_____________________________________________________________ Volume 13 October 1998 Number 2 _____________________________________________________________ Editor Editorial Assistants John Miles Foley Marjorie Rubright Michael Barnes Anastasios Daskalopoulos Scott Garner Lori Peterson Aaron Tate 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) 1998 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. To enter a subscription, please contact Slavica Publishers at the address given above. 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 Lauri Honko King’s College, London Turku University Modern Greek Folklore Dan Ben-Amos Dell Hymes University of Pennsylvania University of Virginia Folklore Native American, Linguistics Daniel Biebuyck Elizabeth Jeffreys University of Delaware University of Sydney African Byzantine Greek Robert P. Creed Michael Jeffreys Univ. of Mass./Amherst University of Sydney Old English, comparative Byzantine Greek Robert Culley Minna Skafte Jensen McGill University Odense University Biblical Studies Ancient Greek, Latin Joseph J. Duggan Werner Kelber Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Rice University French, Spanish, comparative Biblical Studies Alan Dundes Robert Kellogg Univ. of Cal./Berkeley University of Virginia Folklore Old Germanic, comparative Mark W. Edwards Victor Mair Stanford University University of Pennsylvania Ancient Greek Chinese EDITORIAL BOARD John McDowell Svetozar Petrović Indiana University University of Novi Sad Native American, Folklore South Slavic, Critical theory Nada Milošević-Djordjević Burton Raffel University of Belgrade Univ. of Southwestern South Slavic Louisiana Translation Stephen Mitchell Alain Renoir Harvard University Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Scandinavian (Emeritus) Old Germanic, Old French, comparative Michael Nagler Bruce A. Rosenberg Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Brown University Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Folk narrative, Medieval comparative literature Gregory Nagy Joel Sherzer Harvard University University of Texas/Austin Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Native American, Anthropology comparative Joseph Falaky Nagy Dennis Tedlock Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles SUNY/Buffalo Old Irish Native American Jacob Neusner J. Barre Toelken Brown University Utah State University Hebrew, Biblical Studies Folklore, Native American Susan Niditch Ronald J. Turner Amherst College Univ. of Missouri/Columbia Biblical Studies, Folklore Storytelling Felix J. Oinas Ruth Webber Indiana University University of Chicago Finnish, Russian (Emerita) Spanish, comparative Isidore Okpewho Michael Zwettler State Univ. of New York Ohio State University African, Ancient Greek Arabic Walter J. Ong St. Louis University (Emeritus) Hermeneutics of orality and literacy Contents Editor’s Column...................................................................................... 245 Susan 1. Rasmussen Reflections on Myth and History: Tuareg Concepts of Truth, “Lies,” and “Children’s Tales” ....................................247 Sabine Habermalz “Signs on a white field” : A Look at Orality in Literacy and James Joyce’s Ulysses ........................................285 Bruce Lionel Mason E-Texts: The Orality and Literacy Issue Revisited .......................306 Mark Bender Suzhou Tanci Storytelling in China: Contexts of Performance.... 330 Deborah VanderBilt Translation and Orality in the Old English Orosius .....................377 Yvonne Banning Oral English in South African Theater of the 1980s ....................398 Yang Enhong A Comparative Study of the Singing Styles of Mongolian and Tibetan Geser/Gesar Artists ..................................................422 Craig R. Davis Cultural Assimilation in Njál’s saga ............................................435 Ingrid Holmberg The Creation of the Ancient Greek Epic Cycle ............................456 About the Authors .................................................................................479 Index to Volume 13 ...............................................................................481 Editor’s Column With this issue we return to the “bedrock” format of Oral Tradition, the miscellany that offers the reader an interdisciplinary perspective on this naturally heterogeneous field. Susan Rasmussen opens the conversation with “reflections on myth and history” among the Tuareg of Nigeria, a people among whom she has done extensive fieldwork. Sabine Habermalz then continues with a discussion of orality in that most literate and textual of authors, James Joyce; this essay will acquaint our readership with the methodology developed by a group of scholars at the Universität Freiburg to treat a wide range of verbal art. Yet more recent in media evolution is the electronic text, the subject of Bruce Mason’s article and a fresh point of departure in the consideration of orality and literacy; anyone involved with the Internet and e-mail, not to mention other electronic tools, will find his “virtual ethnography” exciting and instructive. Mark Bender then returns to a fieldwork-based examination of oral tradition with his examination of Suzhou tanci storytelling, which emphasizes aspects of performance and offers the author’s firsthand experience as a guide. The next two articles in this issue collectively stress the diversity of traditional oral forms and illustrate the tremendous variety of materials that can be better understood through their agency. First, Deborah VanderBilt recovers the orality of Old English prose, a significant addition to the nearly exclusive focus on the oral-derived poetry of that period. At the other end of things, Yvonne Banning recounts the evidence of various kinds of orality in the theater of South Africa during the last tumultuous decade. With Yang Enhong’s overview of Geser epic we are fortunate to be able to present a glimpse of an important oral tradition, half a world away, in Mongolia and Tibet, a region little explored in Western scholarship but one that boasts epics more than ten times as long as Homer’s Iliad. Closing out this issue, Craig Davis examines cultural assimilation in Njáls saga, explaining how the saga encodes reconstructions of social violence, while Ingrid Holmberg presents an intriguing explanation of the fragments and summaries of the lost Epic Cycle from ancient Greece as the oral tradition they no doubt once constituted. In the future we plan to stay “close to the hearth” with heterogeneous, multidisciplinary issues like this one. To do our part to celebrate the millennium, however, we also have scheduled two special issues. The first of these will be a collection of short “position papers” on the state of studies in this field as we move toward 2001. Each essayist will address