Kitawa Literary Fragments
How Storytelling Shapes Spacetime in a Melanesian Matrilineal Culture
- 1,028 pages
- English
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Kitawa Literary Fragments
How Storytelling Shapes Spacetime in a Melanesian Matrilineal Culture
About this book
The Nowau oral texts collected in this volume were recorded by Scoditti during the several years of fieldwork on Kitawa Island (Papua New Guinea) devoted mainly to understanding the mental mechanisms followed by the image creators, that are the makers of the kula ceremonial canoes, the poets, the magicians, the female and male singers who perform a poetic text orally written by a poet to an oral score composed by a musician. With these early works, Scoditti identifies within Kitawa culture a clear distinction between the author and the performer-interpreter of a given oral text, be it a verbal and a non-verbal one, a distinction that has called into question the hypothesis that in a culture that does not know, or use, any form of phonetic writing, a text is composed at the time of its performance, so that composition and performance would coincide.
A first result of his interpretation is Kitawa. A linguistic and aesthetic analysis of visual art in Melanesia (1990, De Gruyter Mouton), then by Kitawa oral poetry. An example from Melanesia (1996, ANU Press), Notes on the cognitive texture of an oral mind. Kitawa, a Melanesian culture (2012, Sean Kingston Publishing) and, now Kitawa Literary Fragments: How Storytelling Shapes Spacetime in a Melanesian Matrilineal Culture.
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Table of contents
- Table of Content
- Acknowledgements
- Part A: Introduction
- 1 Prologue
- 2 Nowau Memory
- 3 The Memorization of an Oral Text on the Foundation Tale
- 4 Warp and Weft of the Foundation Tale: Forms of Memorization and Conservation
- 5 The First Being, or Axiom: Schema, Structure, and Ancestral Mothers
- 6 The Notion-Image of Schema and Model: A Hypothesis in the Composition of an Oral Text from the Foundation Tale
- 7 The Thinker and Maker of the Schema on the Foundation Tale: One or Several Authors?
- 8 The Schema of the Oral Text of the Foundation Tale and Its Interpretative Models
- 9 Schema as a ‘Toolbox’ for Composing an Oral Text Based on the Foundation Tale
- 10 Epilogue: The Kula Rite as a ‘Rebellion of Intellect’
- The Criteria Followed in Editing the Oral Texts on the Foundation Tale
- A Short Note on Nowau
- Nowau Phonetic Alphabet
- Signorum Explicatio
- Part B: Texts 1–41
- 1 Togeruwa Matawadia
- 2 Kadavagisaguyau Mwagula Tosulala
- 3 Bomũkuyobu Kaidoga Mwagula
- 4 Mwaivada Gumũkautu
- 5 Geredou Modigalobu
- 6 Tokuraeïya Modigalobu
- 7 Uniweni Daburisi
- 8 Bulema Tobeduïya
- 9 Mateïya Matanogi
- 10 Kaiulala Kadora
- 11 Damũramwara Mũlopuwelu
- 12 Pilimoni Togebova
- 13 Mwadagula Kaberisi
- 14 Daburisi Kurina
- 15 Sabewa Kasiotagina
- 16 Dedayoura Kurina
- 17 Togenuwa Tosemwana
- 18 Karumwana Bokalodu
- 19 Nïyeba Bokalodu
- 20 Sïyakwakwa Teitei
- Portrait Gallery
- Lexicon Nowau – English
- Concordances. Part 1
- Concordances. Part 2
- Selected Bibliography
- Index