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Complete Issue _____________________________________________________________ Volume 10 October 1995 Number 2 _____________________________________________________________ Editor Editorial Assistants John Miles Foley Scott Garner Anastasios Daskalopoulos Lynn Lewis Chad Oness Lori Peterson Catherine S. Quick Slavica Publishers, Inc. For a complete catalog of books from Slavica, with prices and ordering information, write to: Slavica Publishers, Inc. Indiana University 2611 E. 10th St. Bloomington, IN 47408-2603 ISSN: 0883-5365 Each contribution copyright (c) 1995 by its author. All rights reserved. The editor and the publisher assume no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by the authors. Oral Tradition seeks to provide a comparative and interdisciplinary focus for studies in oral literature and related fields by publishing research and scholarship on the creation, transmission, and interpretation of all forms of oral traditional expression. As well as essays treating certifiably oral traditions, OT presents investigations of the relationships between oral and written traditions, as well as brief accounts of important fieldwork, a Symposium section (in which scholars may reply at some length to prior essays), review articles, occasional transcriptions and translations of oral texts, a digest of work in progress, and a regular column for notices of conferences and other matters of interest. In addition, occasional issues will include an ongoing annotated bibliography of relevant research and the annual Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lectures on Oral Tradition. OT welcomes contributions on all oral literatures, on all literatures directly influenced by oral traditions, and on non-literary oral traditions. Submissions must follow the list-of reference format (style sheet available on request) and must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope for return or for mailing of proofs; all quotations of primary materials must be made in the original language(s) with following English translations. Authors should submit two copies of all manuscripts. Most contributions will be reviewed by at least one specialist reader and one member of the editorial board before a final decision is reached. Review essays, announcements, and contributions to the Symposium section will be evaluated by the editor in consultation with the board. Oral Tradition appears twice per year, in March and October. Annual subscription charges are $18 for individuals and $35 for libraries and other institutions All manuscripts, books for review, items for the bibliography updates, and editorial correspondence, as well as subscriptions and related inquiries should be addressed to the editor, John Miles Foley, Center for Studies in Oral Tradition, 316 Hillcrest Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. Printed in the United States of America. EDITORIAL BOARD Patricia Arant Ruth Finnegan Brown University Open University Russian African, South Pacific Samuel Armistead Donald K. Fry University of California/Davis Poynter Institute Hispanic, comparative Old English Ilhan Bașgöz Lee Haring Indiana University Brooklyn College, CUNY Turkish African Richard Bauman Joseph Harris Indiana University Harvard University Folklore Old Norse Franz H. Bäuml Melissa Heckler Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles New York Storytelling Center Middle High German Storytelling Roderick Beaton Dell Hymes King’s College, London University of Virginia Modern Greek Native American, Linguistics Dan Ben-Amos Elizabeth Jeffreys University of Pennsylvania University of Sydney Folklore Byzantine Greek Daniel Biebuyck Michael Jeffreys University of Delaware University of Sydney African Byzantine Greek Robert P. Creed Minna Skafte Jensen Univ. of Mass./Amherst Odense University Old English, comparative Ancient Greek, Latin Robert Culley Werner Kelber McGill University Rice University Biblical Studies Biblical Studies Joseph J. Duggan Robert Kellogg Univ. of Cal./Berkeley University of Virginia French, Spanish, comparative Old Germanic, comparative Alan Dundes Victor Mair Univ. of Cal./Berkeley University of Pennsylvania Folklore Chinese Mark W. Edwards Nada Milošević-Djordjević Stanford University University of Belgrade Ancient Greek Serbo-Croatian EDITORIAL BOARD Stephen Mitchell Burton Raffel Harvard University Univ. of Southwestern Scandinavian Louisiana Translation Michael Nagler Alain Renoir Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, (Emeritus) comparative Old Germanic, Old French, comparative Gregory Nagy Bruce A. Rosenberg Harvard University Brown University Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Folk narrative, Medieval comparative literature Joseph Falaky Nagy Joel Sherzer Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles University of Texas/Austin Old Irish Native American, Anthropology Jacob Neusner Dennis Tedlock Brown University SUNY/Buffalo Hebrew, Biblical StudiesFelix Native American Felix J. Oinas J. Barre Toelken Indiana University Utah State University Finnish, Russian Folklore, Native American Isidore Okpewho Ronald J. Turner State Univ. of New York Univ. of Missouri/Columbia African, Ancient Greek Storytelling Walter J. Ong Ruth Webber St. Louis University (Emeritus) University of Chicago Hermeneutics of orality and (Emerita) literacy Spanish, comparative Svetozar Petrović Michael Zwettler University of Novi Sad Ohio State University Serbo-Croatian, Critical theory Arabic Contents Editor’s Column...................................................................................... 233 John H. McDowell Immanence and Immanent Truth.................................................. 235 Jarold Ramsey Generic and Racial Appropriation in Victoria Howard’s “The Honorable Milt” .................................................................263 E. A. Mackay Narrative Tradition in Early Greek Oral Poetry and Vase Painting ........................................................................................282 Betsy Bowden Chaucer New Painted (1623): Three Hundred Proverbs in Performance Contex ....................................................................304 Robin Waugh Word, Breath, and Vomit: Oral Competition in Old English and Old Norse Literature ............................................................359 Susan Niditch Oral Register in the Biblical Libretto: Towards a Biblical Poetic ...........................................................................................387 Werner H. Kelber Language, Memory, and Sense Perception in the Religious and Technological Culture of Antiquity and the Middle Ages ............409 Review Essay Jesse L. Byock The Fornaldarsögur: Stephen Mitchell’s Contribution .......451 About the Authors ...................................................................................459 Index to Volume 10 .................................................................................461 Editor’s Column With this issue of Oral Tradition we offer our readership a salamagundi of essays on an international variety of fields. John McDowell begins the discussion with his remarks on immanence as a characteristic and crucial feature of traditional discourse, drawing particularly from his fieldwork in southern Native American verbal art. Jarold Ramsey also focuses on Native American oral tradition, forming a small cluster on that important and extremely diverse area; in addition, he probes the effect of gender on narrative voice in a tale from the Clackamas Chinook. From Sibundoy and Chinook we take a long step back and eastward to the subject of E. A. Mackay’s contribution on ancient Greece, which tackles a fascinating set of correspondences between the representational codes of vase-painting and Homeric epic. Betsy Bowden then moves forward in time to the English Middle Ages and Renaissance with her recovery of performance context for a neglected collection of proverbs (with a Chaucerian connection) composed by William Painter; the collection is published for the first time here. Robin Waugh’s interest, still against the background of the Middle Ages, is in another aspect of “orality,” namely the somatic emphasis in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse narrative on the various functions of the mouth and the breath. From this point Susan Niditch takes up the “song,” considering the evidence in the Hebrew Bible for a linguistic register or specialized idiom ascribable to its origin in oral tradition, and then going on to discuss the implications of that expressive medium. Werner Kelber’s subject is far the broadest and most ambitious of the issue: nothing less than a historical sketch of how concepts of language, memory, and sense perception modulated from earliest times through the medieval period. With Jesse Byock’s contextual reading of Stephen Mitchell’s recent book, Heroic Sagas and Ballads, the conversation comes temporarily to a close. The next issue of Oral Tradition (11, i) will present a unique glimpse of epics along the famous “Silk Roads,” an immense stretch of territories and peoples across northeast Europe and vast parts of central Asia. We are particularly proud to be presenting this group of essays, many of them translated specifically for inclusion in this collection, on areas that are little known to mainstream Western scholarship, largely because of the language barriers. With this issue readers may expect to hear, perhaps for the first time, of Mongolian, Tibetan, Chinese, Indian, Palawan, Caucasian, and Khalkan epics as well as of the Finnish Kalevala,
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