Oral Literary Worlds : Location, Transmission and Circulation.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marzagora, Sara, author.

Contributor:

Orsini, Francesca.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature, Modern--20th century.

Literature, Modern.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (366 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge,UK : Open Book Publishers, 2025.

Summary:

The discipline of world literature has traditionally focused on written literatures, particularly the novel, with little emphasis placed on the unwritten verbal arts, despite the significance of oral literary expressions around the world, in the past as in the present. This volume redresses this gap by putting the discipline of world literature into dialogue with scholarship on orature and folklore. It asks, what does world literature look like if we start from orature, from oral texts and utterances, and from the performances and audiences that support it? Featuring contributions from an international array of scholars, Oral Literary Worlds explores oral traditions from three multilingual regions: the Maghreb, East Africa and South Asia. Essays discuss a variety of vernacular genres, from Swahili tumbuizo to Na'o folk songs, shedding light on less studied forms of vernacular oral production. Collectively, the contributions critique the characterisation of oral traditions as static and pre-modern, and underscore the contemporary relevance of orature to cultural and political discourse. Oral Literary Worlds offers a timely and accessible perspective on world literature through the lens of orature, moving away from traditional hierarchies and dichotomies that have characterised previous scholarship. It aims to open up new ways of thinking through local and transnational textual circulation, literary power dynamics, the interaction between textuality and audiences, and aesthetic philosophies. This volume will be an invaluable resource for scholars of world literature, folklore and performance studies, and will further interest teachers and students of popular culture, literature of dissent and music.

Contents:

Foreword / Mark Turin

Introduction: Written and Unwritten Literary Geographies: Doing World Literature from the Perspective of Oral Texts / Sara MarzagoraFrancesca Orsini

1. A Hero's Many Worlds: The Swahili Liyongo Epic and World Literature / Clarissa Vierke

2. Ecopoetic and Ecolinguistic Approaches to 'Broken Places': Orature of Displacement Around the Ethiopian Capital / Assefa Tefera DibabaAdugna Barkessa

3. The Novelization of Orature in Ethiopian Village Novels / Ayele Kebede

4. Fluid Texts: Bhojpuri Songs and World Literature / Francesca Orsini

5. Erasure and Rehabilitation of the Halqa in Morocco: The Vicissitudes of an Intangible Cultural Heritage / Fatima Zahra Salih

6. A Contextual and Functional Analysis of Na'o Folk Songs / Desta Desalegn DinegeYenealem Aredo

7. Orature Across Generations Among the Guji-Oromo of Ethiopia / Tadesse Jaleta Jirata

8. Sephardi Orature and the Myth of Judeo-Spanish Hispanidad / Vanessa Paloma Elbaz

9. Two Tracks: Stories of the Destinies of Two Performative Oratures / Sadhana Naithani

10. Morocco's Popular Culture Powerhouse: Darija and the chaabi music of Nas El Ghiwane / Karima Laachir

11. Dissenting Voices of Cairo: Sheikh Imam, Ahmad Fu'ad Negm, and their Legacy in the Contemporary Music Scene / Virginia Pisano.

Notes:

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International CC BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781805113133

1805113135

OCLC:

1493372212

Access Restriction:

Unrestricted online access