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.

Video games today represent very widespread medium, which has a huge potential. Majority of games uses for its stories and building of their world rearranged and commodified elements inspired by vernacular folklore. Thanks to that kind of games, they were able to preserve and spread some manifestations of oral tradition, mainly representation of oral literature, specifically the representatives of demonological legends, not only in collective memory of certain group, but also in the general population thanks to the mass culture of popular culture. Based on the identification, processing, study and documentation of these manifestations in a selected sample of video games with folklore themes and subsequent research among players and developers about the knowledge of these manifestations, it can be determined whether is the manifestations or folklore, or whether these manifestations are related with folklorism or folkloresque. The thesis aims to examine these statements and to explore the possibilities of preserving the manifestations of oral literature in the collective memory of the subculture of computer game players with an overlap to the general population. Keywords oral tradition, oral literature, storytelling, popular culture, demonological legends, video games, case study, folkloresque,...

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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Tesis por compendio / [ES] Esta tesis doctoral presentada como un compendio de artículos académicos compuesta por seis artículos seleccionados, en dónde, el primer artículo titulado "La aplicación de las políticas gubernamentales para la difusión del patrimonio inmaterial: Un estudio de casos en Latinoamérica", se muestra como un antecedente de esta investigación. Los siguientes artículos aportan nuevos datos y conocimientos en función de los objetivos planteados en la investigación doctoral. Es así, que el siguiente artículo identifica las leyendas principales o más reconocidas de Latinoamérica a través de una revisión documental sistemática y el criterio de un grupo de personas con amplio conocimiento respecto al tema. El tercer artículo determina cuáles son las producciones animadas basadas en La leyenda de la Llorona creadas en Latinoamérica en la década 2010-2020, Además, compara las versiones producidas en formato serie de la leyenda la Llorona, mediante el análisis de las similitudes y diferencias de su estructura narratológica. El cuarto artículo toma dos relatos literarios y los compara a través de orientaciones metodológicas y teóricas de la narratología con la versión animada del largometraje de La Leyenda de la Llorona, para determinar similitudes y diferencias. Asimismo, analiza ciertos elementos del lenguaje cinematográfico que tienen concordancia con las obras literarias para entender que los vuelve diferentes y específicos. El siguiente artículo analiza los principios de animación utilizados en las representaciones visuales animadas de la leyenda de la Llorona para conocer la vigencia de los principios animados y su aplicación en una serie animada. El sexto artículo determina si las producciones animadas son un medio eficaz para transmitir las tradiciones orales en niños de 6 a 10 años generando interés en ellos como público objetivo. Finalmente, la leyenda de la Llorona y varias otras forman parte de la identidad cultural latinoamericana, han logrado sobrevivir a lo largo de varias generaciones y además traspasar fronteras, adaptarse y permanecer en la memoria colectiva de los latinoamericanos, que ven en ellas otro rasgo que unifica a una región tan diversa y llena de cultura. Asimismo, han tomado los nuevos medios y tecnología como una herramienta para permanecer y diseminarse en los niños y jóvenes. / [CAT] Aquesta tesi doctoral presentada com un compendi d'articles acadèmics composta per sis articles seleccionats, on el primer article titulat "L'aplicació de les polítiques governamentals per a la difusió del patrimoni immaterial: Un estudi de casos a Llatinoamèrica", es mostra com un antecedent d'aquesta investigació. Els articles següents aporten noves dades i coneixements en funció dels objectius plantejats en la investigació doctoral. És així que el següent article identifica les llegendes principals o més reconegudes de Llatinoamèrica a través d'una revisió documental sistemàtica i el criteri d'un grup de persones amb coneixement ampli respecte del tema. El tercer article determina quines són les produccions animades basades en La llegenda de la Llorona que hagin estat creades a Llatinoamèrica a la dècada 2010-2020. A més, compara les versions produïdes en format sèrie de la llegenda la Llorona, mitjançant l'anàlisi de les similituds i diferències de la seva estructura narratològica. El quart article pren dos relats literaris i els compara mitjançant orientacions metodològiques i teòriques de la narratologia amb la versió animada del llargmetratge de La Llegenda de la Llorona, per determinar similituds i diferències. Així mateix, analitza certs elements del llenguatge cinematogràfic que tenen concordança amb les obres literàries per entendre que els torna diferents i específics. El següent article analitza els principis d'animació utilitzats a les representacions visuals animades de la llegenda de la Llorona per conèixer la vigència dels principis animats i la seva aplicació en una sèrie animada. El sisè article determina si les produccions animades són un mitjà eficaç per transmetre les tradicions orals en nens de 6 a 10 anys generant-hi interès com a públic objectiu. Finalment, la llegenda de la Llorona i diverses altres formen part de la identitat cultural llatinoamericana, han aconseguit sobreviure al llarg de diverses generacions ia més traspassar fronteres, adaptar-se i romandre en la memòria col·lectiva dels llatinoamericans, que hi veuen un altre tret que unifica una regió tan diversa i plena de cultura. Així mateix, han pres els nous mitjans i tecnologia com una eina per romandre i disseminar-se en els infants i els joves. / [EN] This doctoral thesis is presented as a compendium of academic articles composed of six selected articles, where the first article entitled "The application of government policies for the dissemination of intangible heritage: A case study in Latin America", is shown as a background of this research. The following articles provide new data and knowledge according to the objectives set out in the doctoral research. Thus, the following article identifies the main or most recognized legends of Latin America through a systematic documentary review and the criteria of a group of people with extensive knowledge on the subject. The third article determines which are the animated productions based on the legend of la Llorona that have been created in Latin America in the decade 2010-2020. It also compares the versions produced in series format of the legend of la Llorona, by analyzing the similarities and differences of its narratological structure. The fourth article takes two literary stories and compares them through methodological and theoretical orientations of narratology with the animated version of the feature film La Leyenda de la Llorona, to determine similarities and differences. Likewise, it analyzes certain elements of the cinematographic language that are consistent with the literary works to understand what makes them different and specific. The next article analyzes the principles of animation used in the animated visual representations of the legend of la Llorona in order to know the validity of the animated principles and their application in an animated series. The sixth article determines whether animated productions are an effective means of transmitting oral traditions to children from 6 to 10 years of age, generating interest in them as a target audience. Finally, the legend of la Llorona and several others are part of the Latin American cultural identity, have managed to survive over several generations and also cross borders, adapt and remain in the collective memory of Latin Americans, who see in them another feature that unifies a region so diverse and full of culture. Likewise, they have taken the new media and technology as a tool to remain and spread among children and young people. / Pomaquero Yuquilema, ML. (2023). Representaciones visuales animadas de leyendas latinoamericanas. La leyenda de la Llorona [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/191963 / Compendio

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

In this study, I expand the scope of the scholarship that Walter Ong and others have done in orality-literacy relations to examine the often uneasy juxtaposition of the oral and written traditions in the literature of the Victorian pulpit. I begin by examining the intersections of the oral and written traditions found in both the theory and the practice of Victorian preaching. I discuss the prominent place of the sermon within both the print and oral cultures of Victorian Britain; argue that the sermon's status as both oration and essay places it in the genre of "oral literature"; and analyze the debate over the extent to which writing should be employed in the preparation and delivery of sermons.