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| List of plates | ||
| Preface to the Midland edition | ||
| Corrigenda | ||
| Preface to the first edition | ||
| Acknowledgements | ||
| 1 | Introductory | 1 |
| 1 | The importance of oral poetry | 3 |
| 2 | Some forms of oral poetry | 7 |
| 3 | What is 'oral' in oral poetry? | 16 |
| 4 | The 'poetry' in oral poetry | 24 |
| 5 | Performance and text | 28 |
| 2 | Some approaches to the study of oral poetry | 30 |
| 1 | Romantic and evolutionist theories | 30 |
| 2 | The 'historical-geographical' school | 41 |
| 3 | Sociological approaches and the sociology of literature | 44 |
| 4 | Two 'ideal types' of society and poetry | 46 |
| 3 | Composition | 52 |
| 1 | Is memorisation the key factor? | 52 |
| 2 | Composition-in-performance and the oral-formulaic theory | 58 |
| 3 | How valid is the oral-formulaic theory? | 69 |
| 4 | Prior composition, memorisation and performance | 73 |
| 5 | Conclusion | 86 |
| 4 | Style and performance | 88 |
| 1 | The relevance of style and performance | 88 |
| 2 | Prosodic systems | 90 |
| 3 | Repetition, style and structure | 102 |
| 4 | Language and diction | 109 |
| 5 | Performance | 118 |
| 6 | Is there a special oral style? | 126 |
| 7 | Conclusion | 133 |
| 5 | Transmission, distribution and publication | 134 |
| 1 | Oral transmission over space and time: some striking cases | 135 |
| 2 | Inert tradition, memorisation or re-creation? | 139 |
| 3 | How do oral poems reach their audiences? | 153 |
| 4 | 'Oral transmission' and writing | 160 |
| 5 | Conclusion | 168 |
| 6 | Poets and their positions | 170 |
| 1 | The poet: five case studies | 170 |
| 2 | Some types of poets: specialists, experts and occasional poets | 188 |
| 3 | Are oral poets anonymous? | 201 |
| 4 | The poet as seer | 207 |
| 5 | The poet as individual genius | 210 |
| 7 | Audience, context and function | 214 |
| 1 | Some types of audience | 214 |
| 2 | The effect and the composition of audiences | 231 |
| 3 | The purpose and meaning of poetry: local theories | 235 |
| 4 | Some effects of oral poetry | 241 |
| 8 | Poetry and society | 244 |
| 1 | The link between poetic and social institutions | 244 |
| 2 | Does one type of poetry always go with a particular form of society? 'Heroic age', 'ballad society' and 'oral culture' | 246 |
| 3 | Literature as the reflection and consequence of social forms | 262 |
| 4 | Literature as social action | 268 |
| Concluding comment | 272 | |
| References | 276 | |
| Index | 288 |
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Adam Sieja
reviewed Oral poetry on November 17, 2016
Oral poetry
Ruth Finnegan calls into question the idea that oral poetry is necessarily composed in performance and questions many of the assumptions that are made by scholars dealing with orality. She outlines the implicit and explicit assumptions that many scholars carry: from romanticism, historical-geographic methods, and sociological theories. I find her questions concerning the nature of orality to be especially thoughtful: she wonders if there clear divisions between oral and written forms. She questions the oral-formulaic theory on its insistence of composition in performance. There are many brief examples, but she does not truly expand on them. Her work is thought provoking, especially in her questioning of received tradition on orality.
I also find her discussion in chapter 4 thoughtful - she demonstrates that different cultures/traditions have different poetic styles, casting doubt on the validity of one single model of defining oral poetry by features.
I find Finnegan's understanding or even misrepresentation of Lord's work disturbing (cf. 53). Notably, she discusses terms like "word for word, and line for line" as if Lord was saying that rather than it being the understanding of the poet himself. I feel horrible saying this but I begin to wonder if she truly read Lord's work (it becomes evident later that she did). Maybe she is correct in her assessment of romantic views of oral composition, but such a misrepresentation makes it difficult for me to buy her arguments, especially where she uses the work of others - is she representing their views correctly? I feel like she occasionally takes such a scattered approach and strings together examples not unlike armchair anthropologists. It should be noted that the book was researched and written in the late 1960s and early 1970s: it is dated, especially from a modern folklore perspective, but it is a reaction to the rigid and all encompassing application of Albert Lord's oral-formulaic theory to all poetry without concern for context and genre.
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Add Oral poetry, Oral poetry is a wide subject that ranges from American 'folk-songs', Eskimo lyrics or popular songs, to the heroic poems of Homer and distinct epic composers in Asia and the Pacific. Unlike previous works, this book takes a broad comparative view and con, Oral poetry to the inventory that you are selling on WonderClubX
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Add Oral poetry, Oral poetry is a wide subject that ranges from American 'folk-songs', Eskimo lyrics or popular songs, to the heroic poems of Homer and distinct epic composers in Asia and the Pacific. Unlike previous works, this book takes a broad comparative view and con, Oral poetry to your collection on WonderClub |
