Description: Dennis Tedlock presents startling new methods for transcribing, translating, and interpreting oral performance that carry wide implications for all areas of the spoken arts. Moreover, he reveals how the categories and concepts of poetics and hermeneutics based in Western literary traditions cannot be carried over in their entirety to the spoken arts of other cultures but require extensive reevaluation.
Review Quotes: "A significant event in the intersection of several circles: Americanists, folklorists, anthropologists, literary scholars, and linguists. . . . A call for acceptance of the spoken natural reality. Skillfully entertaining and deserving to be heard."-- "Dell Hymes"