Lost in dictation. A cognitive approach to oral poetry: Frames, scripts and ‘unnecessary’ words in the Jebli ayyu

Gintsburg, Sarali

doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2018.11.003

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 3 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In the wake of Parry and Lord, students of 'transitional texts' typically have oral poetry as the starting point of their research. This trend continues even today -in recent years research related to Oral-Formulaic theory was mostly focused on poetry (Ford 2018;Gintsburg 2014Gintsburg , 2017Gintsburg , 2019Murray 2019 As will be shown below, the religious-oriented compositions from the 'Vienna corpus' are of prime importance for the topic of the present study. 4.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Writing on Islamic Apologetics in an Unwritten Tongue. An Unusual Sample of Transitional Prose from the Island of Soqotra

Kogan

2021

Rilce

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Soqotri is a Modern South Arabian language spoken by 100 000 inhabitants of the Island of Soqotra. The island is famous for its narrative art, first revealed to the Western world by the Austrian South Arabian Expedition around 1900. Until recently, Soqotri functioned as an unwritten language, and Soqotra’s traditional lore has mainly been transmitted orally. From 2014 on, an Arabic-based writing system for Soqotri has been implemented by a Russian-Yemeni research team. Originally intended as a means of preservation of the traditional oral lore, the writing system proves to be capable of meeting other intellectual demands – notably, to create original, non-traditional compositions. Apologetic and propagandistic works pertaining to the Muslim faith are among the first genres of the nascent Soqotri prose. The article analyzes one such composition in an attempt to trace the thorny path from orality to literacy on Soqotri soil: the adaptation of traditional narrative techniques; the difficult balance between purism and innovation; and interaction with Arabic. It shows that the concept of transitional text, mostly applied to poetry in modern literary research, can also be used about prose, including religiously motivated writing.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Writing on Islamic Apologetics in an Unwritten Tongue. An Unusual Sample of Transitional Prose from the Island of Soqotra

Kogan

2021

Rilce

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It would be sufficient to mention in this regard that this topic represents an interesting case per se and that such texts should be seen as a variety of transitional texts, as they do differ from texts performed live (Gintsburg 2019a).…”

Section: Morocco: Landscape Of Living Poetic Traditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Living through Transition: The Poetic Tradition of the Jbala between Orality and Literacy at a Time of Major Cultural Transformations

Gintsburg

2021

Rilce

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In my paper I analyze transformations happening in the oral tradition of the Jbala, an Arabic speaking ethnic group inhabiting the western and central part of the Rif mountains of northern Morocco. My analysis centers on the work of two modern poets, who although they see themselves belonging to the oral tradition, compose their poetry in writing. Their poetry is, therefore, characterized by use of two different, and, to some degree, opposite modes of language – the oral and the written. This is especially interesting in the context of the Arabic language, where, officially, only Standard Arabic exists in two modes – oral and written, while its dialectal varieties are seen as exclusively oral forms of communication and ‘vulgar’ poetry. The textual analysis will be substantiated by information received directly from both poets. To complement this analysis I examine this tradition through the lens of major cultural and identity changes occurring in local Moroccan genres and traditions at the national level and argue that the oral tradition of the Jbala is converging with the more popular and prestigious tradition of the malhun.

show abstract

“…This research, however, always treated either authored written literary texts (Stockwell 2002), or already vanished oral traditions, principally Greek epics, which are not extant in their original, i.e., oral, form (see, for instance, Bozzone 2014). In my recent research I used the modern tradition of the ayyu (Jbala, northern Morocco) to demonstrate how these cognitive concepts may function in a living improvised oral poetic tradition (Gintsburg 2017 andGintsburg 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Cognitive Approach to Traditional Oral Poetry: Frames and Scripts in the Jebli Ayyu

Gintsburg¹

2019

Al-Andalus Magreb

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper I continue to examine the oral tradition of the Jbala (northern Morocco) from the cognitive perspective. I use the notions of frame (topics or scenes) and script (formulaic language), to demonstrate how the process of poetic creation works in actual time. For this purpose, I propose to look at the genre of ayyu, a short improvised oral poetic genre intrinsic to the Jbala region. I start with an introductory section, where I briefly present the field of cognitive poetics, relevant terminology used by scholars working in this field, and discuss last advances in it. Then I turn to the oral poetry of the Jbala and demonstrate how exactly frames and scripts operate when poetry is performed live. Further, I analyze in detail several frames, typical of Jebli poetry together with the scripts associated with them, and then summarize my findings in the concluding section of the paper.

show abstract

Lost in dictation. A cognitive approach to oral poetry: Frames, scripts and ‘unnecessary’ words in the Jebli ayyu

Cited by 10 publications

References 3 publications

Writing on Islamic Apologetics in an Unwritten Tongue. An Unusual Sample of Transitional Prose from the Island of Soqotra

Writing on Islamic Apologetics in an Unwritten Tongue. An Unusual Sample of Transitional Prose from the Island of Soqotra

Living through Transition: The Poetic Tradition of the Jbala between Orality and Literacy at a Time of Major Cultural Transformations

A Cognitive Approach to Traditional Oral Poetry: Frames and Scripts in the Jebli Ayyu

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About