From Oral Literature to Performance Analysis: Towards an Aesthetic Paradigm Shift

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Notes

*This article has been developed from a paper delivered at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT) Conference on ‘Theatre in Africa – Africa in the Theatre’ held at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, 10–14 July 2007.

1. Isidore Okpewho, African Oral Literature: Background, Character and Community (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 42.

2. Ibid., p. 42.

3. Ibid., p. 7.

4. Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth S. Goldstein, ‘Introduction’, Folklore: Performance and Communication (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), ed. by D. Ben-Amos and K. Goldstein, pp. 1–7 (p. 3).

5. See J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955); V. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: PAJ Publications, 1982); D. Handelman, Models and Mirrors: Toward an Anthropology of Public Events (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

6. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), p. 91.

7. Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 158.

8. Ibid., p. 12.

9. J. Kruger, ‘Venda Dance Theatre’, South African Theatre Journal, 14 (2000), 73–96.

10. D. Kerr, ‘African Theatre Space – Real, Mediated and Symbolic’, Keynote address presented at the Dramatic Learning Spaces Conference on ‘African Performance Practice’, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 22–25 September 2006.

11. M. T. Drewal, Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play and Agency (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).

12. D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock Publications/New York: Leusire Press, 1971), p. 100.

13. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock, 1972), p. 38.

14. Ibid., p. 38.

15. Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 96.

16. Handelman, Models and Mirrors, p. 188.

17. See A. van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960).

18. Victor Turner, ‘Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?’, in By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual, ed. by R. Schechner and W. Appel (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 8–18.

19. M. F. C. Bourdillon, The Shona Peoples: An Ethnography of the Contemporary Shona with Special Reference to their Religion (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1991), p. 18.

20. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, p. 18.

21. See J. S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1994).

22. See Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London and New York: Methuen, 1981), especially Chapter 2.

23. S. Chimombo, Malawi Oral Literature: The Aesthetics of Indigenous Arts (Zomba: Centre for Social Research, 1988), p. 93.

24. Finnegan, Oral Literature, p. vi.

25. Okpewho, African Oral Literature, p. 224.

26. Isidore Okpewho, The Epic of Africa: Towards a Poetics of the Oral Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), p. 53.

27. Ibid., p. 53.

28. A. Pellowski, The World of Storytelling (New York: Bowker, 1997), p. 111.

29. M. Drewal, ‘The State of Research on Performance in Africa’, African Studies Review, 34.3 (1991), 1–64 (p. 43).

30. See N. N. Canonici, Zulu Oral Traditions (Durban: University of Natal, 1996).

31. See B. Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

32. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, pp. 1ff.

33. See Augusto Boal, Theater of the Oppressed (New York: Urizen Books, 1979).

34. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, p. 140.