Desde tempos imemoriais, a milenar arte de contar e ouvir estórias está estreitamente relacionada com a formação de seres humanos. Narrar é uma ação própria do humano, incluindo-se nesse ato não só a narrativa de fatos vividos, mas sobretudo daqueles que são experimentados no âmbito do imaginário, fonte mitológica, portanto primordial, que nos supre dos símbolos essenciais necessários para a nossa existência no mundo. A partir de vivências narrativas proporcionadas aos frequentadores do Lab_Arte da FEUSP, em sua maioria alunos do curso de Pedagogia e de Licenciatura da Universidade de São Paulo, no núcleo de Narração de Estórias, através da investigação poética de seus processos simbólicos e de seus itinerários formativos, pôde-se perceber a importância de se cuidar da formação humana desses futuros docentes. Uma formação que transcende as barreiras escolares e que se dá para além das questões tecnicistas e operacionais que, em geral, servem como base única para os costumeiros cursos formativos de professores. Desde uma perspectiva hermenêutica e fenomenológica, as reflexões suscitadas pelas vivências no laboratório conduziram a pesquisadora desse trabalho ao mito fundador da pessoa contadora de estórias, que encontra sua expressão mais significativa na figura da sultana Sherazade, do livro das Mil e uma Noites, mas que perpassa o mito de Ariadne, a Senhora dos Labirintos, que por sua vez atualiza o mito sumério de Inanna, a senhora dos céus e dos ínferos. Narrando à beira do precipício, a Senhora da Vida convida o Senhor da Morte para uma contradança labiríntica, de cujo fim inexorável ninguém escapa. As estórias de tradição oral como fios que nos conectam aos nossos ancestrais e a todos que virão depois de nós, como palavra viva que prevalece sobre o narrador, nos despertam para um aprendizado que aponta para a necessidade de uma realização pessoal que se situa sempre dentro de uma existência coletiva comum e, como gesticuladores culturais, os professores acabam por entender que no banquete dos saberes tradicionais a única forma de saciar nossa fome e apaziguar nossa sede de conhecer é alimentando-nos e oferecendo-nos água fresca uns aos outros. Assim, acreditando que arte de narrar estórias é, sobretudo, a arte do encontro e do diálogo, foram os encontros e os diálogos dessa pesquisadora, professora e narradora de estórias, com as estórias e com seus alunos ouvintes-narradores, bem como seus diálogos com teóricos e pesquisadores como Georges Gusdorf, Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Chris Downing, Amadou Hampâté Bá e Marcos Ferreira-Santos , que nortearam essa pesquisa que, dessa forma, resultou numa complexa constelação simbólica de sentidos e significados, como exige o foco de uma investigação poética. / Since immemorial times, the millennial art of storytelling has been closely related to the education and human formation. Narrating is a typical human action, which includes not only narrating experienced facts, but also especially those that are experienced within the imaginary scope, our mythological and so primordial source of essential symbols necessary for our existence in the world. From narrative experiences offered to Lab_Arte goers most of whom being students of Pedagogy and of other degree courses from University of São Paulo, through the poetic research of their symbolic processes and their formative itineraries it was possible to realize the importance of taking care of the human formation of these future teachers. An education that transcends the school barriers and which is made beyond the technicist and operational issues that, in general, serve as a single basis of development for the usual training courses for teachers. From a hermeneutic and phenomenological perspective, the thoughts aroused by experiences in the lab led the researcher of this work to the founder myth of the storyteller, which finds its most significant expression in the figure of sultana Scheherazade, from the Arabians Night book, but that also pervades the myth of Ariadne, the Mistress of the Labyrinth, which turn to updates the Sumerian myth of Inanna, the Mistress of heaven and the world above. While narrates on the edge of the cliff, the Lady of Life invites the Lord of Death to a labyrinth dance, from whose inexorable end nobody escapes. The oral-tradition stories as threads that connect us to our ancestors and to all those who come after us as a living word that prevails on the narrator awaken us towards apprenticeship that points to the need for a personal fulfillment that only can be achieved within the space of a common and collective existence. As cultural agents, teachers will understand that at the feast of traditional knowledge the only way to end up our hunger and assuage our thirst of knowing is to feed us and provide us with fresh water to each other. So, believing that art of storytelling is, above all, the art of encounter and dialogue, the meetings and dialogues of this researcher, teacher and storyteller with the stories and with her students, as well as her dialogue with theoreticians and researchers like Georges Gusdorf, Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Chris Downing, Amadou Hampâté Bá, and Marcos Ferreira-Santos were the guiders to this research. Therefore, this study resulted in a complex symbolic constellation of meanings and senses, which is de focus of a poetic investigation.

From the eighth to the fourteenth century, places of wonder and dread appear in a wide variety of genres in Old and Middle English: epics, lays, romances, saints’ lives, travel narratives, marvel collections, visions of the afterlife. These places appear in narratives of the other world, a term which in Old and Middle English texts refers to the Christian afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, even Paradise can be fraught with wonder, danger, and the possibility of harm. But in addition to the other world, there are places that are not theologically separate from the human world, but that are nevertheless both marvellous and horrifying: the monster-mere in Beowulf, the Faerie kingdom of Sir Orfeo, the demon-ridden Vale Perilous in Mandeville’s Travels, or the fearful landscape of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Fraught with horror or the possibility of harm, these places are profoundly different from the presented or implied home world of the text. My dissertation investigates how Old and Middle English narratives create places of wonder and dread; how they situate these places metaphysically between the world of living mortals and the world of the afterlife; how they furnish these places with dangerous topography and monstrous inhabitants, as well as with motifs, with tropes, and with thematic concerns that signal their marvellous and fearful nature. I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts. This overarching concern with displacement encourages the migration of iconographic motifs, tropes, and themes across genre boundaries and theological categories.

No description available.

The thesis is a description and analysis of the oral style devices on four collections undertaken by G.Beutler, G. de Granda, F. Dougherty and G. Hersalek in Colombia. Themes and their transmitters are analysed. Oral features such as formulas, the uses of repetition and parallelism as well as variability are explored in individual chapters which are illustrated with Colombian texts. The thesis consists of an introduction to the theme of the Oral Spanish Balladry and its collections; a summarized description of the primary sources; an annotated transcription of our compilation of texts in the department of Boyaca and five chapters of analysis and description of oral style mechanisms. Charts showing the themes collected in Colombia and the number, gender and age of its repositories are included. Maps indicate the departments in Colombia where those themes were found. Graphs have the purpose to show a clearer perspective on the distribution of the Spanish Balladry in Colombia, thus, offering a guide for new researchers. This analysis shows that the Colombian transmitters have made use both of the oral style devices inherited from Spain as well as their own initiative that has produced innovations at different levels in this tradition. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1997.

In this study I investigate the narratives of near-death experiences in the Nazarite Church as one way in which this community grapples with the question of death and the after-life. However, I am particularly interested in the manner in which Nazarite members deploy these experiences to define individual and collective identities. I argue that in the Nazarite Church the significance of near-death experiences is neither rooted in the future nor in the past, but it is something of the here and now. As Biesele states, " Old stories are powerful not because they come from the past, but because they are told in the present" (1999: 167). Nazarite members are not only regarded by many as backward, uneducated, and unemployed rural people, they are also accused of worshipping another human being like themselves, Shembe. For the Nazarites then near-death narratives are important because they serve as proof that Shembe is not just an ordinary human being, he is the one sent from above. Many near-death experiencers testify that they have met Shembe on their spiritual journeys. While this does give the Nazarites a sense of what may happen to them when they die, it is more important as a tool for confirming or defending their faith against the people who criticise and look down upon them and their church. However, Nazarite members, especially those who have had near-death experiences, also use these experiences to imagine individual identities. Since the church has grown rapidly in the past decades, there has been a growing need to define the self in relation to the group. Newcomers (there are many of them) are regarded as ignorant of the ways of the church and are sometimes called by pejorative names like Qhawe, (Braveman) and Khethankosi (Converts). The near-death experience provides those 'newcomers' who have experienced it with a means to assert their agency in that they have been to the other world and have witnessed what many only hear about. Even for those who were already members of the church when they had the experience, this make them important. They have seen 'home'. Their stories are recorded and disseminated in the church, thus becoming part of the church's cultural capital. Sometimes ministers and preachers invite those who have had near-death experiences to come and share their stories in the Temples they oversee. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.

This dissertation focuses on the migrant performance genre isicathamiya, a genre which was popular amongst migrant workers in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in the nineteen thirties and forties. It explores contemporary isicathamiya and asks whether there have been paradigmatic shifts in its content in post-apartheid South African society. By way of introduction, the origins and development as well as some of the themes and features of isicathamiya are highlighted. Hereafter scholarly accounts of migrant performance genres are discussed in conjunction with the cultural re-orientation of migrants in urban centers. The introduction is intended to contextualise the genre by alluding to the politics and aesthetics of isicathamiya performances. Leading on from the introduction, the first chapter of this body of research is a reflection upon the characteristics of oral literature; from the point of view of a literary scholar, I also discuss the problems of interpretation I experienced in this study of mediated isicathamiya lyrics. I propose that isicathamiya performances and texts are elements of oral literature and begin to define them as such. My intention in chapter two is to explore how local performances have influenced global culture. I ask if oral literature from South Africa has contributed to the global market. I ask what Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the internationally acclaimed isicathamiya choir, has invested in "First World culture" and suggest that there is in existence a transcultural flow of energy between the "so-called centre" and "so-called periphery". In chapter three I suggest that the local and global are in a state of dialogue. I hope to establish a dialogue between local isicathamiya choirs and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. In essence, Ladysmith Black Mambazo has exported a musical form that has its foundations in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. This chapter takes readers back to the source of the genre. I take into consideration Veit Erimann's scholarly studies of isicathamiya in Nightsong: Performance, Power and Practice in South Africa. Focus falls upon the paradigm of rural/ urban migration in isicathamiya song and the importance of "home" in sustaining migrants in the city. The notion of "homeliness" as a trope in isicathamiya performances is discussed. By extension, in chapter four, I ask whether the notion of "home" emphasized by Veit Erlmann is of significance in contemporary isicathamiya performance. Consequently, I adopt a comparative approach and set out to identify the changes and continuities in contemporary isicathamiya performances in response to transformations within postapartheid society. I ask why isicathamiya is significant in post-apartheid South African society. What is its importance for personal and collective identity? What is being articulated within contemporary performances? Does isicathamiya provide a cultural space, a forum in which public debate (regarding leaders, policies and concerns) can be staged? Most importantly, is the thematic paradigm between the rural and urban world still visible in contemporary isicathamiya? Is contemporary isicathamiya still grounded on the notion of "homeliness", or have new thematic paradigms emerged in contemporary isicathamiya performances? I propose that South Africa in the present, is itself the site of multiple cultures and fragmented histories. The country and its people are searching for a new unitary meaning in the post-apartheid era. My argument is that isicathamiya texts are elements of postcolonial and post-apartheid literature. I suggest that language, through isicathamiya performance, can show a way back into reinterpreting the past and stitching together a different present. Isicathamiya texts give hints of journeys and point to identities, shared histories and cultural landscapes. Isicathamiya makes possible the sharing of knowledge and knowledge systems, and is an opportunity to hear un-erased histories and un-silenced voices. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.

This dissertation is a study of the Afro-American oral tradition with special reference to the formal aspects of the poetry of spirituals. In the introduction. an attempt has been made to take a look at the value of oral tradition; the interplay between oral and written tradition; the use made of orality in a society that was denied conventional literacy; the concept and the definition of the term, “spiritual". The organization of the rest of the essay is as follows: The sections are divided into four chapters. The first chapter concerns the origins of Afro-American spirituals and the anthropological foundations of the Afro-American oral style (anthropology of gesture). In addition, an attempt has been made to place the Afro-American oral tradition vis-a-vis the African oral tradition. The second chapter deals with key characteristics in the expressive phase of the Afro-American slave community with special reference to the dynamics of language usage. In the third chapter, there is consideration in some detail on the Afro-American oral composer and the transmission of the spirituals in an oral style milieu. The fourth chapter investigates stylized expression and is devoted to analyses of mnemotechnical devices within the spirituals. In the concluding chapter, an attempt has been made to take an overall look at Afro-American sacred poetic achievement. I must point out that it is not my intention to embark on any technical analysis of the music form and configuration of the spirituals - that is beyond the scope of this essay. In including "representative" samples of spirituals (and portions of spirituals), I do not intend them to be seen as "islands unto themselves" but rather, each spiritual must be seen as part of the whole corpus of Afro-American sacred oral composition. The question may arise: "Why a study of the Afro-American spirituals when there is so much to be studied on the oral traditions of Southern Africa? My response would be that the spirituals fascinate me for I see in them their widespread influence on the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in South Africa. The Gospel song, so beloved of Pentecostal congregations, is an heir to the Spiritual. An enquiry on the sacred music and performance styles (improvisation, extemporization, dance, handclapping, shouts, etc.) of Pentecostalism will reveal that much of the Afro-American oral style still exists within the fellowship of Black and, venture to say, all Pentecostal churches in South Africa with obvious nuances that vary from denomination to denomination. But, the spirited and lively sacred music is encouraged and preserved. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1991.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

This research study, in its efforts to discuss the consequences of the introduction of literacy among the Zulu people in Umbumbulu, will embody the social and educational aspects of the oral Zulu people before and after the introduction of writing. People have been made to believe that by learning to read and write, they would be empowered: literacy and education would enable them to get decent jobs and earn more money. Western civilization which has been adopted by many African peoples, attaches great value to money economy than subsistence economy, hence there has been a shift from orality to literacy. It is assumed that the acquisition of literacy skills may not change the intelligence quotient of an individual. This work will therefore investigate if the Zulu people did have a form of civilization before they met with the Whites. One will further investigate if the oral life of the Zulu man without the knowledge of reading and writing, was miserable and imbalanced. I shall then look into the method of how literacy was introduced among the Zulu people in Umbumbulu and lastly, check on the impact of literacy and education on the social life of Umbumbulu people. This project falls within the orality-literacy debate and will compare some often conflicting theories. Finally, one would propose suggestions of how school going pupils in Umbumbulu would improve their school performance by applying teaching methods and content that has relevance to their oral culture. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1997.

The aim of this thesis is to undertake a theoretical analysis of the dynamics of change in pre-Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Māmoe oral traditions of Te Waipounamu to gain a deeper understanding of their nature, function, evolution and meaning. For the purposes of this thesis a framework will be established to classify changes to encompass different types of alterations made pre-contact and post-contact to authentic and un-authentic oral traditions. This model will analyse the continuum of change and will be applied in later chapters to pre-Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Māmoe traditions to gain an understanding of the dynamics, evolution and construction of the oral traditions of Te Waipounamu. This study of the morphology of tradition will demonstrate they were never fixed but evolved alongside their communities as they adapted to ensure tribal identity and mana was firmly entrenched in their local landscape. A major component of this thesis will be analysis of Waitaha traditions centring upon three key questions; firstly who were Waitaha peoples, secondly, where were they from, and thirdly, were they, and do they continue to be separate social units? This thesis will contribute to this discussion by analysing literature concerning pre-Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Māmoe tribal identities to ascertain not just who they were and where they were from but how their identities have been constructed and modified over time. Analysis will examine the role of oral tradition in establishing tribal identity and how Waitaha traditions were changed both pre and post-contact to suit the cultural, political and ideological imperatives of the time, providing an insight into how our ancestors perceived, recollected and constructed the past to suit the needs of the present.