Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes The Ethnography of Performance in an Arabic Oral Epic Tradition / Dwight Fletcher Reynolds.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reynolds, Dwight Fletcher, 1956-

Contributor:

Nagy, Gregory, contributor.

en Book Program, funder.

Series:

Myth and poetics.

Myth and Poetics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sīrat Banī Hilāl.

Rites and ceremonies--Egypt.

Rites and ceremonies.

Oral tradition--Egypt.

Oral tradition.

Folklore--Egypt--Performance.

Folklore.

Epic poetry, Arabic--Egypt--History and criticism.

Epic poetry, Arabic.

Ethnology--Egypt.

Ethnology.

Egypt--Social life and customs.

Egypt.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (246 pages) : illustrations, photographs.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cornell University Press 2018

Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1995.

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

Dwight F. Reynolds is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Arab Folklore: A Handbook and editor and coauthor of Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition and The Cambridge Companion to Modern Arab Culture.

Summary:

An astonishingly rich oral epic that chronicles the early history of a Bedouin tribe, the Sirat Bani Hilal has been performed for almost a thousand years. In this ethnography of a contemporary community of professional poet-singers, Dwight F. Reynolds reveals how the epic tradition continues to provide a context for social interaction and commentary. Reynolds's account is based on performances in the northern Egyptian village in which he studied as an apprentice to a master epic-singer. Reynolds explains in detail the narrative structure of the Sirat Bani Hilal as well as the tradition of epic singing. He sees both living epic poets and fictional epic heroes as figures engaged in an ongoing dialogue with audiences concerning such vital issues as ethnicity, religious orientation, codes of behavior, gender roles, and social hierarchies.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Foreword / Nagy, Gregory

Preface

Notes on Transcription and Transliteration

Introduction: The Tradition

Part One: The Ethnography of a Poetic Tradition

I. The Village

2. Poets Inside and Outside the Epic

3. The Economy of Poetic Style

Part Two: Textual and Performance Strategies in the Sahra

4. The Interplay of Genres

5. The Sahra as Social Interaction

Conclusion: Epic Text and Context

Appendix: Texts in Transliteration

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-238) and index.

This eBook is made available Open Access. Unless otherwise specified in the content, the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501723216

1501723219

9781501723223

1501723227

OCLC:

1046050690