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Ethnopoetics is a method of recording text versions of
oral poetry Oral poetry is a form of poetry that is composed and transmitted without the aid of writing. The complex relationships between written and spoken literature in some societies can make this definition hard to maintain. Background Oral poetry is ...
or narrative performances (i.e. verbal lore) that uses poetic lines, verses, and
stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, but they are not required to have ei ...
s (instead of prose paragraphs) to capture the formal, poetic performance elements which would otherwise be lost in the written texts. The goal of any ethnopoetic text is to show how the techniques of unique oral performers enhance the aesthetic value of their performances within their specific cultural contexts. Major contributors to ethnopoetic theory include
Jerome Rothenberg Jerome Rothenberg (born December 11, 1931) is an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry. Early life and education Jerome Rothenberg was born and raised in New York ...
,
Dennis Tedlock Dennis Ernest Tedlock (June 19, 1939 – June 3, 2016) was the McNulty Professor of English and Research Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He received his Ph.D. in 1968 from Tulane University. In 1986, he ...
, and
Dell Hymes Dell Hathaway Hymes (June 7, 1927 in Portland, Oregon – November 13, 2009 in Charlottesville, Virginia) was a linguist, sociolinguist, anthropologist, and folklorist who established disciplinary foundations for the comparative, ethnographic st ...
. Ethnopoetics is considered a subfield of ethnology,
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
, folkloristics,
stylistics Stylistics, a branch of applied linguistics, is the study and interpretation of texts of all types and/or spoken language in regard to their linguistic and tonal style, where style is the particular variety of language used by different individu ...
,
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
,
literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to ...
and translation studies.


A need for ethnopoetics: Rothenberg

Jerome Rothenberg coined the term ethnopoetics in the 1960s. According to Catherine S. Quick, Rothenberg had recognized that “most translations of Native American oral traditions . . . failed to capture the power and beauty of the oral performances on the written page,” especially when “Western poetic styles” were imposed upon these written texts (1999, 96).Quick, Catherine. 1999. "Ethnopoetics." ''Folklore Forum'' 30(1/2): 95–105. Rothenberg’s influence has increased public
awareness Awareness is the state of being conscious of something. More specifically, it is the ability to directly know and perceive, to feel, or to be cognizant of events. Another definition describes it as a state wherein a subject is aware of some in ...
of the rich narrative and poetic traditions of cultures all over the world.


Ethnopoetic theory: Tedlock and Hymes

The development of ethnopoetics as a separate subfield of study was largely pioneered from the middle of the 20th century by anthropologists and linguists such as Dennis Tedlock and Dell Hymes. Both Tedlock and Hymes used ethnopoetic analysis to do justice to the artistic richness of Native American verbal art, and while they have disagreed on some analytic details, they agree on the fundamental issues and purposes of ethnopoetics.


Dennis Tedlock

On the one hand, Dennis Tedlock argues not only that pauses in oral performances indicate where poetic line breaks should occur in the written texts, which he compares to musical scores, but also that words on the page should be formatted to reflect the more subtle qualities of speech used in oral performances. Tedlock explain his perspective in this way,
An ethnopoetic score r textnot only takes account of the words but silences, changes in loudness and tone of voice, the production of sound effects, and the use of gestures and props. . . . Ethnopoetics remains open to the creative side of performance, valuing features that may be rare or even unique to a particular artist or occasion.Tedlock, Dennis. Syllabus. “English 699: Ethnopoetics.” Colleges of Arts and Sciences. University at Buffalo. Accessed 22 November 2011.
In other words, Tedlock argues that by visually representing oral performance features in the written texts, ethnopoetic methods more accurately convey the aesthetic qualities of the performance than uniformly formatted text in prose paragraphs ever could. Tedlock himself defines ethnopoetics as “a decentered poetics, an attempt to hear and read the poetries of distant others, outside the Western oetictradition as we know it now."


Dell Hymes

On the other hand, Dell Hymes believes that even previously dictated texts retain significant structural patterns of poetic repetition that “are the ‘reason why’” storytellers use pauses in their oral performances (1999, 97–98). Hymes’s ethnopoetic theories focus on repetitions in the grammar and syntax of transcribed and translated texts that he suggest can still be analyzed and retranslated. For example, accordingly to folklorist Barre Toelken, the poetic beauty and power of Native American texts like “The Sun's Myth” have been restored “because a dedicated anthropological folklorist and linguist, Dell Hymes, dedicated a good part of his life to resuscitating a dry, written text collected . . . by a long-dead anthropologist .e., Franz Boasand stored away in a dusty volume” (2003, 122).Toelken, Barre. 2003. The Anguish of Snails. Vol. 2, Folklife of the West, edited by Barre Toelken and William A. Wilson. Logan: Utah State University Press. When Hymes retranslated “The Sun’s Myth,” he recovered the poetic and stylistic devices that were used in the original recorded performance, but which had been lost in the myth’s earlier translation by
Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...
.
Hymes’ ethnopoetics revolves around a conception of narratives as primarily organized in terms of ''formal'' and ''aesthetic''—‘poetic’—patterns, not in terms of content or thematic patterns. Narrative is therefore to be seen as a form of action, of performance, and the meanings it generates are effects of performance. Narratives, seen from this perspective, are organized in lines and in groups of lines (verses, stanzas), and the organization of lines in narratives is a kind of implicit patterning that creates narrative effect. . . . Content, in other words, is an effect of the formal organization of a narrative: What there is to be told emerges out of how it is being told. (Blommaert 2007, 216)Blommaert, Jan. 2007. “Applied Ethnopoetics.” Narrative–State of the Art. Edited by Michael G. W. Bamberg. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Benjamins Current Topics Series (Number: 595215). 215–224.
Also, understanding the native language of oral performers is essential for accurate, ethnopoetic translation of their words into written texts. For example, folklorist Barre Toelken explains that Hymes’s “knowledge of the extant Chinookan languages” helped him to “notice stylistic devices that highlighted certain actions and themes and even performance styles that brought scenes into sharp focus” (2003, 122). In other words, without his knowledge of the native language of oral performers, Hymes could not have placed his ethnopoetic translation of “The Sun’s Myth” within its specific Native American cultural context.


Ethnopoetics: aesthetic movement or academic discipline?

Various other writers and poets can be said to have contributed to the field of ethnopoetics as an aesthetic movement. For example, Tristan Tzara created calligrams and
William Bright William O. Bright (August 13, 1928 – October 15, 2006) was an American linguist and toponymist who specialized in Native American and South Asian languages and descriptive linguistics. Biography Bright earned a bachelor's degree in lingui ...
worked with the Karuk tribe to preserve their native language. However, within the fields of
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
, folkloristics, and
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
, ethnopoetics refers to a particular method of analyzing the linguistic features and syntactical structures of
oral literature Oral literature, orature or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung as opposed to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used var ...
(such as poetry, myths, narratives, folk tales, ceremonial speeches, etc.) in ways that pay attention to poetic patterns within speech. Overall, then, ethnopoetic methods and theories strive to capture on the written page the unique aesthetic elements of individual cultures’ oral poetry and narrative performance traditions, or what folklorists would call their verbal lore. Classicist Steve Reece has attempted to envision how folklorists like Dennis Tedlock or Elizabeth Fine, if transported to an eighth-century BCE social gathering in Ionia where Homer was performing a version of the ''Odyssey'', would transcribe that oral performance into a textual form. This exercise is not entirely hypothetical: Homer’s ''Odyssey'' was, after all, written down at some point in history; otherwise it would not have survived.Reece, Steve. "Toward an Ethnopoetically Grounded Edition of Homer's ''Odyssey''. ''Oral Tradition'' 26.2 (2011) 1-2
An Ethnopoetic Edition of Homer's Odyssey
/ref>


References


Bibliography

* Blommaert, Jan. 2007
“Applied Ethnopoetics.”
''Narrative–State of the Art''. Edited by Michael G. W. Bamberg. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Benjamins Current Topics Series (Number: 595215). 215–224. * Quick, Catherine. 1999
"Ethnopoetics."
''Folklore Forum'' 30(1/2): 95–105. * Tedlock, Dennis. Syllabus

Colleges of Arts and Sciences. University at Buffalo. Accessed 22 November 2011. * Toelken, Barre. 2003. The Anguish of Snails. Vol. 2, Folklife of the West, edited by Barre Toelken and William A. Wilson. Logan: Utah State University Press.


Additional resources

* Hymes, Dell H. 1981. ''"In vain I tried to tell you": Essays in Native American ethnopoetics''. ''Studies in Native American Literature'' 1. University of Pennsylvania publications in conduct and communication. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. . * Hymes, Dell H. 2003. ''Now I know only so far: Essays in ethnopoetics''. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. (hbk); (pbk). * Tedlock, Dennis. 1972. ''Finding the Center: Narrative Poetry of the Zuñi Indians''. New York: Dial Press. * Tedlock, Dennis. 1983. ''The spoken word and the work of interpretation''. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. . * Tedlock, Dennis. 1999. ''Finding the Center: The Art of the Zuni Storyteller'' (Second Edition). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. .


External links





* ttp://www.durationpress.com/archives/ethnopoetics/alcheringa/alcheringa.pdf Selections from Alcheringa, pdf format
Ubuweb
a comprehensive, rather useful online anthology of poets, poems,
manifesto A manifesto is a published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. A manifesto usually accepts a previously published opinion or public consensus or promotes a ...
s, writings, materials, and enything related to Ethnopoetics.
Jerome Rothenberg class on ethnopoetics and performance, mp3u

ethnopoetics new and old
{{Authority control Folk poetry