anchored to Hornedo’s theory of reality frames in teaching literature. It unfolds the literary characteristics of the text through descriptive-qualitative method employing formalistic-contextualist approach. The study reveals the theme/s through the narration of the persona, the Filipino worldviews in contemporary times though the language of the characters. Barter in Panay: An Epic reflects the “sweetness and light” of the Filipino lifeways and traditional values. Demetillo’s literary epic is vehicle of preserving our folkloric tradition depicting our Filipino identity and worldview, making the text significant in the canon of Philippine and World literatures. The author emphasizes the urgency to know our past and to revise our understanding of the world within the progress of time. Keywords - Folk literature, barter in Panay, formalistic-contextualist approach, reality frames in teaching literature, literary epic, Central Panay, Philippines. (shrink)

Al-Mu'jam Al-muḫtaṣ of Murtadā Al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1791) in which a scholar recorded his teachers, the books that he obtained the right to narrate during his education life and the chain of transmission from his teachers to the author, is one of the important representatives of the mu'jam genres in 12th/18th century. It can be said that the mu'jam that Zabīdī wrote to record the important people in his life, goes beyond the standard mu'jam with its compilation style, sources, diversity of (...) biographers and anecdotes about the writing activity of the period. Based on Zabīdī's teachers, students and contemporaries, their origins, specialization and profession, the dates of their deaths, the dates of his encounters with them, the extent of his friendships, the dated rihle route, the lecture places and the books he taught, a panorama about the mu'jam will be drawn. The mu’jam, which includes 635 biographies, has a wide range of written and oral sources, especially ijazat and samā sources. Zabīdī's correspondence with scholars from different regions, taqrīz/appreciation written for his famous books and poems belonging to scholars of the period are among these sources. Numerous taqrīzs on his Tāj al-ʿArūs and Sharḥ Al-Iḥyā's point to their fame at that time, while Mu’jam, which has the appearance of an independent poetry anthology due to the poems that reach tens of pages, reveals his unknown poetic side. On the other hand, some couplets recorded in Persian and Turkish show his knowledge of these languages. Zabīdī is a versatile personality who lived in different geographies such as India, Yemen and Egypt and met many scholars there. Rihles in different regions of Yemen such as Zabid, Moravıa and Mocha, as well as inside Egypt, including Damietta, Raşıt, Fuwwah and Asyut, show that Zabīdī traveled frequently for the sake of knowledge. Egypt, where he went in 1167 (1753) with the advice of his teacher al-Aydarūs and spent thirty-eight years of his life, has an important place in his scientific adventure. Recording sufis, merchants and janitors as well as famous people from different fields such as poets, jurists and muhaddis in biographies reflects Zabīdī's extensive contact reaching various segments of society through the aforementioned rihles. While Zabīdī was obtaining knowledge through both these journeys and ijazat, he also gave ratification/ijazat to the students who came to him. While he prefers ijazat of al-musalsal bil awwaliyyah and Al-Awail Ṣaḥīḥ/al-Kutub al-Sittah for those who come to him for short periods of time on the occasion of pilgrimage, but on the other hand he gaves ijazat of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhari, Shamail Tirmidhi, Sharḥ Al-Iḥyā and Al-Amali for his long-term students. Lessons, both open to the public in mosques and with more private groups at home, were held in informal rather than systematic/formal style like in the madrasah. The books that Zabīdī received the right to transmit through his rihles are listed below under the "textbooks" heading. When a book is mentioned in whichever biography, it can be implicitly considered the person has the elevated chain of transmission of the book. Similarly, it can be revealed in which region and by whom tranmits the short chain of a book. This reveals the unknown aspects of regional and temporal writing style. On the other hand, it is possible to find other traces of the background of writing and representation/taqrir through the mu'jam. For instance, a book was sometimes typed as a result of the students' compilation of lecture notes of their masters, sometimes when a person obtained a book he needed and he abbreviated important parts and copied a special copy for himself or a student could only get permission for giving lectures after he had written a book. The mu’jam includes besides of Zabīdī's books, the books written by the biographers in the form of "he has many books" or by mentioning the name directly. Even the recording of details such as the reason for writing, date and content information reveals the unknown aspects of the book writing style of the period. Ultimately, the importance of mu’jam, which was written as the result of a life spent with learning, although it is not well known in terms of genre; is to mention the biographical information collected from many different secondary sources, compiled as a result of long effort, such as history and tabaqat-tarajim about the scientific life of the author together with their evidences. Therefore, these kinds of books, that are mostly written by the author himself or his close student, in which the teacher constitutes its main element, is a primary source in the determination of the biographical information of the author, as well as the book and isnad, deserve to be examined separately because of their potential to shed light on the unknown aspects of the hadith history and literature of the later period. (shrink)

This paper argues that the newspaper Notre Journal enshrined the importance of narrative in the revolutionary psychiatry of its founder and editor, Frantz Fanon. Anchoring my analysis in the interdisciplinarity of the medical humanities, I demonstrate how care at Hôpital Blida-Joinville in colonial Algeria was mediated by the written word. I examine Fanon’s physician writing and editorial texts detailing the use of narrative approaches in the clinic. As an object of care, Notre Journal’s promotion of psychic healing, social actions, and (...) engaged professional practice shaped the interactions and experiences of patients and staff. Printed and distributed to the wider institution, the newspaper created community—during an oppressive French Occupation and at the outset of the War of Independence—in addition to nurturing creativity, curiosity, solidarity, and accountability. Still, Fanon would come to recognize the limits of narrative methods amidst cultural oral traditions, illiteracy, and divergent attitudes about narrating the self. (shrink)

Attachée par Jack Goody à l’usage de l’écriture, la liste se révèle, dans une confrontation avec différentes traditions orales africaines, appartenir en fait à différentes formes de mémoire. Moyen mnémotechnique mis en forme selon différentes logiques d’ordre verbal autant que d’ordre sémantique, la liste devient alors, dans la mise en discours, un catalogue, avec sa pragmatique. Parmi ces logiques catalogales on compte la narration généalogique, privilégiée par les poètes animateurs de la mémoire de la communauté. Les logiques catalogales fournissent (...) donc un instrument idéal pour penser les formes et les fonctions des genres mythologiques et mythographiques pratiquées par Grecs et Romains.Jack Goody has put into relation the list and the use of writing. Different types of oral tradition, especially in Western Africa, show that the list is actually a privileged form of memory. As such, the list is organised into different sequences according to different logic, on the verbal level as well as on the semantic one. Through these different formal organisations, the list becomes a catalogue with its pragmatics. Genealogical narration is one of these principles of discursive logic, often used by the poets, masters of the memory of the community. The logic of the catalogues is an ideal mechanism for thinking about the forms and genres of mythology and of mythography in Greece and Rome. (shrink)

Análisis de un corpus de textos míticos relatados por exmineros de la zona del carbón de la Región del Biobío (Chile). En primer lugar se observa en los textos seleccionados (casos y leyendas) la memoria sensorial como proceso de actualización psicológica cognitiva y semiótica. En segundo lugar se analizan los discursos míticos desde dos perspectivas: la teoría semiótica de los signos naturales de Umberto Eco y la semiosis de Charles Morris. Finalmente, el trabajo aporta diferencias estructurales entre estas dos superestructuras (...) discursivas orales utilizadas por los informantes: el caso y la leyenda. This article is related to the field of oral literature. It is focused on a theoretical and analytical approach in the corpus of mythical texts narrated by former miners from the Coal District of the Bío-Bío Region (Chile). Firstly, sensory memory is found in the texts as a process of updating (cognitive and semiotic psychology). Secondly, the mythical discourses are analyzed from two perspectives: the semiotics theory of natural signs of Umberto Eco and the semiosis of Charles Morris. Finally, this work shows structural differences between these two superstructures used by the informant miners: the case and the legend. (shrink)

Argues that rebuilding ethical communities will require a cultural reorientation from visually dominated to oral/aural experience and develops a speech-based conception of moral place that can set limits on the actions of individuals and communities.

Since the fourteenth century, Eastern Woodlands tribes have used delicate purple and white shells called “wampum” to form intricately woven belts. These wampum belts depict significant moments in the lives of the people who make up the tribes, portraying everything from weddings to treaties. Wampum belts can be used as a form of currency, but they are primarily used as a means to record significant oral narratives for future generations. In Reading the Wampum, Kelsey provides the first academic consideration (...) of the ways in which these sacred belts are reinterpreted into current Haudenosaunee tradition. While Kelsey explores the aesthetic appeal of the belts, she also provides insightful analysis of how readings of wampum belts can change our understanding of specific treaty rights and land exchanges. Kelsey shows how contemporary Iroquois intellectuals and artists adapt and reconsider these traditional belts in new and innovative ways. Reading the Wampum conveys the vitality and continuance of wampum traditions in Iroquois art, literature, and community, suggesting that wampum narratives pervade and reappear in new guises with each new generation. (shrink)

Os processos iniciáticos – a circuncisão e os ritos e ensinamentos a ela correlacionados – representam um dos mais importantes traços da cultura tradicional africana. Constituem sofisticado e complexo corpus pedagógico, sendo compreendidos, em todos os seus aspectos, em relação com o sagrado. Inúmeros temas e artifícios literários presentes na obra do escritor moçambicano Mia Couto encenam movimentos que podem ser associados ao imaginário da tradição ancestral. O artigo percorre alguns contos e romances do escritor buscando referências ao sagrado expressas (...) com os modos característicos da tradição. Detém-se particularmente na forma de construção diegética que encena aspectos da estrutura ritualístico-narrativa dos mitos. Destaca a estratégia ficcional de Couto que não apenas recolhe e valoriza os saberes da cultura tradicional, mas desconstrói, tensiona e transforma esses saberes. O atravessamento da voz do narrador e das personagens pela voz reinventada da tradição oral, para além de reconhecer e afirmar o valor da sabedoria tradicional, reafirma outrossim o pressuposto do dinamismo da tradição. Palavras-chave: Literatura moçambicana. Mia Couto. Tradição oral. Ritos iniciáticos.Initiation processes – circumcision and the rites and lessons related to it – represent one of the most important features of traditional African culture. They form a highly sophisticated and complex pedagogical corpus, which is completely understood in relation to the sacred. Many topics and literary devices present in the work of Mozambican writer Mia Couto show movements that can be associated to the imaginary of ancestral tradition. The paper analyzes some tales and novels looking for references to the sacred expressed with the characteristic features of that tradition. This piece of work specially focuses on the diegetic construction used to present aspects of the ritualistic-narrative structure of myths. Couto's fictional strategy has special importance not only because it records and values the knowledge of traditional culture, but also because it deconstructs, tautens and transforms this knowledge. Besides acknowledging and reaffirming the value of traditional wisdom, the reinvented voice from oral tradition present in the voices of the narrator and characters states the assumption of dynamism in tradition. Keywords : Mozambican literature. Mia Couto. Oral tradition. Initiation rites. - DOI: 10.5752/P.2175-5841.2012v10n25p136. (shrink)