This Wednesday, February 27 at 4:30pm in Logan 802, we welcome Haun Saussy, University Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature here at the University of Chicago.

We will discuss a paper entitled “Prosody Between Music and Text: or, a Sidelight on Oral Poetry Theory,” available here (please email mcpierson [at] uchicago.edu for the password). An abstract of the paper is below:

“Prosody Between Music and Text: or, a Sidelight on Oral Poetry Theory”

 

The question of how textual knowledge was transferred from person to person before the common use of writing obsessed a number of anthropologists, religious scholars, and classicists in the early part of the 20th century. The reduction of text to schema, accomplished through prosody and semantic parallelism, seemed to promise a form of writing that would operate through the body rather than through extra-corporeal supports. I will try to excavate this archive in the hope of eliciting echoes from people knowledgeable about ethnomusicology.

 

Those needing additional assistance to attend or participate in this event should contact one of the student coordinators, Marcy Pierson (mcpierson@uchicago.edu) or Dan Wang (dyw@uchicago.edu).

If you would like to receive announcements for future Workshops and events, please contact Marcy or Dan, or add yourself to the listhost here.