When is oral narrative poetry? generative form and its pragmatic conditions

Hymes1 Especially clear accounts of the identification of lines in spoken narratives are given by Virginia Hymes (1987) and Joel Sherzer (1987, ch.4; 1990, pp.17).On the vocal articulation of lines in ritual wailing in three South American cultures, see Urban (1991), pp.110-1, 152-9.These regularities have to do with cultural patterns, but also with the explorations and skill of narrators.In terms of cultural patterns, communities appear to build upon one of two alternatives: Relations in terms of two and four, or relations in terms of three and five.English narratives in the United States appear to work in terms of three and five, but in parts of Ireland in terms of two and four.Among Native American groups, Navajo, Zuni and others build in terms of two and four, while Chinookan and Sahaptian build in terms of three and five.In a flourishing narrative tradition one may find a variety of ways of making use of such relations, and of varying their aesthetic effect.A set of three or of five may be a set of three or five pairs.A sequence of ten lines may be a single rhetorical unit.A set of lines may be balanced internally, or a run from start to end.Uses of quoted speech and of catalogs are variables also.(See Hymes 1994, 1999) For many narrative traditions, discovering lines and relations is pretty much all that we can do.To be sure, it can lead to understanding and interpretation otherwise not possible.We can recognize artistry and subtleties of meaning otherwise invisible.For a true account of the human capacity for verbal art, this is crucial.But as with the Iliad and Odyssey, there are no people to observe and question, only texts.The second and third points have to do with when and where and to what degree narrators are conscious of such relations, or sensitive to them, vary in their deployment of them, as in regard to gender, are perhaps unconsciously affected by their presence.Pragmatic research should not be ignorant of the first point, when dealing with narrative.It can make major contributions to the second and third.