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The Language of Myth and Art : Performance and Orality in San Bushman Expressive Culture.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Witelson, David M.
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (343 pages)
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Place of Publication:
- New York : Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2026.
- Summary:
- A ground-breaking exploration of the principles of orality and performance of both the myths and images of a now vanished oral society.
- Contents:
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- List fo Figures
- List fo Tables
- About the Authors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Pronunciation
- Note on References to the Bleek and Lloyd Collection
- General Map
- 1 An Intercontinental Quest
- Egyptian enigma
- A parallel puzzle
- The key to understanding
- A philologist abroad
- The need for corroboration
- Notes
- 2 Questions of Evidence
- The nineteenth-century southern San
- The Bleek and Lloyd Collection: A brief outline
- The northern San: Another part of the mosaic
- 3 Myth, Art and a Shared Experience
- An early illuminating dispute
- A pervasive performance
- Dancing a song
- Pervasive metaphors in ritual, myth and rock art
- 4 San Orality and Allusiveness Exploring Below the Surface
- Orality and San society
- Over-emphasized narratives
- Merely mentioned in passing
- Going behind the plot
- Note
- 5 As Uncountable as Grains of Sand Dynamic ǀXam Myths
- Matters of meaning: Some initial words of caution
- Hidden associations: 'The old man and the Sun'
- Narrative frameworks and transformation groups
- Narrative fluidity
- Myths: Performance and exploration
- 6 Three Verbatim ǀXam Texts and Their Narrators
- M1: The Honey Badger and the Water Tortoise
- M2: The Honey Badger and the girls of the Early Race
- M3: The Mantis and the Tortoise
- 7 Contrasting Protagonists
- The Honey Badger and allusive chains
- The Water Tortoise and 'illness'
- The Early Race and 'new maidens'
- The Mantis and ambivalence
- 8 Allusive Actions, Powerful Substances and an Incantation
- A major San ritual category: Stroking, rubbing and anointing
- Intertwined odours: Blood, honey, buchu and rain
- Performative refrain: An incantation
- 9 A Contrasting Performance Setting.
- A nineteenth-century missionary's view
- A colonial administrator's view
- An ethnographic foundation
- Crossing over from myths to images
- 10 Language and Setting in the Apprehension of Imagery
- The 'true key'
- Painted panels: Arrested discourses
- Images in cosmological context
- Three-dimensional panoramas
- 11 Language Made Visible
- Principal elements in the Main Caves panel
- Syntax in the Main Caves panel
- Parallels between performances of myths and image-making
- 12 Human and Hybrid Anthropomorphs
- The naked nugget
- Postures and gestures
- Therianthropes: The essence of the art
- Main Caves therianthropes
- Graphic condensations of allusions
- 13 Allusive Objects
- Karosses: Leather cloaks
- Eared leather caps
- Animal-skin bags
- Fly-whisks
- Arrows
- Material culture, spiritual culture
- The images themselves: More than material
- 14 A San Cynosure
- A king among antelope
- A discussion under a tree
- The problem of meaning: Eland in San languages
- An animal de passage
- Passage to the spirit realm: 'The death that kills us all'
- People of the Eland
- 15 Creative Performances Making Eland, Making Images
- The creation of the first eland
- Creative parallels
- Painted images: More than symbolic
- 16 Performance, Orality and Synoptic Questions
- The principles of orality
- An inclusive metaphor
- The art of 'carrying'
- Cooperative performances
- Epilogue: The Consonance of San Expressive Culture
- References
- Index.
- Notes:
- Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.
- ISBN:
- 9798216396222
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