O presente trabalho tem como objetivo estudar a obra de Angela Lago, escritora e ilustradora de livros infantis, partindo da seleção de títulos que têm em comum a temática do assombro e da morte, a saber: De Morte! (1992), Charadas Macabras (1994), Sete Histórias para Sacudir o Esqueleto (2002) e Minhas Assombrações (2009). Considerada um dos grandes nomes da Literatura Infantil e Juvenil contemporânea, Angela Lago há mais de três décadas tem oferecido aos seus leitores títulos instigantes, muitos dos quais já foram objeto de pesquisa no âmbito acadêmico. Da análise de algumas dissertações de mestrado e teses de doutorado, verificamos a possibilidade de investigação de sua obra sob diferentes perspectivas teóricas. Entre os vieses possíveis, nossa abordagem considerou os conceitos teóricos desenvolvidos por Mikhail Bakhtin, já apontados em alguns trabalhos, e o estudo da oralidade e da cultura escrita, propostos por Walter Ong e Eric Havelock. Reverberam nas obras os conceitos de plurilinguismo, dialogismo e a estética do grotesco, discutidos por Bakhtin, e características da oralidade, do advento da escrita e da impressão, apresentados especialmente por Ong. Realizando o entrecruzamento das teorias, procuramos demonstrar como a artista propõe o processar da interação autor/leitor de forma gradativa no corpus selecionado, passando do riso ao assombramento, do convite ao ato de contar à inserção do leitor como personagem da história. Partindo do estudo comparativo dos livros selecionados, observamos semelhanças entre os projetos estéticos, o que nos fez agrupá-los em duas categorias: obras nas quais a autora se posiciona ao lado de seu leitor, convocando-o a transmitir as histórias; obras em que a autora e leitor tornam-se personagens, com novas formas de participação. / The purpose of the present study is to analyse the work of Angela Lago, book writer and children\'s books illustrator, based on a selection of books that have haunting and death as common themes, namely: De Morte! (1992), Charadas Macabras (1994), Sete Histórias para Sacudir o Esqueleto (2002) and Minhas Assombrações (2009). Considered one of the biggest names in contemporary juvenile and children\'s literature, Angela Lago has provided readers, for over three decades, with exciting books, many of which have been the object of research in the academic field. While analysing some master\'s and doctorate\'s dissertations, we realized the possibility of investigating her work under different theoretical perspectives. Among the possible biases, our approach contemplated the theoretical concepts developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, already cited in other works, and the study of the oral tradition and written culture, proposed by Walter Ong and Eric Havelock. The concepts of multilingualism, dialogism and the aesthetic of the grotesque, discussed by Bakhtin, as well as characteristics of the oral tradition, the advent of writing and the press, presented especially by Ong, reverberate through her works. By interchanging these theories, we attempted to demonstrate how the artist proposes the gradual processing of the reader/author interaction in the selected corpus, going from laughter to haunting, from the invitation of the act of storytelling to introducing the reader as a character in the story. Starting with the comparative study of the selected books, we observed similarities among the aesthetic projects, which led us to group them into two categories: works in which the author gets together with the reader, inviting him/her to convey the stories; works in which the author and the reader become characters themselves, allowing new ways of participation.

Este trabalho é uma reflexão acerca da Arte de Contar Histórias como uma importante ferramenta artística e educativa na formação do ser humano de todas as épocas, vista especialmente em suas relações com as questões trazidas pelo universo contemporâneo da cibercultura. Ao problematizar e dialogar com a emergência e complexidade desse universo, a função social do contador de histórias, sua arte e seu papel formador encontram visões divergentes, antagônicas e polêmicas trazendo assim discussões pertinentes para seu lugar e importância na vida atual. O que é importante saber para contar histórias no mundo de hoje? Qual a relevância da arte de contar histórias em um mundo mediado por telas? Qual o impacto da cibercultura no universo do contador de histórias e o impacto do trabalho do contador de histórias na Era Digital? Tais questões foram discutidas partindo de imagens significativas que serviram de metáforas para o aprofundamento dos problemas bem como do depoimento de contadores e ouvintes de histórias, teóricos da comunicação, antropólogos, filósofos, poetas e educadores. / This work is a reflection about the Art of Storytelling as a major artistic and educational tool in the educational process of human beings of all ages, especially seen in its relations with the questions raised by the contemporary universe of cyberculture. When discussing and questioning the emergence and complexity of this universe, the social role of storyteller, his art and his educational role, we came across different, antagonistic and controversial sights bringing relevant discussions to his place and importance in the present life. What is important to know in order to tell stories in today\'s world? What is the relevance of storytelling in a world mediated by screens? What is the impact of cyberculture in the storytelling universe and the impact of the storyteller\'s work in the Digital Age? Such issues were discussed starting from meaningful images that served as metaphors for the deepening of the problems as well as the testimony of storytellers and listeners, communication theorists, anthropologists, philosophers, poets and educators

L’éducation musicale académique n’est officialisée au Sénégal qu’à partir de 1976, dans l’intention de démocratiser l’accès à la culture à l’école. Le but est de former un citoyen sénégalais enraciné dans sa propre culture et ouvert vers le reste du monde. Mais la concrétisation de cette noble ambition a presque échoué en raison d’une « ouverture » qui a pris le pas sur « l’enracinement ». Car la formation des professeurs d’éducation musicale est calquée sur les contenus de cours légués par les français et basés essentiellement sur la musique classique européenne inconnue des sénégalais. Ce qui crée une tension par rapport à la culture musicale populaire des élèves. Dans les écoles, rien n’est prévu pour l’enseignement de cette discipline, au niveau des moyens et matériels didactiques. Les professeurs d’éducation musicale sont confrontés aussi à un problème de rapport au savoir académique dans une société de tradition orale très islamisée avec un système de castes, d’où des préjugés culturels et religieux à propos de la musique. Dans ce travail, nous étudions l’éducation musicale sénégalaise sous ses aspects socioculturels, politiques, politiques, scolaires et économiques. / Academic music education is formalized in Senegal until 1976, with the intention of democratizing access to culture in the school. The goal is to train a Senegal citizen rooted in their own culture and open to the rest of the world. But the realization of this noble ambition almost failed due to an ‘’openness’’ that has overtaken the ‘’rooting’’. Because the pattern of musical education training for teachers is imitating the courses contents left by the French and based mainly on European classical music unknown by the Senegalese. What creates a voltage compared to the popular musical culture of students. In schools, nothing is provided for teaching this subject as for as the resources and educational tools are concerned. Music education teachers are also facing a problem report to the academic knowledge in a society of highly Islamized oral tradition with a caste system, where cultural and religious prejudices about the music. In this work, we study the Senegalese musical education in its socio-cultural, political, academic and economic aspects.

MA (Sociology) / Department of Sociology / The study aimed to explore on the oral narratives of selected female migrants in South Africa. It was a case study of Thohoyandou in the Limpopo Province. Female migrants are faced with integration challenges such as political and socio-economic challenges. The study focused on reflecting on stories of selected female migrants who reside in Thohoyandou. The study was qualitative in nature and utilised a qualitative exploratory research design because it was aimed at exploring perceptions on oral narratives of selected female migrants. The researcher made use of non-probability sampling in the form of purposive sampling method and snowball. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Data was then sorted, coded, organised and indexed in a manner that made it easier for the researcher to interpret, analyse and present in content analysis. Text was summarised by checking key themes, phrases or passages that were used in a more detailed analysis. The process was guided by the original aim of the study. Findings of the study postulated that most female migrants came for economic reasons and discrimination is perceived to be an important barrier to integration. Other significant integration barriers include linguistic, educational, and institutional factors. Internal factors (social, cultural, and religious norms, immigrants' own opinions about themselves, lack of motivation and intergenerational mobility) are also serious barriers to integration.

This dissertation offers an ecocritical reading of Italo Calvino’s Fiabe italiane, a collection of traditional oral tales published by Einaudi in 1956, and argues that the two-hundred folktales function as a repository of ecological motifs, showing the relationship between humans and the environment as not necessarily exploitative, but rather as a relationship of coexistence and entanglement. The dissertation shows that the critical language that Calvino uses, influenced by a long tradition of folklore studies, rests on two key metaphors to express belonging in a political and national community: rootedness and groundedness. Through the reading of several tales, I show that the folktales themselves actually reveal a fabulist ecology concerned much more with entanglement and enmeshment with the natural landscape, and offer imaginative tools to recover, at the time of the Anthropocene, an enchanted view of the environment. In the first chapter, I argue that the morphology of the folktale that Calvino draws from the Russian formalist Vladimir Propp rests on a conception of the folktale as a plant that can be dissected with the same tools used by a botanist. I show how observations that Calvino makes about tales of metamorphosis of women into plants betray an investment in rootedness as a metaphor for belonging in a political and national community. Drawing from material ecocriticism, I argue that plants, rather than signposts for stasis and belonging, can be read as signs of mixture, coexistence, and symbiosis with the environment. I also argue that the frequent metamorphosis of female characters into plants points toward a trans-corporeal conception of subjectivity. In the second chapter, I show how Calvino contradictorily engages with the legacy of the Brothers Grimm, for whom the forest stands as a metaphor of the lost unity of the German nation. Through a close reading of “Hansel and Gretel,” and Calvino’s rewriting of this tale, “Pulcino,” I show that forests, be they material or fictional, can also be read as environments that preserve an agrarian ecology of subsistence, populated by othered figures such as witches and ogres that depend on a non-exploitative relationship with the environment of the forest. This ecology is preserved in Calvino’s own Marcovaldo, a collection of modern urban fairy-tales that he authored in the same period. Ultimately, I conceive of trees as markers of deep time and connectors between human and geological history. In the third chapter, I turn to the second metaphor identified by my project, groundedness. I briefly reconstruct the cultural milieu in which Calvino operated, and the development of postwar folklore studies after the publication of Antonio Gramsci’s Quaderni del carcere. Therefore, I examine the “Observations on Folklore,” showing how much of Gramsci’s theoretical language engages metaphorically with geology. Calvino himself is indebted to this idea of stratification. His folktales, especially “Cola Pesce,” then become a site where human history and geologic time intersect, and many stories function as repositories of folk knowledge about the telluric landscape of Southern Italy and about the porosity of humans and stones. In the conclusion, I offer an overview of the material and I consider Calvino’s revisiting, in the 1970s, of his earlier folkloric work and how his thoughts on storytelling and belonging evolve in the course of two decade, arguing that they constitute a literary ecology.

The basic aim of this study is to investigate the nature of the narrative, concerning itself with the structures inherent in a system of signs which reveals the communicative function of literature. The general aim is to interpret the meaning of the narrative against the cultural background. The study makes a synthesis of formalist and structuralist points of view on the relations between story and discourse. A comparison of the oral and written narratives reveals that the discourse of the latter displays more artistry than that of the former. An examjnation of the problems of theme selection and development in the Northern Sotho prose narrative, from the point of view of African literature, is made. This reveals that the South African censorship laws have caused the emergence of sophisticated writers with a highly developed artistic way of portraying the South African situation sensitively by making it speak for itself. The study also examines some aspects of character in the narrative, analyzing the actions of characters in the story rather than psychological essences about them, and showing how these characters help the reader to understand the narrator's moral vision of the world. A comparison of the narrative techniques in the oral and the written narrative shows that in the former, the narrator is limited by tradition to the actions and the events that can be seen or heard, while the narrator in the latter can even describe what his characters are thinking or feeling. The study finally examines the relationship between symbolism and culture in the Northern Sotho narrative to reveal the general African philosophy in which -life is perceived as a perpetual journey undertaken by the hero from the natural to the non-natural world, whence he returns to the original world after experiencing moral lassitude and frustration. In the conclusion it is observed that both the oral and the written narratives deal with the intricacies of life as series of patterns and developments. The functional nature of the traditional African aesthetics reflected in the narratives prescribes the study of their meaning against the African cultural background. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

Reading this dissertation means joining me on an 8-year journey that began with my desire to understand the lives and decisions of African immigrants in relation to retention and transmission of our native languages and cultures. The Akan say that <i>ntontom pe n'ase fi ako, na nframa ebo no</i>. Wherefore, like the mosquito propelled by the wind blowing me towards my desired direction, I sat under the shade of the heritage tree as I pondered how to get there. The journey became a quest to find an approach or methodology that will not just talk about African languages and cultural retention and transmission, but also center histories, worldviews, and philosophies while actively encouraging these values. Thus, approaching storytelling from the African oral tradition, I arrived at the development of the African Oral Traditional Storytelling (AOTS) Framework as an ethical and culturally centered approach to studying with African peoples. Because I wanted to go far and not fast, two heads (African families in the Midwest) collaborated with me by sharing through our African oral traditions and storytelling, our lived experiences of how we (as parents) navigate usage, retention and transmission of our living native languages and cultures while in the U.S. Emergent in this approach to storying, was the AOTS Framework. Now, what was needed was a description of the framework retrospective of the shared stories; what does it look like? What did/will she do, and how will she birth a transformative and relevant approach to satisfy that hunger for African histories, worldviews, indigenous knowledges and philosophies in research? The AOTS Framework, through African oral traditional storytelling, brings to the fore the relevant and essential role that African philosophies, worldviews, languages, and cultures play in understanding African peoples' experiences. Our stories reveal how our African worldviews and languages (embedded with our indigenous knowledge) inform how we navigate decision on 1) building a community of like-minded people from the continent, same country and ethnic group; 2) decolonizing our minds about the value of African languages, cultures, and worldviews: building a sense of pride in our indigenous ways and teaching them to our children as a resistance to neocolonialism and global erasure; 3) cultural, linguistic, and identity reconceptualization, revitalization, redefinition, and resistance; 4) conscious effort to use native language in the home; and 5) racialized experiences that influence decisions about heritage language retention and transmission. With that, we stand on the shoulders of postcolonial and decolonial theory, as we move through postcolonial indigenous methodologies in resisting imperialism and coloniality in education, research and language in relation to African peoples. Additionally, the AOTS Framework is the arable land that is not selective in growing varied linguistic, cultural, and philosophical perspectives of African peoples in research albeit challenges in relation to transitioning oral techniques into writing. As a framework, our desire and interests in learning with African peoples is not a question-and-answer approach. Instead, it is a collaborative, communal approach where the privileged gatherer shares in co-creating stories, meanings, and understandings with African peoples.<br>

[pt] A dissertação Guardiãs da cura: o saber das benzedeiras do Vale do Paraíba do Sul Fluminense possui como objetivo central desenvolver argumentos analíticos acerca das práticas e tradições orais de benzedeiras da região do Vale do Paraíba do Sul Fluminense, tendo seu lócus na cidade de Valença, estado do Rio de Janeiro. O trabalho propõe, em um primeiro momento, elaborar uma breve análise da historiografia oficial da região, marcada pela produção cafeeira do período colonial, examinando a hipótese de uma identidade tradicional valenciana, de um passado glorioso. A partir da reflexão e problematização deste passado identitário, elabora-se, em um segundo momento, um percurso por narrativas outras, aquelas apoiadas sobre as tradições de cura e articulações de forças no território do Quilombo São José da Serra, localizado na Serra da Beleza, no distrito de Valença. A pesquisa segue a partir dos registros de experiências individuais e de notas produzidas em estudos de campo junto às benzedeiras da região. Como referencial teórico, a dissertação mobiliza trabalhos de diferentes áreas de conhecimento, como, dentre outros, o uso que faz do conceito expandido de performance, cuja análise auxilia a definir um ponto central neste trabalho: a identificação de formas de resistência e (re)existência de práticas simbólicas tradicionais através de tecnologias orais. Em síntese, o presente estudo consiste no reconhecimento desse conjunto de saberes do benzimento da região como uma costura a contrapelo, que evidencia abismos sociais e culturais através dos encantamentos pela palavra e como estratégia de manutenção da vida. / [en] The dissertation Guardians of the cure: the knowledge of the healers of Vale do Paraíba do Sul Fluminense has as main objective to reflect on the oral practices and traditions of healers in the region of Vale do Paraíba do Sul Fluminense, having its locus in the city of Valença, RJ. First, a brief history of the region is proposed. Marked by coffee production during the imperial period, the present work raises the analysis of whatwould be a traditional Valencian identity; of a glorious; past. Then, the focus passes to the narratives about healing traditions and articulations of forces in the Quilombo São José da Serra territory, also located in the region. With the expanded concept of performance as a theoretical tool, the analysis reaches its main point: the wisdoms that resist and re-exist through oral technology. In retrieving individual experiences and notes taken in field studies, results of research in different areas of knowledge are combined. In summary, the present study consists in the recognition of this set of knowledge of the healers of the region as a seam against the current, which shows social and cultural gaps through the enchantments by the word and as a strategy for maintaining life.

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Biblical and Ancient Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (Semitic Languages)