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The Singer of Talesby Lord, Albert B
Book DescriptionCambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960 Scientific inquiry into oral technique, how every oral poems comes to have written form. Very good condition softcover.. Soft Cover. Very Good/No Jacket. 515 G. Bookseller Terms of SaleAll sales are payable before shipping. All prices are in US Funds; Canadian equivalent for checks or money orders is acceptable. Returnable within 10 days if not as described, please inform us in advance. If the book is not as described we will pay return postage. Even more information about this bookSummary of The Singer of TalesCustomer ReviewsOn Apr 20 2008, 7246aramaic said:  "There are few ethnographically based books on linguistic prosody-- this work is a major contribution thereunto.What this book's primary offering consists of is its way of defining (epic) poetic construction as the learning experientially of prosodic-rhythmic-language paradigms, which are then applied to longer-work compostion, differing each per composition by the theme-and-variations-interplay. This book has helped me with my own writing: by listening to oral performances in idioms that I like to hear(such as Dylan Thomas on CD; like Scourby's King James Bible cassettes; like the prosodic construction one hears on American streets-- the prosody of bus-stops, filling-stations, polling-booths, Wal-Mart-poetics, White-Castle-panhandlers'-whine, etc. etc.)-- and by rehearsing these rhythms in at-home speech (to the kitty-of-my-house, in-prayer, singing/chanting, repeating-standout-verbiage) I find that I am enabled to compose in idioms that (with rehearsal) I can truly OWN-- and then with these Pragnanzen I am then able the-better to cast ideas into a lively/living form. Additionally, Lord's other work helps me to understand oral traditions of all types-- e.g. his work on the construction of the Gospel (NT) traditions as a verbal traditional construction-- helps me to fathom the ritualities (Eric Berne would have us know that 'spontaneity' is in general constructed of games [zero-sum and non-zero-sum, I trow], of pastimes, and rituals]; knowing rituality thence abets understanding of the 'form-critical' social construction beneath virtually every work of utterance. In other words, what one would get with simple-random linguistic construction (while not at all interesting) would be on the opposite end of structure-- and Lord's book gives important clues for unraveling the paradigms of prosodic-- and thus semiotic-- language utterance. Read Roman Jakobson sometime before/during/after this book by Lord; in particular, the Jakobsonian notion that the 'first-message' of language consists of its poetics will convince the reader that here-- in Lord-- we have 'the keys to the kingdom' of understanding verbalization that is memorable-- because of its beauty-- and how those 'beauties' are constructed. --Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee Louisville, Kentucky, USA" Other Recommended Books
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