ENGLISH 338 - Oral Literature

http://humphreysfiles.nfshost.com/FinalProject.mp3

The latest remix, taken from the audio recorded at Tuesday’s Uncommon Words.  Enjoy.

http://humphreyspodcast.nfshost.com/PoetryReading.mp3

Here’s an excerpt from H. G. Wells’ “The Red Room”, just in time for Halloween.  The accompaniment is Prelude no. 2 in G Minor by Jan Hanford.  It’s available from magnatune.com, which I recommend if you’re looking for podsafe music.

http://humphreyspodcast.nfshost.com/RedRoom.mp3

I thought that I would be the first to post a remixed class audio project. It can be accessed at http://www.people.iup.edu/fzbk/Project.mp3 . Let me know what you guys think of it.

I noticed something interesting in class today while Dr. Sherwood read “The Wreck of the Hesperus”. He stressed a few times that the class members should not read along in the text while he performed (as difficult as the habit is for us to break–I read subtitles in movies even if I can hear the audio clearly). We dutifully put our packets away, but it seemed like nobody knew what to do with his or her eyes during the performance. A few of us let our eyes wander around the room, but for the most part we seemed to choose fixed points and stare vacantly into them while we listened (this is what I did at first, but then I got curious and looked at everyone else). Nobody seemed to watch the performance for more than several seconds at a time before looking elsewhere (though I may have missed a face or two).

I wonder how much this is a product of our focus on study (a literate practice) as the preferred activity in the classroom rather than reception/appreciation of performance. I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to this specifically, but I doubt that the same performer/audience dynamic is present during our meetings in the Commonplace.

I wonder if this is a product of the technologizing of oral performance that we touched on today. As we listen to the news on a TV or a song on a cd/mp3 player we are not required to be active or even to engage with the performer; in fact, she or he has no means to get immediate feedback from us whatsoever. Orality can lose its audience/performer dynamic for a reader/text dynamic if it is technologized and mediated (though it may not have to).

How does listening to the recordings of our performances compare with listening to the performances themselves? Do we use different strategies for each to enter into the experience?

Does anyone have a pair of PC speakers that they are willing to bring to the Commonplace for Friday’s class?  I have an idea for my oralized text that will require me to play a recording while I read.  I have a portable casette recorder that would work, but I think that the sound quality would be better if I could use my mp3 player.

Today our class discussion included a treatment of authenticity when collecting oral literature, with varying viewpoints expressed.  I am very interested in the topic, so I’d like to continue that discussion here if anyone has any further thoughts to express.
I mentioned that I feel that no transcription of an oral text, no matter how faithful, can be authentic because an oral text is fundamentally different from a written text–one is fluid and changing, while the other is fixed and unchangeable.  The transcription of an oral text creates a script for the creation of a specific instance of the oral text rather than the creation of the text itself (though, to what extent is one performance of a story/etc. the same text as a different performance?  What if there is a different performer?).

However, as I ponder more on the subject it strikes me that the same is true of any written text as well–even as I write these words I am making occasional revisions and correcting spelling errors.  The version that will eventually be seen is “better” than the version that I am making as I go (in that it conforms more closely to accepted rules of grammar), but it is not an “authentic” version because it overlooks the steps that took place in the creation of these words.

It seems to me that while reading a work like Tedlock’s translation we are extremely aware of the artificial nature of the text in front of us, but that there is a cultural tendency not to look at a “finished” written text as artificial.  Where can authenticity be found?  In the finished product?  In the process?  In the mind of the author?  Or somewhere else?