ENGLISH 338 - Oral Literature

Last class meeting: Monday, 12/11

Project Due: Wednesday, 12/13 (Leo 110)

Exam/Perf.: Friday, 12/15, 11:15am (Commonplace)

Possibilities for Final Projects

* Synthesis piece - what is oral literature, what are it’s formal characteristics, how would you explain the audience elements, what is the relationship between voice and text in literature today? etc. (Write an 8-10pp. piece that begins with a set of simulated exam questions, and then answers them, drawing widely on course readings.

* Critical Performance Essay, 8-10 pp (discussing a performance, issue, or concept relevant to the class. E.g. “Slam Ritual: Identifying Continuities Between Performance Poetry and Traditional Healing Chants of Maria Sabina”; or “Fronting the Self: Toast Performance and the Fashioning of Ethnic Identity”

* Critical Text Essay 8-10pp. (drawing on course readings) that identifies oral /performance features in a text/voice from the past.

* Creative Work and Commentary: produce a performance score and recording, framing it with an in-depth (min 4 pp) explanation of characteristic oral elements/ performance keys, discussion of scoring and performance choices, and statement of self-reflection.

* Audio Essay - carefully select and edit a thoughtful cluster of spoken word pieces; intercut with your voice, as narrator, explaining, commenting, and analyzing.

Please bring a one-page “thick description” of a performance, time-slice of a performance, or selected aspect of a performance for Friday. We’ll read them aloud.

Your model is Beech. Your aim is to isolate and make evident, palpable some dimension of the performance (audience response, delivery style, framing, etc.) through an analytical description. Aim to replicate the temporal experience on the page (you can be creative).

Use any live or documented performance. There are clips below from Tuesday, and from other sources.

Next week we’ll jointly develop synthesis essays to close out the semester.

Last night, I went to see Doug Bradley, known best as Pinhead from the Hellraiser films, perform his one man horror show.  The show was composed of telling part of a Ray Bradbury story, reciting Shakespearean solilpquys, and telling scary stories like “The Monkey’s Paw.”  I would like to share with the class one of his stories, and I’ll tell it as accurately as I can remember. Afterwards, I will discuss its relevance to the class:

One October morning, an IUP college girl was walking across campus.  When in the Oak Grove, she saw the figure of Death.  It was a typical figure, donning a black robe, a long scythe, and an hourglass in its opposite hand.  She was scared, for a moment, but then remembered that it was close to Halloween, and figured that it was probably a frat boy, drunk and trying to scare people.  Moments later, however, the figure was coming closer to her.  She looked to her friends for support, but they had vanished.  In fact, she was totally alone in the Oak Grove.  Now the figure was right in front of her, and it raised its scythe high above her in a threatening gesture. 

She had enough of this, and fled in the opposite direction.  She didn’t stop running until she reached the office of one of her professors.  When she got there, she was crying and screaming, still frightened.  Her professor calmed her down, and then she told him of the figure of Death and how it raised its scythe in a threatening gesture.  He assured her that it was probably just a Halloween prank, but she wouldn’t listen.  She told him that she must get to New York City right away to see one of her friends.  He said that its too far away to go there, and not worry about the situation any longer.  But the girl wouldn’t listen, so she stormed out of the office, packed her bags, and was on the freeway speeding off to New York City.

An hour or two later, the Professor was walking across campus.  He too saw the figure of Death.  He decided he was going to get to the bottom of the situation and marched right up to the figure.  “What are you doing walking around like this, using your scythe in a terrifying and threatening way to my students?” he asked.  “I wasn’t doing it in a bad way,” the figure said, “but in a way of surprise.”  “Surprise?” the professor asked. “Yes,” Death said, “I was surprised to see her here in Indiana, because I have an appointment with her tonight in New York”

 So, that’s the story he told.  Now, what is interesting, is that he also told us that the story originated in Iraq several thousand years ago.  He also told us about how he evolved the story so that it would fit where he was more appropriately.  This was interesting, because I got to experience storytelling being handed down to me in a way that we discuss in class.  Now that I had that oral experience, I was able to recount it to the class.  I also evolved it for the class more appropriately, by typing it here rather than performing it.  This seems to me to fall in with our talks about Proverbs, and how they are passed down and then modified in some situations to give advice or to help someone learn a quick lesson.

 Discuss.

We’ll further discuss the first two groups of toasts today. Let’s see if we can extend the thread about purposeful poetry to think about Jackson’s argument for the expressive function of toasts. We might consider this on an individual and a social level, as well as asking whether it’s conservative (in the sense of an oral tradition which transmits and reproduces culture) or transgressive.

For Monday, let’s plan on closing with discussion of “Titanic” and “The Signifying Monkey.” I’d like you to pay special attention to the “versioning” in light of Jackson’s implicit thesis that oral transmission of these poems refines them, and to the issue of context (their collection in a jailhouse vs. our reading in a classroom). *You may want to revisit Foley’s Second Word pp. 58-78.

For this coming week, we will be skipping past Gregorio Cortez. Please read the following “transcription” for monday:EasterSunriseSermon.pdf

Let’s pick up on the issue we were discussing this morning — orality, audience, and the responsibility of the performer. The issues had to do with purpose in performance, how one judges a successful performance, or a good text. Remember too that the Audio Exhibit page includes an Mp3 of this, if you want to hear it.

On Wednesday, we’ll begin discussing Get Your Ass in the Water (pp. 1-94). This will give us the introduction and the first selection of Toasts — on Badmen.

Don’t forget, class will meet at the Commonplace Coffeehouse during the regular time Friday. Bring a “re-oralized” piece to perform.

If you have forgotten where it is, head down the hill between dining and the garage. Behind the tall building under construction, you’ll see a building with a Platterz and Dominoes sign; enter this and in the back of the atrium, you’ll see the commonplace.

I’m interested in moving beyond the binary oral/literate, as Sean suggests.  A friend of Ong’s, Marshall McLuhan famously proposed that the technology of modern culture has brought us back around to oral  elements — he called it secondary orality.

Let’s think about our own oral/literate orientations, and have this set of tensions in mind as we finish discussing the Yaqui and begin Maria Sabina for next week.  Both of these deal with just this tension or balance in my mind.