The Theory of Orature and its Application to Carleton’s and PaCéré’s Writings

Abstract

Orature designates both an interdisciplinary aesthetic form that weaves together many genres and a theoretical method of assessing literary works as potentially hybrid and performative. Using ‘spoken literature’ as an inclusive term for all literatures that are expressed vocally or through sign and drummed languages, orature shows that an interdependent relationship exists between this and ‘written literature’. Before systems of writing were introduced, literature existed in an unwritten form, preserved through the use of meter, rhyme and zabyuya or mottos, transmitted through human voice, gestures and instruments (e.g. bendre in Burkina Faso). Early ‘written literature’ absorbed elements of ‘spoken literature’ and was orally appropriated through reading (aloud). The concept and practice of orature reduce the often held opposition of ‘spoken’ and ‘written’ literatures as transcendent categories by acknowledging the cyclical and complex interaction of these modes of literature over time. Today, the invention of new media to convey literature extends and reinforces this relationship by showing that literature is not dying but instead circulates from one medium (e.g. ‘spoken’, print) to another (e.g. digital). Pacéré and Carleton lived in cultures in which ‘spoken literature’ was listened to in a communal setting, and they sought to transcribe this literature for future performances by using abbreviations, page layout and many other typographical techniques to transcribe wordpower and aurality. Our approach to Carleton’s Traits and Stories and Pacéré’s poetry from the perspective of orature shows these works to be a mixture of performance genres such as stories, drawings, plays, music and song, and highlights the devices each writer used as incentives to the performativity of his printed texts. The sophistication of these literary forms can only be fully comprehended with the benefit of an understanding of the conventions of orature