Articles Tagged with Tradition
'Blasts of Language': Changes in Oral Poetics in Britain Since 1965
This article examines how oral performances of poetry have proliferated over the past forty years to become an essential part of the writing and distribution of poetry in the UK. Our analysis of this phenomenon involves historical research and suggests new ways of looking at the construction of poetic meaning. We draw on interviews with practitioners from diverse poetry communities in considering how performance challenges the exclusive emphasis on the silent, printed text in existing histories of English language poetry.
Read more »A Meme-Based Approach to Oral Traditional Theory
A meme is the simplest unit of cultural replication. This paper adapts meme theory to explain the workings of several aspects of oral traditions––traditional referentiality, anaphora, and the use of repeated metrical patterns. All three of these phenomena can be explained by operations of repetition and pattern-recognition. This paper ultimately illustrates that the development of meme theory is an important first step towards a wholly materialist cultural poetics.
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