This latest issue of the Cahiers de Littérature Orale, published by INALCO (Paris), brings together twenty-five scholars of oral literature in a collection of essays focusing on field practices. Most articles are written in French, but bilingual abstracts and keywords will give the English reader a good idea of the wide range of verbal art (proverbs, tales and stories, personal narratives, songs, jests, etc.) in the periods and countries represented in this book.
The ambition of this issue, as stated by Sandra Bornand and Cécile Leguy in their introduction, is to investigate the practical consequences of evolution in theories of orality. This concern, which draws on ethnography of speaking and performance studies, is cross-cut by a second one, namely the impact of the growing interaction between orality and literacy and the use of modern technologies. A strong emphasis is thus placed on case studies, personal testimonies, and methodological experiments. Articles are organized in three parts: contexts and performances, stories of surveys and accounts, and questions of ethics. I cannot comment here on all the articles, but I will give a brief overview of some of them.
The first part deals mainly with pragmatics and oral literature as speech acts. Sandra Bornand’s opening article stresses the significance of personal interactions between a researcher and multiple actors and gives some eloquent examples of how the different roles she was given shaped the Sanghay-Zarma verbal performances she studied in Niger. Cécile Leguy makes proposals for the editing of proverbs that would preserve their use in an indexed collection while acknowledging their performative nature. Genevieve Calame-Griaule, who had a major influence in the field, recounts her journey into the study of storytelling gesture as an ethnolinguist between 1946 and 1978. She explains how each step undertaken (verbal descriptions, drawings, photographing, and eventually filming) gave her new insight into the different types and combinations of gestures. Marie-Jo Derive offers an interesting account of the transposition of an Ivory Coast ritual insult genre, gate-gate, on the internet. This part closes with a theory-oriented article by Graham Furniss; drawing on cognitive psychology, he questions the continuities of genre and stands up for a schema-based explanation.
The second part of the book deals with methodological experiments and technology. Of the many articles of interest in this section, I should mention Josiane Bru’s and Eva Guillorel’s for taking us back to France of the early 1900s at the time of two experimental surveys: a collection undertaken by the school teacher and folklorist Perbosc with his young student; and a letter-based competition. Jean Derive and Daniel P. Biebuyck recall their pioneer research in the 1950s and 1960s in Ivory Coast and Republic of Congo where they used collective fieldwork involving local students and informants. Of particular interest is Janet Langlois’ account of her journey as “a legend hunter” in the United States and the empirical methods she used in successive frames: from participant observation for a structural analysis to “intimate ethnography” as feminist critique, “shadow ethnography” in a postmodern approach, and then team research. Another noteworthy article is Barbara Glowczewski’s interview by Cécile Leguy, in which she explains how she built multimedia reflecting the visual and oral connections of an aboriginal song repertoire and its reception by the local people.
The book’s third part addresses the issue of ethics. Three articles relate to “mined fieldwork,” dealing with fieldwork in countries at war (Marie Lorillard in Ivory Coast and Sonia Nimr in Palestine) and with secrecy (Maria Manca in Sardinia). Finally, two articles deal with the growing issue of expertise in heritage projects—Elisabeth Motte-Florac and Lee Haring elaborate on problems such as the political and economic consequences of researchers’ involvement.
As shown in this brief summary, this book is indeed very substantial and succeeds in showing fieldwork practices in oral literature as a set of complex interrelated issues. Articles being rather independent and heterogeneous, it is at times difficult for the reader to understand why an article fits into one part of the book instead of another, or to grasp the overall unity of the volume. A conclusion would thus have been welcome, together with a general bibliography. However, in its present state, it does leave open several readings of equal interest.
One could read this book as an outline of the history of the field, and more specifically of the French school based in INALCO, through the personal and reflexive additions to the books of some its contributors, the dialogue between senior scholars and younger researchers, and reflections on contemporary growing issues. It also stands as an argument for empiricism and pragmatism, acknowledging a specific link between verbal arts and politics, memory and personal life, on the one hand, and what is actually produced during the interactions between researchers and actors involved in verbal arts, on the other.
For that matter, though it was not designed specifically for students, I also see this book as a very good introduction to fieldwork. I would thus recommend it to all readers of the Journal of Folklore Research, be they specialists of verbal arts or ethnomusicologists interested, as I am, in these subjects.
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[Review length: 850 words • Review posted on September 22, 2010]