Fulfills: Theory

This course explores the workings of the world’s ethnic poetry, that
is, its measured and allusive language existing outside the
boundaries of literary canons. We sample widely in a domain
sometimes called oral poetry, oral literature, or folk poetry,
referencing a range of speech play and verbal art traditions. We
seek to appreciate the mastery exhibited by wordsmiths operating in
a variety of settings, from the conversational to the commemorative,
and their synergetic interaction with audiences for these
performances. Central to our inquiry are key issues surrounding the
concept of the text – the relationship between a text and its social
and cultural context, between a text and its source performance --
and the best practices for creating textual representations of
spoken, chanted, and sung performances. But the larger issue
motivating this field of study is to examine the role of the
underlying poetic impulse in constituting, confirming, refining, and
challenging social alignments and conventions.