This study concerns an investigation of the oral traditions of the contemporary child in southern France, and sets out to disprove the widely held belief that such traditions have disappeared as a result of the levelling influence of the media upon today's children. Attention is focused upon the child of eight to ten years of age, investigating that part of his world normally ignored, even denied, by adults: that is, those games and rhymes passed down by word of mouth from the older child to the younger, generation after generation. Unlike any previous detailed study of juvenile lore in twentieth-century France, this thesis considers the entire spectrum of traditional play in the context of the 'child-to-child complex'. The study has involved extensive fieldwork in the Midi, recording and transcribing the language and lore of children at play. This practical work has been backed up by detailed historical research into the documentation of child lore in France from the thirteenth century until the present day. Account has been taken both of literary references to children's games, which provide important data for historical and comparative analysis, and of the various manuals and collections of games which exist in France. From the vast range of materials amassed, common characteristics and clear divisions between the various play activities recorded have been identified, enabling a detailed classification to be made of the data collected. Such a classification has not hitherto been achieved in France. Through an investigation of the closed and mysterious world of the playground, a world where children gather among themselves, this study aims to present an autonomous society, regulated by the jurisdictions of its own code, where rhymes and games are communicated from one child to the next, away from the restrictive eye of the adult.

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In this thesis, I will explore the dual language Cajun-French and English comic strip, Bec Doux et ses amis, in terms of its value within the literacy communities of southwest Louisiana. I will claim that the text subverts the established power dynamics which existed between the American English speakers, the unreconstructed Cajuns, and the bilingual Cajun French and English speaking communities through the use of text placement and trickster figures.

Scotland’s oral traditions have received scholarly attention since the 18th Century; however, collection and analysis has exclusively focused on those passed on ‘by word of mouth,’ and the traditional arts of Scotland’s deaf communities have been overlooked. This thesis begins to address this oversight by examining storytelling practices passed on ‘by sign of hand’ in British Sign Language (BSL). Neither fully acculturated to majority society nor ‘foreigners in their own country’ (Murray 2008:102), signing-deaf people have distinct ways of ‘doing’ culture which involve negotiating a bilingual-bicultural continuum between the hearing and deaf worlds. The historical exclusion of signing-deaf culture from conceptualisations of Scotland’s cultural heritage is increasingly being challenged, both overtly and tacitly, through an emergent ‘deaf public voice’ (Bechter 2008:72); in light of this, I consider three case-studies in which BSL storytelling practices have been placed in the public domain. Drawing on fieldwork, interviews and the in-depth analysis of BSL performance-texts, I examine the ways in which signing-deaf biculturality is expressed and performed, and consider the artistry involved in storytelling in a visual-spatial-kinetic language. In so doing, a working methodology is proposed for presenting signed material to non-signers, laying the groundwork for further collection and analysis. Applying Bauman and Murray’s concept of ‘Deaf Gain’ (2009), I argue that the study of this new corpus of oral material has a radical contribution to make to the field of ethnology and folklore, not least in highlighting phonocentric assumptions embedded in the study of oral traditions. I emphasise the extent to which the transmission of culture is predicated on particular ‘techniques of the body’ (Mauss 1973), and argue that, in drawing on different modality-specific affordances, both spoken and signed storytelling should be understood as part of the totality of Scotland’s ‘corp-oral’ traditions through which culture is transmitted ‘by performance of body.’

This visual art project has explored the ancient Maori pukorero (oral tradition) of Te Whatu o Poutini (The Eye of Poutini) that articulates the journey of Poutini Taniwha, Waitaiki and Tamaahua from Tuhua (Mayor Island) in the Bay of Plenty, to the Arahura River. An oral geological map, the pukorero also expresses through cultural values, the intimate spiritual relationship Ngati Waewae have with our tupuna, the Arahura River, pounamu stone and each other. Exploring the genres of digital storytelling and video art installation, this project combines them as new media storytelling. The current experience of colonisation and urbanisation emotionally parallel the abduction, transformation and multiple places of belonging experienced by the tupuna Waitaiki at the hand of Poutini Taniwha. The project explores and acknowledges this connection. The survival, restoration and celebration of Ngati Waewae culture and the need to assert control of our own destinies has infused every component of the project.

This visual art project has explored the ancient Maori pukorero (oral tradition) of Te Whatu o Poutini (The Eye of Poutini) that articulates the journey of Poutini Taniwha, Waitaiki and Tamaahua from Tuhua (Mayor Island) in the Bay of Plenty, to the Arahura River. An oral geological map, the pukorero also expresses through cultural values, the intimate spiritual relationship Ngati Waewae have with our tupuna, the Arahura River, pounamu stone and each other. Exploring the genres of digital storytelling and video art installation, this project combines them as new media storytelling. The current experience of colonisation and urbanisation emotionally parallel the abduction, transformation and multiple places of belonging experienced by the tupuna Waitaiki at the hand of Poutini Taniwha. The project explores and acknowledges this connection. The survival, restoration and celebration of Ngati Waewae culture and the need to assert control of our own destinies has infused every component of the project.

This thesis presents a critical overview of a supernatural being, the South Slavic vila, as she figures in the oral traditions of Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian peasants collected in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The thesis returns to the conceptual frame of older primary texts (here titled survey studies) used by comparative scholars and updates this work with the knowledge gleaned from a century of research and theory in the fields of folkloristics and historical anthropology. These materials are presented in a distributive frequency analysis model such as those often employed by the Historical-Geographic school of folklore research, but the study is built on a foundation informed by the insights of Milman Parry and Albert Lord’s researches into the diffusion of oral traditions. These traditions are further refined by focusing on the singers, storytellers and believers who used the vila in an emic manner balanced at a nexus point between artistic innovation and traditional dictates. The data is also further contextualized with a focus on the embedded nature of these cultural expressions and a clear portrait of the contexts surrounding their collection and publication in a wider cultural sphere. The aim of the thesis is to present a comprehensive description of the vila’s role in oral traditions to serve as a primary source for scholars doing comparative or interpretive work, as well as to provide a clearer picture of the contexts of the materials to refine such research. In doing so, this thesis produces a comprehensive method and model that can be applied to other supernatural beings, repatriates oral arts back to their original purveyors by undoing academic silencing of subaltern voices and returns critical context to inherited traditions once stripped of them by romantic academic theories. / Thesis / Candidate in Philosophy

This thesis evaluates one Hopi oral tradition-Tiyo, the boy from Tokonavi-as a meaningful geographic discourse that reveals a landscape extending from the American Southwest to Mesoamerica and beyond. Hopi's understanding of their past and the significance of the land have evolved within larger struggles between Western and Native American views of time, space, and history. Instead of a static cartographic rendering, the story of Tiyo presents the land as a dynamic entity differentiated through religious and social relations. Theories of place making and materiality help validate a space coterminous with Hopi history and religion, and support a multi-vocal approach to the land. This work has implications for anthropological scholarship, and for the process of decolonizing dominant understandings of Hopi culture. It is equally relevant for historic preservation, indigenous sovereignty, and land claims. Most importantly, this research can assist the Hopi people in communicating cultural knowledge to future generations.

This thesis examines and reveals pre-colonial and colonial organisation of oral traditions, attitudes and positions in relation to significant Tainui ancestresses. Mana wahine, womanist, Kaupapa Māori and Indigenous autoethnography are key theories and methodologies that I have used to reclaim, rediscover and retell their herstories. This approach allows for the contexualisation of Tainui women based on Māori cultural values and practices. The women examined are Whakaotirangi, Marama, Ruapūtahanga and Rehe Hekina Kenehuru. The information that informs this thesis is from textual sources including those from the chiefly narrated accounts, publications, newspapers and manuscripts. This thesis is a challenge to patriarchal understandings and interpretations of female inferiority in ancient practices, including karakia and whakapapa rites. I argue that the study of ancient karakia, whakataukī and tradition reveals that Māori women held a place of the highest regard and at times exerted power of a stronger force than their male counterparts: only the women’s voice could whakatika certain events. Tainui women were crucial representatives between the earthly and the spiritual domains. Significantly, I have ‘restoryed’ the ancestresses, the effect being to reclaim a powerful place for women in Māori societies in contemporary times.