Verbal Arts in Madagascar: Performance in Historical PerspectiveVerbal Arts in Madagascar combines a history of the encounter between Europeans and colonized people with a groundbreaking analysis of four types of Malagasy folklore: riddles, proverbs, hainteny (dialogic exchanges of traditional metaphors), and oratory. In this richly textured study, Lee Haring has collected several hundred witty, imaginative texts and translated them into English for the first time. Verbal Arts in Madagascar contains the first history of the collecting of folklore in Madagascar from 1820 to the present. Haring contends that when European investigators recorded this "native culture" they created a vision of "folklore" which served French domination by trivializing Malagasy reality. Now, through comparison and analysis of texts gathered during a century and a half by foreigners, Haring shows that the four types of folklore examined make use of a pervasive two-sided dialogic structure. Although Haring works from texts transcribed and published at least seventy years ago, his analysis always highlights the performance of folklore in actual social settings. By drawing upon the observations of collectors and upon information presented in chronicles, ethnographies, reports, and other historical documents, Haring successfully reconstructs the performances of the texts and the social context in which the performances took place. Verbal Arts in Madagascar pioneers an integrated approach to past folklore studies into contemporary theory. It will especially interest students and scholars in folklore, history, African studies, and anthropology. |
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Page 16
Single texts result , in this view , from the generative processes of folklore . When
Malagasy speakers adapt borrowed cultural elements and put together new
structures out of the fragments , the rules they use are not fixed but variable ,
drawn ...
Single texts result , in this view , from the generative processes of folklore . When
Malagasy speakers adapt borrowed cultural elements and put together new
structures out of the fragments , the rules they use are not fixed but variable ,
drawn ...
Page 81
Few of the ohabolana in printed collections seem to be variants or versions of
already collected texts . By contrast , Kuusi ( 1970 ) found 4 , 631 texts of only 2 ,
482 Ovambo proverbs . Of course , many Malagasy texts were reprinted from one
...
Few of the ohabolana in printed collections seem to be variants or versions of
already collected texts . By contrast , Kuusi ( 1970 ) found 4 , 631 texts of only 2 ,
482 Ovambo proverbs . Of course , many Malagasy texts were reprinted from one
...
Page 106
I will oppose any attempt by my people to change the customs of my ancestors , ”
she declared . But already two of her court secretaries had begun writing down
folk poetry — or , more precisely , texts which we now know to be poetic .
I will oppose any attempt by my people to change the customs of my ancestors , ”
she declared . But already two of her court secretaries had begun writing down
folk poetry — or , more precisely , texts which we now know to be poetic .
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Contents
Question and Answer | 50 |
Dialogue in Monologue | 63 |
The Merina Hainteny | 98 |
Copyright | |
4 other sections not shown
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Common terms and phrases
acceptance African ancestors answer assert audience authority balance called choice collected connection contest continues conversation created culture Dahle dead death debate deliverer dialect dialogue Domenichini-Ramiaramanana European example expressive fixed folklore folklorists followed formal French funeral genre give hainteny hianao Houlder importance interaction island kabary kind king language linguistic living Madagascar Malagasy marriage means Merina metaphor missionaries monologic observed ohabolana oral oration oratory origin pattern Paulhan performance person petitioner phrases pieces play poems poetic poetry political present printed proverbs question quotation quoted raha Rasamuel reference relations reported riddle says separate single situation social society speaker speaking speech structure style symbolic tale texts tradition trans translated Turn verbal voices wife woman words writing
Bibliographic information
| Title | Verbal Arts in Madagascar: Performance in Historical Perspective Publications of the American Folklore Society: New series |
| Author | Lee Haring |
| Publisher | University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992 |
| Original from | Indiana University |
| Digitized | 14 Aug 2009 |
| ISBN | 0812231414, 9780812231410 |
| Length | 242 pages |
| Subjects | › Literary Criticism / Middle Eastern |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |