Contents
Preface vii
1. Introducing words 1
Enacting and distancing words in life and story
2. The reflective practice of speech and language: a West African example 23
3. How to do things with words among the Limba 46
4 The arts and action of Limba storytelling 71
5. Stories of Africa?stories about Africa 95
Performing literature
6. Literature as oral, the oral as literature 126
7. Is oral literature composed in performance? 156
8. Time, performance and literature 188
Working with oral texts
9. Constructing ?Oral Literature in Africa?: hindsights a generation later 224
10. Creating texts: transformation and enscription 261
11. Conceptualising oral texts and beyond 300
Epilogue
12. Words, the human attribute? 340
References 379
EXTENDED CONTENTS
Preface / acknowledgements
1. Introducing words
Doing things with words
Changing arenas
A backward forward look
Enacting and distancing words in life and story
The reflective practice of speech and language: a West African example
?Limba is one, Limba is many?: reflecting on language
Language as literature
A philosophy of language, speech and action
Speech, language and writing
How to do things with words among the Limba
?I agree . . . ?: some Limba performative utterances
?Thanking,? ?greeting? and other spoken acts of commitment
Speech and action
The arts and action of Limba storytelling
The poetry of story-telling
Limba performed arts and the nature of human beings
Narrative and performance
5. Stories of Africa?stories about Africa
More on Limba stories
Of timeless Africa and modernising west
Of being silenced by outsiders
Storying and living
Performing literature
6. Literature as oral, the oral as literature
Literature and performance
Studying oral forms
Oral art as literature
7. Is oral literature composed in performance?
The Parry-Lord model and African literary forms
What is ?oral literature? anyway?
?Oral composition?
The place of the formula
?Orality? as multiform
8. Time, performance and literature
Organising and timing poetic performances
Story-telling as events in time
Internal temporal features, sustainability, and the ?unity? of texts
Timing and text
Literature and time
Working with oral texts
9. Constructing ?Oral Literature in Africa?: hindsights a generation later
Some academic and personal background
Those recurrent problems of terminology
Topics to revisit
What theoretical perspectives?
10. Creating texts: transformation and enscription
The initial capture
Snaring into writing
Text-making through translation
The fate of the finalised text
Enscripting: an uneasy process?or not?
Conceptualising oral texts and beyond
From oral tradition to contemporary dynamics and popular culture
From unilinearity to historical specificity and multiple voices
Performance, orature and text
Across academic divides
Epilogue
12. Words, the human attribute?
Human history as the history of language
A more multiplex story?
Words in their place
Literature, performance and words in their place in Africa, and beyond
End Notes [chapter notes presumably collected here]
References
Index