Project MUSE®: Oral Tradition - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/227
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Oral Tradition.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 18 (2003) - vol. 32, no.1 (2018)Latest Articles: Oral TraditionTWOProject MUSE®Oral Tradition1542-43080883-5365Latest articles in Oral Tradition. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editor's Column
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/700244
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With this issue Oral Tradition returns to its customary miscellany format, offering half a dozen essays that examine as many strands in humanity's complex of verbal traditions: a previously overlooked theme in Old Germanic poetry; a pictorial system for representing narratives devised by the Naxi dongba in Southwestern China that conjugates the oral and the literary in the same vehicle; an illustration of contemporary shamanistic augury and communication with the dead practiced by women from the Vlach minority community in Eastern Serbia; an account of genre classification schemes for Trans-Atlantic Gaelic song traditions; and, finally, the debut in the pages of Oral Tradition of "lexomics," an analytic tool that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/227/image/coversmallEditor's Column2018-08-07text/htmlen-USEditor's Column2018-08-072018TWOProject MUSE®74822026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002018-08-07Eall-feala Ealde Sæge: Poetic Performance and "The Scop's Repertoire" in Old English Verse
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/700245
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Scenes depicting the recitation of verse, particularly in Beowulf, are among the most memorable and closely studied passages in Old English poetry. Beowulf repeatedly depicts the making and performance of poetry (Hill 2002), and it is the swutol sang scopes ("the clear song of the scop," Bwf 90a) that first draws the monster Grendel's attention to Heorot and sets in motion the major events of the first part of the poem.2 In Beowulf, the creation of new stories is inextricably linked with the recitation of ones already known, so that the poem "aligns itself with a poetics where transmission and composition are co-dependent, indivisible aspects of the same act" (Jones 2009:486). A different but equally famous
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/227/image/coversmallEall-feala Ealde Sæge: Poetic Performance and "The Scop's Repertoire" in Old English Verse2018-08-07text/htmlen-USEall-feala Ealde Sæge: Poetic Performance and "The Scop's Repertoire" in Old English Verse2018-08-072018TWOProject MUSE®1375112026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002018-08-07Between the Oral and the Literary: The Case of the Naxi Dongba Texts
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/700246
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Shafts of sunlight stream through the crooked rafters, piercing the heavy smoke from the fire. Before you sits a dongba ritualist. He reads from the beautifully written manuscript in his hands, singing of the Naxi ancestors and their encounters with spirits—good and ill. He closes his eyes, lost in memory. He has stopped reading, but he keeps on singing. This dongba ritualist, unlike the Tibetan paper singers, is fully literate; and unlike a priest reading a sermon from the Bible, he is versed in the craft of oral poetry. The book in front of him can, unlike the prop of the paper singer, be read, for it is a receptacle of the written word; but unlike the Bible, it can never be read with the same two combinations of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/227/image/coversmallBetween the Oral and the Literary: The Case of the Naxi Dongba Texts2018-08-07text/htmlen-USBetween the Oral and the Literary: The Case of the Naxi Dongba Texts2018-08-072018TWOProject MUSE®1231112026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002018-08-07The Fairy Seers of eastern Serbia: Seeing Fairies—Speaking through Trance
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/700247
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The fairy-seers of Southeastern Europe are (mostly) women who are able to communicate with women-like creatures from the supernatural world. Sometimes the fairy-seers induce a trance state in order to establish communication with these creatures. During their communication with the fairies the fairy-seers can prophesy about future events. The fairy-seers can also deliver messages to the living on behalf of their deceased relatives. Similarly, they advise about how to heal an ill individual or the treatment of that individual can proceed after consulting the fairies. These illnesses are usually a form of so called "fairy-illness"—a disorder that has its origins in a curse or a spell wrought by fairies offended by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/227/image/coversmallThe Fairy Seers of eastern Serbia: Seeing Fairies—Speaking through Trance2018-08-07text/htmlen-USThe Fairy Seers of eastern Serbia: Seeing Fairies—Speaking through Trance2018-08-072018TWOProject MUSE®915422026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002018-08-07A New Approach to the Classification of Gaelic Song
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/700248
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A good deal of water has flowed under the bridge since James Ross published "A Classification of Gaelic Folk-Song" in 1957.1 Ross's study was typical of a time when scholars favored a clinical and taxonomical approach to oral traditional culture, before modern theories about text, context, and genre began to raise good questions about the application of scientific methods to the analysis of cultural activity. The search for answers to these questions has greatly advanced the way ethnographers and ethnomusicologists understand culture, including the cultures of the Gael.2 After six decades, it seems fitting to revisit Ross's classification system, and to examine whether the effort of constructing such a system is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/227/image/coversmallA New Approach to the Classification of Gaelic Song2018-08-07text/htmlen-USA New Approach to the Classification of Gaelic Song2018-08-072018TWOProject MUSE®3228102026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002018-08-07Oral Features of the Qur'ān Detected in Public Recitation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/700249
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The first audience for the Qur'ān did not receive leaves with writing on them (98:2),1 nor something on parchment they could touch (6:7), nor a book from the sky (4:153). They heard it. The Qur'ān arrived orally, piecemeal, and, significantly, each piece of which was heard before it was written down. Within a quarter of a century the pieces were collected, their order standardized, and uniform copies of the whole soon became available. At that point, believers could access it by ear or by eye (and by heart for those portions they had memorized).This complementarity of hearing and reading, a bimodal approach to verbal comprehension, has endured within Muslim communities to this day, but for many scholars in the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/227/image/coversmallOral Features of the Qur'ān Detected in Public Recitation2018-08-07text/htmlen-USOral Features of the Qur'ān Detected in Public Recitation2018-08-072018TWOProject MUSE®2465372026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002018-08-07A Pebble Smoothed by Tradition: Lines 607–61 of Beowulf as a Formulaic Set-piece
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/700250
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In lines 607–61 of Beowulf, just before the battle between the hero and the monster Grendel, the Danes and visiting Geats celebrate their comradeship in the great hall of Heorot.1 While venerable Hrothgar, king of the Danes, presides, Queen Wealhtheow, bedecked with gold, carries the ornamented cup of fellowship to each warrior in turn, old and young alike.2 The passage, which for convenience we will call "Wealhtheow's cup-bearing," is one of several depictions in Beowulf of the social happiness that Anglo-Saxon poetry often calls dream ("joy") and has been described as "the most detailed description we possess of the offering of the ceremonial drinking cup to an honored guest in early Germanic society" (Fulk
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/227/image/coversmallA Pebble Smoothed by Tradition: Lines 607–61 of Beowulf as a Formulaic Set-piece2018-08-07text/htmlen-USA Pebble Smoothed by Tradition: Lines 607–61 of Beowulf as a Formulaic Set-piece2018-08-072018TWOProject MUSE®1974712026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002018-08-07About the Authors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/700251
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Paul Battles Paul Battles is Professor of English at Hanover College. His research focuses on the intersection between orality, tradition, and intertextuality. He has written extensively on Old English traditional themes, with essays on the subject appearing in Studies in Philology, Modern Philology, and Anglo-Saxon England. His forthcoming essay "Old Saxon-Old English Intertextuality and the 'Traveler Recognizes His Goal' Theme in The Heliand" examines another theme rooted in Germanic poetic tradition.Virginia Blankenhorn Virginia Blankenhorn received her Ph.D. in Celtic Studies from the University of Edinburgh, and held academic posts at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Ulster in Coleraine. Now
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/227/image/coversmallAbout the Authors2018-08-07text/htmlen-USAbout the Authors2018-08-072018TWOProject MUSE®50662026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002018-08-07