Thèses sur le sujet « POETICA ORALE »

Essa tese é o resultado de uma pesquisa etnográfica realizada junto às atividades do Grupo de Capoeira Angola Pelourinho – GCAP – em Salvador (Bahia/Brasil) e em Cremona (Itália). Trata-se de narrativa centrada em experiência autoral nômade, que se fez oportunidade para investigar os processos culturais, artísticos, bem como as dinâmicas politíco-sociais que obras, marcadas por várias autorias, do final do século XIX aos dias atuais, trazem sobre a capoeira, com mudança de seu estatuto: de prática criminalizada (e sempre posta à margem) à Patrimônio Imaterial da Humanidade. Crítico em relação a esse projeto de institucionalização, o GCAP, orientado pelo Mestre Moraes (Pedro Moraes Trindade), vem desenvolvendo um projeto, interessado em compreender, no contexto atual, narrações orais e corporais, levando adiante princípios e práticas que distinguem essa arte em sua complexidade. Como transmitida no GCAP, a capoeira angola sugere um pensamento de entre-lugar, estimulando a constante busca por outras verdades, ancorado num aprendizado sem ponto final. Para ressaltar essa perspectiva, a narrativa de minha experiência etnográfica não tratou de aspectos meramente visíveis da capoeira – materialização que, pessoas com seus corpos, fazem da capoeira -, mas de como sua prática estimula emoções, interesses e conhecimentos. Minha experiência, em diálogo com outros integrantes do GCAP e suas produções, trouxe à tona a existência de uma tradição poética da capoeira angola, que chamei de poética mandinga, ressaltando sua ancestralidade africana. Essa poética envolve as diversas partes do ritual da capoeira - textuais-corporais-musicais-relacionais – e permite entender a capoeira angola como uma ambiência comunicacional, artístico e expressiva, divulgada e atualizada no encontro entre diferentes culturas.
Questa tesi è il risultato di una ricerca etnografica condotta frequentando le attività del Grupo de Capoeira Angola Pelourinho - GCAP - a Salvador (Bahia/Brasile) e a Cremona (Italia). É una narrativa centrata in un’esperienza d’autore nomade, che è diventata l'occasione per indagare i processi culturali e artistici, così come le dinamiche politiche e sociali che l’operato di diversi attori, della fine del XIX secolo ad oggi, ha prodotto sulla capoeira, cambiando il suo status: da pratica criminalizzata (e sempre marginalizzata) a simbolo del Patrimonio Immateriale dell'Umanità. Critico nei confronti di questo progetto di istituzionalizzazione, il GCAP, orientato da Mestre Moraes, Pedro Moraes Trindade, sviluppa un progetto interessato a comprendere, nel contesto attuale, narrazioni orali e corporali, portando avanti principi e pratiche che contraddistinguono quest’arte nella loro complessità. Como trasmessa nel GCAP, la capoeira angola suggerisce un pensiero del intermezzo (in-between), stimolando la costante ricerca di altre verità, ancorato in un processo di apprendimento privo di punto finale. Per sottolineare questo aspetto, la narrazione della mia esperienza etnografica non ha affrontato solo gli aspetti visibili della capoeira - materializzazione che le persone con i loro corpi fanno della capoeira -, ma di come questa pratica stimola emozioni, interessi e conoscenze. La mia esperienza, in dialogo con gli altri membri del GCAP e le sue produzioni, ha fatto emergere anche l'esistenza di una tradizione poetica della Capoeira Angola, che ho chiamato poetica mandinga, sottolineando la sua ascendenza africana. É importante accentuare che, dal XX secolo, questa manifestazione poetica ha iniziato ad essere registrata, sviluppando una conseguente produzione discografica accessibile a persone provenienti da diverse parti del mondo.

Jusqu’au milieu du XXe siècle, la littérature kabyle fut essentiellement orale et s'exprimait principalement dans le genre poétique. Si les contes, les fables, les légendes et autres récits mythiques furent l'autre moyen par quoi les Kabyles exprimèrent leur génie, il reste que c’est la poésie qui fût la matrice de leur culture et le réceptacle de leur histoire. Plus qu’un art qui doit transfigurer le réel, la poésie kabyle a pour rôle de rendre ce réel, l’interpréter et le clarifier pour donner du sens aux événements historiques et politiques auxquels sont confrontés les hommes et les femmes de cette région. L’objet de notre recherche est de partir de la production poétique la plus ancienne telle qu’elle est arrivée à nous par les recueils de Adolphe Hanoteau (1867), Amar-Ou-Saïd Boulifa (1904), Belkacem Bensedira (1887), Jean Amrouche (1988) et la somme considérable établie par Mouloud Mammeri (1969, 1980, 1989) afin de scruter l’horizon culturel de la Kabylie et saisir, à travers l’étude les textes, l’homme dans son enracinement social et culturel
Until the middle of the twentieth century, Kabyle literature was essentially oral and was mainly expressed in the poetic genre. If tales, fables, legends and other mythical narratives were another way by which the Kabyle people expressed their genius, it remains that poetry was the matrix of their culture and the receptacle of their history. The Kabyle poetry, more than an art that has to transfigure reality, has the role of rendering this reality, interpreting it and clarifying it to give meaning to the historical and political events.The object of our research is to start from the earliest poetic production as it came to us by the collections of Adolphe Hanoteau (1867), Amar-Ou-Saïd Boulifa (1904), Belkacem Bensedira (1887) Jean Amrouche (1988) and the considerable sum established by Mouloud Mammeri (1969, 1980, 1989) in order to examine the cultural horizon of Kabylia through the study of its oral poetry

A computationally-assisted analysis was undertaken of Tahitian oral poetry transcribed in the early 19th century, with the aim of discovering its poetic organization. An automated pattern detection process attempted to recognize many of the organizational possibilities for poetry that have been documented in the literature, as well as be open to unanticipated varieties. Candidate patterns generated were subjected to several rounds of manual review. Some tasks that would have proved difficult to automate, such as the detection of semantic parallelism, were pursued fully manually. Two distinct varieties of meter were encountered: A syllabic counting meter based upon a colon line, and a much less common word stress counting meter based upon a colon line or a list item. The use of each meter was ubiquitous in the corpus, but somewhat sporadic. Word stress counting meter was typically applied to lists, and generally co-occurred with patterns of syllabic counting meter; perhaps in order to enhance metrical effect through an addition of rhythm. For both meters, counts were regulated by an external pattern, wherein they were observed to repeat, increment, form inverted structures, or group into alternating sequences. There appeared to be few limitations as to the possibilities for a pattern‟s starting count or length. Patterns were found to juxtapose freely, as well as alongside unpatterned counts. According to Nigel Fabb and Morris Halle, syllabic counting meter is only otherwise encountered in a style of Hebrew poetry from the Old Testament (Fabb and Halle 2008:268, 271, 283). Word stress counting meter may be unique to Tahitian poetry. The colon also functioned as poetic line for purposes of sound parallelism, which manifested itself in patterns of simple assonance, simple consonance, and complex patterns that combined simpler ones of assonance, consonance, and parallel strings of phonemes. Although sound patterns most often spanned lines, they were sometimes constrained to within a line. Occasionally, they were arranged into inverted structures, somewhat analogous to those noted for counting meter. Some sound patterns were contained within names and epithets, and perhaps served as recurring islands of parallelism. Syntactic parallelism was common, especially in the organization of lists. Occasionally, its application was suggestive of canonical parallelism. Items of syntactic frame lists were often arranged so as to assist patterns of counting meter. A syntactic frame‟s variable elements often belonged to a single semantic category for which there seemed to be no restriction, and which could represent any taxonomic level. There appeared to be complete freedom in regards to the arrangement of syntactic frame patterns, and it was common for several to follow one another in unbroken succession. There is evidence that some of the corpus poetry was memorized. Other evidence suggests that a capacity existed, and perhaps continues to exist, of poetic composition-in-performance.

This dissertation argues that the political, philosophical, and aesthetic theories developed in The New Age, edited by A. R. Orage, provided a crucial foundation for modernist poetry. By situating the modernist aesthetics of Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and T. S. Eliot in tenris of the complex scene of 19 10s and early 1920s London radicalism, this study develops historically local theoretical terms to read modernist poetry and also suggests the continued relevance of modernist political questions when viewed frorri this perspective. The first chapter analyzes Orage's early political and theosophical writings, demonstrating how these sources informed the journal's interconnected concerns with print culture, radical politics and literature. The second chapter analyzes Ezra Pound's entr6e into the NeIv Age scene in late 1911, situating the criticism and poetry of I Gather the Limbs of Osiris as an important ideological contribution to The New Age's Guild Socialism movement. The third chapter argues that Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound's Vorticist movement was organized as a radical mode of production along New Age lines and that Vorticism's aesthetic products are politically positioned against capitalist production. The fourth and fifth chapters trace The New Age's engagement with orthodox economic theory and Pound and Eliot's interest in radical economics, particularly as they connected to epistemology, money and representation, value, corporate organization, consumption and scarcity. In the final chapter, this analysis of Social Credit is used to arguet.h at the developmento f The Cawos and The WasteL aiid are fundamentally connected to the New Age's radical economic epistemology. As a whole, this dissertationa rguest hat the idiosyncratic political theory of T11eN ew Age shaped the production and consumption of crucial modernist poetic strategies.

Since the advent of capture technologies poets have advanced, through their experimental practice, an expanded understanding of what constitutes a text to incorporate not only its content, but also its construction. Reframed by morphological and mechanical perspectives, our changing relationship with sound and image was constituent to a cumulative process of artistic abstraction that would, in time, come to define modernity. By highlighting the importance of technologies such as telegraphy and electricity in the conception of poetry as a connecting force, of photography and cinema in the recalibration of our perceptions of subject and object, and of gramophony, radio, television and computing technologies as key agents in a process of naturalization regarding the relationship between poetry and its audience, this thesis will attempt to illustrate the progression of technology-led abstraction in oral, written and music based poetries from the beginning of the industrial age to the present day. Our relationship with the communication technologies we invent has become increasingly interwoven with the epistemological structures such mechanisms advance. This thesis will propose that as a consequence, the ways we organise and remediate texts, sounds and images into new, creative contexts that utilize the mass communication technologies and distribution networks of our modern experience positions electronic music, rap, digital memes and other interdisciplinary modes of digital expression as significant poetic forms. Our day-to-day engagement with diverse media allows us to reconfigure all our manifestations of self and any examination of mass media's impact on poetic expression must likewise constitute a reading of both literary and popular materials. To this end, this thesis will consider the progressive technologization of our engagement with oral, written and music-based poetries that media technologies facilitate within the context of the praxis of prominent poets, their literary theories and those of the literary movements they endorsed.

Mestrado em Línguas, Literaturas e Culturas
This dissertation aims to explore the human and cultural heritage of North American Indigenous communities, through the example of the poetry of Joy Harjo, in order to increase understanding and respect for the diversity of life supported by the sharing Mother, the Earth. In the attempt to ponder a pluri-dimensional viewing of the world, an approach will be developed in the context of American Indian cultural expression, particularly the contemporary poetry of Joy Harjo, of Muskogee-Creek descent, who suggests a dialectics of spirituality to help human beings in the search for responses to issues and dilemmas both of American Indians and the global multicultural human community. In this process, she focuses on the dynamics of interrelationships combined with personal and collective activism. By sharing ideas and attitudes as well, everyone can learn how to cultivate and educate an awareness of responsibility towards dignifying and valuing diversity. To sum up, in accordance with the crucial role of literature in the evolution of human interrelationships with less social tension and fewer conflicts, by cultivating the dialectics of spirituality articulated by Harjo, human beings can share life in harmony and justice at the same time as we maintain a balanced coexistence with other elements and beings. This dissertation is composed of an introduction and theoretical contextualization of the theme in Part I, an interpretative study of Joy Harjo’s poetry in Part II, and the conclusion in Part III.
O presente trabalho propõe-se aprofundar o conhecimento do património humano e cultural das comunidades Indígenas Norte-Americanas, por intermédio do exemplo da poesia de Joy Harjo, para melhor compreender e respeitar a diversidade da vida gerada pela Mãe em comum, a Terra. Ao procurar refletir sobre uma visão pluridimensional do mundo, será desenvolvida uma abordagem no contexto de expressão cultural Índia Americana, ou Ameríndia, particularmente a poesia contemporânea de Joy Harjo. A poetisa de ascendência Muskogee-Creek sugere que, pela dialética de espiritualidade, os seres humanos encontrem caminhos para resolver questões e dilemas das comunidades Índias Americanas e da comunidade humana multicultural global. Seguindo este processo, vai dar relevância à dinâmica das interrelações que inclui intervenção pessoal e coletiva. Na partilha de ideias e, também, de atitudes, as pessoas podem conhecer como cultivar e educar uma consciência de responsabilidade pela dignificação e valorização da diversidade. Finalmente, concordando que a literatura tem um papel crucial no desenvolvimento de interrelações humanas com menos tensão e menos conflitos sociais, pondo em prática a cultura dialética de espiritualidade exposta por Joy Harjo, a humanidade pode viver em comum com harmonia e justiça, em equilíbrio com todos os outros elementos e seres vivos que existem à nossa volta. Esta dissertação é composta por uma contextualização teórica do tema e introdução, a Parte I, um estudo interpretativo da poesia de Joy Harjo, a Parte II, e pela conclusão, a Parte III.

O presente trabalho, resultado do contato com sociedades da Reserva Indígena Kadiwéu, localizada no Pantanal Sul-mato-grossense, verifica a cerâmica ali produzida pelas índias, no período compreendido entre o final do século XIX e a atualidade. A investigação focaliza o processo de produção, os padrões ornamentais, a forma e a função dos objetos, além dos materiais e técnicas utilizados. A cerâmica Kadiwéu difere, atualmente, das demais produções brasileiras principalmente pela ornamentação, marcada por grafismos e cores muito peculiares. Essa produção sofreu, durante o período ao qual a pesquisa se ateve, transformações significativas no que se refere aos padrões e técnicas ornamentais, possivelmente devido à fixação dos índios próximo a Serra da Bodoquena, que oferece grande variedade de matérias-primas, incorporadas às produções correntes. Foram utilizadas como referência para esta pesquisa duas importantes coleções etnográficas: a de Guido Boggiani, que esteve entre os Kadiwéu em 1892 e 1897 e se encontra, sobretudo, em museus da Itália e a coleção recolhida por Darcy Ribeiro na década de 1940, período em que conviveu com eles. Essas coleções diferem muito da produção atual, conforme verificação feita durante os anos 2000 e 2005. A aproximação aos processos de produção, das formas, cores e padrões, impressos na cerâmica Kadiwéu, possibilitou a compreensão da real dimensão das inúmeras possibilidades de exploração do barro transformado pelo fogo, propondo, então, uma tradução poética dessa observação. São de essencial importância a apresentação desse percurso, a verificação e o registro dos processos de produção atuais, usados pelas mulheres índias para preparar, modelar e submeter o barro à ação mágica e transformadora do fogo. A tradução poética aqui delineada nasceu desse encontro, que provocou reflexões manifestadas por dois conceitos: persistência e tradição oral.
This work, resulting from contact with Reserva Indígena Kadiwéu (Kadiweu Indian Reserve) societies, located in South Mato Grosso state marsh region (Pantanal), focuses on pottery made by female Indians between late XIXth century and today. Besides material and techniques used, the investigation focuses on objects production process, ornamental patterns, form, and function. Nowadays, Kadiweu pottery differs from other Brazilian natives production mainly in ornamentation, marked by distinctive graphisms and colors. During the period researched, this productions patterns and ornamental techniques have significantly changed, possibly due to the settlement of that native group near Bodoquena Range, where they find a variety of raw material, incorporated to their current production. Two important ethnographic collections were used as a reference for this research: that of Guido Boggiani (who visited the Kadiweu Indians in 1892 and 1897), now specially found at Italian museums, and that accumulated by Darcy Ribeiro in the last century 40s, when he lived with them. These collections differ a lot from current production, as verified in 2000 and 2005. Approaching production processes, forms, colors and patterns imprinted in Kadiweu pottery provided comprehension of the actual dimension of the numberless possibilities of fire-transformed clay exploitation, leading then to a poetic translation of this observation. Of essential importance are presenting this trajectory, checking and registering present production processes used by female Kadiweu Indians in preparing, modelling and subjecting clay to the magic and transforming action of fire. The poetic translation here outlined was born from this meeting, which caused reflections manifested through two concepts: persistence and oral tradition.

El origen y significado de la inspiración poética” ha sido siempre objeto de considerable controversia. Lo que los críticos no preguntan muy a menudo es: ¿cuáles son las palabras o frases que los textos poéticos tempranos, previos al Período Clásico, usaron para expresar el genio poético o mousikē que nosotros asociamos con la inspiración en la poesía griega temprana? En este ensayo examino, en primer lugar y principalmente, tanto la terminología empleada por Homero y Hesíodo para expresar la experiencia poética, como el rol del aoidoso cantor/poeta en sus descripciones respectivas. Sostengo no solo que se confunden en Homero y Hesíodo las nociones físicas y figurativas de inspiración”, es decir, que no son diferenciadas por los poetas de manera consciente, sino que la poesía misma debe haber sido vista por Homero y Hesíodo como un don divino –de acuerdo a la voluntad de los dioses–. También sostengo que diversas etimologías y contextos sugieren fuertemente que un tipo de mania o posesión extática fue una parte importante del proceso poético temprano. El trabajo aquí presentado es una versión abreviada de un proyecto de investigación más amplio que busca examinar el origen y desarrollo de las actitudes pre-platónicas, platónicas y post-platónicas hacia la inspiración y la alegoría. --- Some Reflections on the Early Greek Notion of Poetic Inspiration”. The origin and meaning of poetic inspiration” has always been the subject of considerable controversy. What critics rarely ask are: what words or phrases did the early poetic texts use to express the poetic genius or mousikē we associate with inspiration in the early Greek poetry, and thus prior to the Classical period? In this paper, I examine first and foremost both the terminology employed by Homer and Hesiod to express the poetic experience and the role of the aoidos or singer/poet in their respective accounts. I argue that not only are the physical and figurative notions of inspiration” in Homer and Hesiod confused, that is, they are not consciously distinguished for the poets, but poetry itself for Homer and Hesiod must have been seen as a divine gift –as willed by the gods. I also argue that a number of etymologies and contexts strongly suggest that a type of mania or ecstatic possession was very much a part of the early poetic process. The work presented here is an abridged part of a larger research project that seeks to examine the origin and development of pre-Platonic, Platonic and postPlatonic attitudes toward inspiration and allegory.

This dissertation aims to investigate the relations between music and literature in songs that make the work of the pernambucano group Cordel do Fogo Encantado in order to understand the meanings of these interartistics compositions and how they reinvent the crystallized traditions about the image of the Brazilian backland. Therefore, we chose a corpus consisting of seven songs by Cordel do Fogo Encantado (Profecia, Profecia Final, Chover, A Matadeira, Pedra e Bala,Vou saquear a tua feira e Morte e Vida Stanley), chosen not only for their intersection between literature and music, since the whole work of this group has such intersection, but for their expression of the Brazilian backland, the place of origin of the group. Several implications of this approach appeared and to answer them we followed the pioneering work of Steven Paul Scher, who under the name Melopoetic (melos = singing + poetic) includes studies of musical-literary comparativism, seeking connections between the arts. Along the ideas of this author, the notion of Cultural Melopoetic present in the works of Solange Ribeiro de Oliveira, also served as basis. Furthermore, we consider appropriate the dialogue between melopoetic and the concept of oral poetry developed by medievalist Paul Zumthor, comprising the study of orality not only in literature, but in different manifestations in which the voice is the driving force, as well as his idea of performance coupled with the work of Ruth Finnegan under the same topic. The work of Cordel do Fogo Encantado, uniting the afro indigenous music in the backland of Moxotó to the sound of violas and rhythms of popular folklore was increased of literature to portray the backland where tradition and modernity are intertwined, creating a peculiar work. The analytical process sought to demonstrate how the presence of literature and music manifests itself in the songs worked and how this connection is responsible for transcreate a hybrid backland that insists on reinventing itself
Esta dissertação se propôs a investigar as relações entre música e literatura nas canções que compõem a obra do grupo pernambucano Cordel do Fogo Encantado de forma a compreender os sentidos destas composições interartísticas e como elas reinventam as tradições cristalizadas sobre a imagem do sertão. Para tanto elegemos um corpus composto por sete canções do Cordel do Fogo Encantado (Profecia, Chover, Profecia Final, A Matadeira, Pedra e Bala,Vou saquear a tua feira e Morte e Vida Stanley), escolhidas não apenas por sua intersecção entre literatura e música, visto que toda a obra do grupo apresenta tal relação, mas sim por sua expressão do sertão, lugar de origem do grupo. Várias implicações surgiram desta abordagem e para respondê-las nos valemos do trabalho pioneiro de Steven Paul Scher, que sob a denominação de Melopoética (melos = canto + poética) abarca os estudos de comparativismo musical-literário, buscando as conexões entre as artes. Junto às ideias deste autor, a noção de Melopoética Cultural presente nas obras de Solange Ribeiro de Oliveira, também nos serviu de base. Além disso, consideramos pertinente o diálogo entre a melopoética e o conceito de poesia oral desenvolvido pelo medievalista Paul Zumthor que compreende o estudo da oralidade não apenas na literatura, mas nas diversas manifestações em que a voz é a força motriz, bem como a sua ideia de performance aliada aos trabalhos de Ruth Finnegan sobre o mesmo tema. A obra do Cordel do Fogo Encantado, unindo a música afro-indígena do sertão do Moxotó à cantoria de viola e aos ritmos do folclore popular foi acrescida da literatura para retratar um sertão em que tradição e modernidade estão imbricadas, criando uma obra peculiar. O processo analítico por nós utilizado buscou demonstrar como se manifesta nas canções trabalhadas a presença da literatura e da música e como esta conexão é responsável pela transcriação de um sertão híbrido que teima em se reinventar

Este trabalho está centrado na Arte de Contar Histórias e o sopro do narrador, fundamento da vocalidade poética. Ao pensar nos diversos caminhos possíveis para a sua composição, foi aprofundada uma visão direcionada para o entrelaçamento das experiências subjetivas com a própria narrativa. Essa é uma vereda que tem como base a Palavra Viva, proveniente dos narradores tradicionais, onde é ressaltado o seu aspecto artesanal. Paralelos com a contemporaneidade foram cercados, assim como imagens e metáforas, dentre os quais se destacam a criança, o peregrino e o selvagem, que permeiam a reflexão sob ângulos diversos. Para abordá-los é sugerida a ideia de despreparo que se contrapõe a uma ideia de formação mais linear e acentua o chamado à experiência.
This work is centered on the Art of Storytelling and the breath of the narrator, the foundation of the poetic vocality. In thinking about the different possible paths for its composition, a vision was focused on the intertwining of subjective experiences with the narrative itself. This is a path based on the Living Word, from the traditional narrators, where their artisan aspect is emphasized. Parallels with contemporaneity have been surrounded, as well as images and metaphors, among which the child, the pilgrim and the savage stand out, which permeate the reflection under different angles. To address them is suggested the idea of unpreparedness that opposes a more linear idea of formation and accentuates the call to experience.

Ce travail prend appui sur les œuvres de quatre écrivains originaires du Maghreb, Assia Djebar, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Abdelwahab Meddeb et Boualem Sansal pour proposer un examen de la notion de voix littéraire en contexte francophone et pour comprendre les conditions et les enjeux de la présence de la voix dans les œuvres. En mobilisant les apports de la sociologie de la littérature, elle met en lien l'esthétique vocale des œuvres avec des expériences sociales et culturelles qui ont marqué les écrivains et ont développé chez eux une sensibilité au sonore. L'étude développe ensuite une analyse formelle de l'insertion et de la présence de la voix dans les œuvres, en prenant appui sur les outils de la narratologie de Gérard Genette, sur les analyses de Mikhaël Bakhtine et sur les orientations de la critique de la vocalité. Elle vise à proposer des critères de distinction pour envisager la différence entre oralité et voix et pour comprendre comment la construction littéraire de la voix engage différents niveaux textuels (dialogiques, énonciatifs, narratifs, stylistiques, rythmiques). Enfin, ce travail cherche à penser la relation entre les poétiques vocales qui marquent les textes des quatre écrivains et le sens politique et éthique que peut prendre la voix dans les œuvres. En mobilisant la pensée philosophique de Michel de Certeau et Jacques Rancière, l'étude montre comment la forme vocale engage un discours sur le monde et sur le sujet qui formule des impératifs éthiques. Cette thèse cherche à montrer comment les poétiques de la voix en œuvre chez ces quatre écrivains prennent sens si elles sont envisagées à la fois dans leurs dimensions référentielle et sémiotique
This study examines the work of four North African writers : Assia Djebar, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Abdelwahab Meddeb and Boualem Sansal. It emphasizes the concept of literary voice in order to apprehend the conditions and theoretical background of vocal presence in the writings of these authors. By resorting to sociology of literature, this study connects the vocal aesthetics of texts to social and cultural experiences that might have affected the writers and led them to develop a sensitivity to sound. It analyses then the introduction and presence of voices in texts from a formal point of vue. It leans upon concepts of Gérard Genette’s narratology, on Mikhail Bakhtine’s analyses and criticism of vocality’s contributions. It develops an attempt to distinguish orality and voice, as well as to understand how litterary construction of voice leads to various textual levels (dialogical, enunciative, narrative, stylistic, rhythmic). This study finally tries to understand the relationships between these four writers’ poetics of voice, as well as the political and ethical meaning of voice in their writings. Leaning on Michel de Certeau and Jacques Rancière’s philosophical works, this study shows how literary voice involves ethical considerations about the world and the subject by examining the ways these writers speek about History and politics. This study tries to highlight that these four writers’ poetics of voice can be understood if considered through a referencial as well as through a semiotic dimension

This thesis utilizes the theory of feminism in all its implied branches in an attempt to critically review the subtle and sometimes deliberate subjugation of women in general and South Africa in particular. This occurs, in spite of the fact that there are laws in place that are meant to discourage women abuse. Juxtaposing this is the perspective conception of women, looking at themselves as subjects of virtue who deserve equal treatment to any other human being. It is through some oral forms that this reflection could be tested. Praise poetry, in the hands of a creative artist opens up a world of human emotions that could not be easily seen or felt, and yet it can simultaneously be used to manipulate situations. Language therefore could be seen as a powerful double-edged instrument. The patriarchal system, in this thesis, is exposed as that holy ideology turned unholy to achieve condescending agendas against women. The thin light of respect demonstrated by the traditionalist thinking is made to disappear into thin air, especially when contaminated by Western ideas. It is the resoluteness and the fair obstinacy of some both traditional and modern women that determinedly stood up to conscientise the world in terms of respect for human life irrespective. In this research, an exploration of literary elements within four Nguni languages, that is Siswati, isiZulu, isiNdebele, and isiXhosa reveals the singularity of purpose, for these elements to be manipulated to achieve domineering intentions. Be that as it may, tibongo (praise poems/ praises) of outstanding women who have served in traditional leadership in these language groups give reason to challenge any idea that women should by virtue be relegated to the back seat. Through these tibongo it becomes apparent that because of the women leaders’ stubborn fairness and unparalleled foresight, they have become personifications of democratic values and as such, role models and symbolic hope not only for the empowerment of women, but also for their total liberation from all negative perceptions and oppressions.
African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

This article takes up the challenge of comparative research in Africa by analysing and comparing the oral art of West African griots and Southern African iimbongi or oral poets. Similarities and differences between these performers and their respective societies are highlighted through the use of an ethnographic methodology. A distinction is drawn between the more traditional performers such as Thiam Anchou and D.L.P. Yali-Manisi, and the more modern performers such as M’Bana Diop, Bongani Sitole and Zolani Mkiva. The rich use of genealogy and history in the more traditional performances is highlighted. In comparing the work of the more contemporary, urban poets such as M’bana Diop of Senegal and Zolani Mkiva from Southern Africa, similarities are found in their performances on post-independence leaders such as Senghor and Mandela. Political pressures which have been brought to bear on the performer are also discussed. This article explores the continuity between the past and the present in relation to aspects such as the following: how performers gain recognition, their continued survival, their relationship with politics and religion, the orality- literacy debate, and the stylistic techniques used by these performers. Wherever possible, examples of performers and their work are provided.

The materiality of poetic language, its sensuous dimension, has generally been understood as aural or visual—patterns of sound unfolding in time, or words arranged on the page in a certain way. But a poem also has a sensuous reality in the mouth due to the movements and sensations of uttering the sequences of speech-sounds that constitute the poem. This is the articulatory dimension of the poem—the patterns of shapes, movements, sensations, and gestures that a poem orchestrates in the mouth. How is our experience of a poem informed or conditioned by the activity of enunciating the speech-sounds that constitute it? As the first full-length study of this fundamental material aspect of poetic language, this dissertation argues that the articulatory dimension of a poem, i.e. the oral-tactile-kinesthetic sensations of its utterance, can be made to signify. My first chapter traces a history of articulatory thinking drawn from disciplines ranging from anthropology to linguistics to cognitive poetics and literary studies, and develops a conceptual framework for describing and analyzing the articulatory dimension. The framework I propose relies on articulatory phonetics to describe and appreciate the aesthetics of speech-sound in a precise and rigorous way. The second chapter comprises of a series of ‘case studies’ of specific speech-sounds, showing how the affective and symbolic potential of these phonemes grow naturally out of the phenomenological experience of their utterance, and then illustrating how these potentials are evoked in actual lines of verse from poets as historically and stylistically diverse as Shakespeare, Pope, Tennyson, Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, Hughes, Stevens, and Plath. The case studies are interspersed with ‘interludes’ that fill in the developmental, anthropological, literary, and cultural history of speech-sounds that undergird the articulatory dimension. Finally, the third chapter examines how the oral physicality of speech-sounds has been imagined, mythologized, and valorized in the poetic imagination. Specifically, I show how the mouth in its activity of enunciating speech-sounds becomes a ground for figuration, a source of overarching metaphors for poetic inspiration, poetic utterance, and the poetic imagination in poets ranging from Shelley and Whitman to Frost, Stevens, Pinsky, and Seamus Heaney.
2021-11-13T00:00:00Z

From the eighth to the fourteenth century, places of wonder and dread appear in a wide variety of genres in Old and Middle English: epics, lays, romances, saints’ lives, travel narratives, marvel collections, visions of the afterlife. These places appear in narratives of the other world, a term which in Old and Middle English texts refers to the Christian afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, even Paradise can be fraught with wonder, danger, and the possibility of harm. But in addition to the other world, there are places that are not theologically separate from the human world, but that are nevertheless both marvellous and horrifying: the monster-mere in Beowulf, the Faerie kingdom of Sir Orfeo, the demon-ridden Vale Perilous in Mandeville’s Travels, or the fearful landscape of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Fraught with horror or the possibility of harm, these places are profoundly different from the presented or implied home world of the text. My dissertation investigates how Old and Middle English narratives create places of wonder and dread; how they situate these places metaphysically between the world of living mortals and the world of the afterlife; how they furnish these places with dangerous topography and monstrous inhabitants, as well as with motifs, with tropes, and with thematic concerns that signal their marvellous and fearful nature. I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts. This overarching concern with displacement encourages the migration of iconographic motifs, tropes, and themes across genre boundaries and theological categories.

Le mouvement chansonnier est-il en continuité ou en rupture avec la tradition orale ? S’agit-il d’une forme de néo-folklore ou d’une chanson moderne ? Les liens qui s’établissent entre ces deux ensembles sont paradoxaux, de même que leurs rapports aux discours et aux idéologies. Ce mémoire explore ce phénomène par la mise en commun de trois approches : une analyse statistique de la présence d’éléments de tradition orale dans le corpus chansonnier général, une étude de cas détaillée sur La Manikoutai de Gilles Vigneault et une analyse socioculturelle générale des processus de diffusion. Dans ce cadre, le mouvement chansonnier, trop souvent interprété comme un épiphénomène de la Révolution tranquille et du mouvement nationaliste, reprend son caractère propre à titre de dynamique de diffusion parallèle. Une relation complexe s’établit alors entre un phénomène jeunesse qui pousse à rompe avec les générations précédentes et une dynamique de distinction qui pousse à imaginer des racines anciennes au mouvement chansonnier. Un processus qui fait à la fois paraître le discours chansonnier comme fortement orienté vers le passé, mais en même temps, produit une certaine coupure, qui engendre un passé imaginaire et lointain. Enfin, avec le passage du temps, le mouvement chansonnier devient lui-même partie prenante du passé et se joint à la tradition orale pour former un double mythe de la chanson québécoise; un mythe qui relie symboliquement deux ensembles pourtant distincts.
Is the chansonnier movement of the 1960s in Quebec in continuity or discontinuity with the oral tradition ? Is it a form of neo-folklore or is it a modern type of song ? The links between songs by chansonniers and oral tradition are complex, as are the relations to discourse and ideology. The thesis explores these links by using three approaches: a statistical analysis of the presence of oral tradition elements in the general chansonnier corpus, a detailed analysis of Gilles Vigneault’s song La Manikoutai, and a sociocultural analysis of diffusion processes. In this context, the chansonnier movement, too often interpreted as an epiphenomenon of the Quiet Revolution and of the nationalist movement, can be seen in itself, in its own dynamic and as a parallel development. The chansonnier movement is linked in a complex way to the a young generation that wants to cut itself from older generations and to a dynamic of distinction which leads to a search for ancient roots to this type of modern song. It is because of this that the chansonnier discourse is seen as strongly oriented toward an ancient past, but at the same time as a break from the immediate past. Finally, with the passage of time, the chansonnier movement becomes an element of the past itself, and, together with oral tradition, leads to a double myth of Quebec music, a myth that links two distinct sets of phenomena.
Il est à noter que le texte de La Manikoutai a été reproduit dans ce mémoire (voir l’annexe 4, p. xv-xvii), avec l’aimable autorisation de Francyne Furtado des Nouvelles Éditions de l’Arc.

This thesis sets off from an a priori hypothetical position that the universality of certain language features, particularly poetic expression, provides an opportunity for syncretism in the reading, analysis, explication, and interpretation of African literature, specifically oral poetry, our teleological point being the formulation of a syncretic approach. In the first chapter we undertake an overview of the debate which has been ensuing among 'African' critics in the search of an 'African' poetics. We proceed, in the second and third chapters, to undertake a study of two 'Western' schools of thought, namely Formalist-Structuralism and New Criticism, with a view to setting the critical theories and practice of some major protagonists of these schools of thought against sample readings of African oral poetry. In the fourth and fifth chapters we proceed to select and analyse some of the most prominent critics of African oral poetry, and undertake detailed case studies of their critical assumptions and practice, in retrospective comparison with the theoretical paradigms and practical readings dealt with in chapters two and three. In the sixth and final chapter we assess the syncretic approach suggested, together with its implications for the future research and teaching of African oral poetry. Our findings suggest that the case studies of critiques of African oral poetry reveal certain shortcomings which might have been strengthened by a perspicacious awareness of Formalist-Structuralist and New Critical methodology. From this postpriori perspective we suggest a syncretic approach which, in its sensitivity to the idiosyncratic features of African languages, will at the same time acknowledge, adopt and adapt sophisticated poetical analyses which have been developed by Western poetics. Our findings also suggest specific ways in which Western standards could be evaluated with a considerable degree of exactitude. We conclude by, inter alia, opening directions of research which could advance the debate towards an African poetics beyond doctrinaire wrangle, so that progress can be made through further close studies of other schools of thought and theories in order to assess their applicability and/or adaptability to African poetry and other genres.
Afrikaans and Theory of Literature
D. Litt et Phil (Theory of Literature)