Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.57225/martor.2022.27.04
Mirela Florian
This article sets out to study the records and testimonies created during the First World War in order to understand this important historical moment in the existence of Romanian rural communities. Many of the testimonies of Romanian soldiers capture the shift from oral culture and oral language to writing and written culture. Writing, which the soldiers had yet to fully internalize, was one of the few possibilities available to them on the war front to maintain alive the connection with their families and to leave a trace about the exceptional times they were living. These written accounts, which do not always observe the rules of correct writing, make apparent and available to us today a deep layer of oral culture that had until then been orally transmitted from generation to generation. Romanian soldiers from Transylvania were best known for writing home messages in verse, which they composed on the spot, using memorized set structures and phrases from the shared folklore repertoire circulating at the time in the village world. Privates coming from the Kingdom of Romania also made verses in their letters or journal entries, but it was less common. They would sometimes insert in their notes orally transmitted moral stories or parables, as well as other forms and pieces of the peasant oral culture to which they belonged. Some of these testimonies can present real challenges in terms of understanding the writing but also the semantics of some of the words. While familiarized with letters, writing, and reading, their authors had only a rudimentary knowledge of spelling and punctuation rules. To be able to discern the meanings of these writings today, one needs to first understand the complex circumstances that produced them.
{"title":"Letters in Verse from the Great War","authors":"Mirela Florian","doi":"10.57225/martor.2022.27.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.57225/martor.2022.27.04","url":null,"abstract":"This article sets out to study the records and testimonies created during the First World War in order to understand this important historical moment in the existence of Romanian rural communities. Many of the testimonies of Romanian soldiers capture the shift from oral culture and oral language to writing and written culture. Writing, which the soldiers had yet to fully internalize, was one of the few possibilities available to them on the war front to maintain alive the connection with their families and to leave a trace about the exceptional times they were living. These written accounts, which do not always observe the rules of correct writing, make apparent and available to us today a deep layer of oral culture that had until then been orally transmitted from generation to generation. Romanian soldiers from Transylvania were best known for writing home messages in verse, which they composed on the spot, using memorized set structures and phrases from the shared folklore repertoire circulating at the time in the village world. Privates coming from the Kingdom of Romania also made verses in their letters or journal entries, but it was less common. They would sometimes insert in their notes orally transmitted moral stories or parables, as well as other forms and pieces of the peasant oral culture to which they belonged. Some of these testimonies can present real challenges in terms of understanding the writing but also the semantics of some of the words. While familiarized with letters, writing, and reading, their authors had only a rudimentary knowledge of spelling and punctuation rules. To be able to discern the meanings of these writings today, one needs to first understand the complex circumstances that produced them.","PeriodicalId":324681,"journal":{"name":"Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124299754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.57225/martor.2022.27.06
Florența POPESCU-SIMION
Starting with the second half of the twentieth century, a number of graves from Bellu Catholic Cemetery in Bucharest became the stage of a ritual. The allegedly miraculous graves achieved fame due to different and, in some cases, random characteristics. Many people (most of them Greek-Orthodox, not Catholics) come to perform this ritual to have their wishes fulfilled. As an important part of the ritual built around these graves, its performers are leaving written notes on them, containing their wishes. The notes are often handwritten on different pieces of paper (notebook pages or even receipts), although they may also be typed on a computer and printed. In rare cases, the performers leave notes written on the back of printed photos. My research consisted in observing the ritual, talking with a small number of people who performed it, and, most importantly, analyzing the notes left by the graves. All the performers I interviewed were women, and most of them (with one exception) strongly disapproved of the practice of leaving notes. Nevertheless, judging by the great number of pieces of paper I found by the “miraculous” graves every time I went to Bellu Catholic Cemetery, this practice seems to be general and deemed to be effective.
{"title":"When People Write as They Speak: An Analysis of Letters Left on the Miraculous Graves of Bellu Catholic Cemetery","authors":"Florența POPESCU-SIMION","doi":"10.57225/martor.2022.27.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.57225/martor.2022.27.06","url":null,"abstract":"Starting with the second half of the twentieth century, a number of graves from Bellu Catholic Cemetery in Bucharest became the stage of a ritual. The allegedly miraculous graves achieved fame due to different and, in some cases, random characteristics. Many people (most of them Greek-Orthodox, not Catholics) come to perform this ritual to have their wishes fulfilled. As an important part of the ritual built around these graves, its performers are leaving written notes on them, containing their wishes. The notes are often handwritten on different pieces of paper (notebook pages or even receipts), although they may also be typed on a computer and printed. In rare cases, the performers leave notes written on the back of printed photos. My research consisted in observing the ritual, talking with a small number of people who performed it, and, most importantly, analyzing the notes left by the graves. All the performers I interviewed were women, and most of them (with one exception) strongly disapproved of the practice of leaving notes. Nevertheless, judging by the great number of pieces of paper I found by the “miraculous” graves every time I went to Bellu Catholic Cemetery, this practice seems to be general and deemed to be effective.","PeriodicalId":324681,"journal":{"name":"Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114310732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.57225/martor.2022.27.13
I. Corduneanu
The article is presenting the art project Semne cusute (Sewn Signs), focusing on on traditional embroidery’s patterns’ revival, and launched in 2012. It has already reached a community of 44,000 members. It is an enterprise that brings together cultural and artistic actions, embedded as heritage project. During all these years Semne cusute’s activity has been presented to the public by means of exhibitions, and educational workshops. The members of the community embroider to emphasize the need to preserve and teach ancient symbols, but also to coin their country (Romania) on the international map of luxury embroidery, responsible fashion, and European heritage.
{"title":"Embroidery with a Cause: Ten-year Anniversary of Semne Cusute (Sewn Signs)","authors":"I. Corduneanu","doi":"10.57225/martor.2022.27.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.57225/martor.2022.27.13","url":null,"abstract":"The article is presenting the art project Semne cusute (Sewn Signs), focusing on on traditional embroidery’s patterns’ revival, and launched in 2012. It has already reached a community of 44,000 members. It is an enterprise that brings together cultural and artistic actions, embedded as heritage project. During all these years Semne cusute’s activity has been presented to the public by means of exhibitions, and educational workshops. The members of the community embroider to emphasize the need to preserve and teach ancient symbols, but also to coin their country (Romania) on the international map of luxury embroidery, responsible fashion, and European heritage.","PeriodicalId":324681,"journal":{"name":"Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130526433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.57225/martor.2022.27.03
Olga V. Maltseva
Before the 1930s, the peoples who inhabited the Amur region located in Eastern Russia transmitted traditional information only orally within their groups. That accumulated knowledge was a fundamental cornerstone for their mental world and mainly reflected the social processes that had been unfolding in the large river valley. The Three Suns Nanai cosmogony legend, which tells the story of the three suns that melted and scorched the Earth, is a good example for understanding the local history. The basic myth is split into several actions, forming independent subplots with separate characters and their behaviors. The branched storyline of the legend confirms the specific migratory processes that used to take place within the Amur territory. The new communities embedded their family stories into the Three Suns common myth. In that way, the migrators harmonized their lives with their world model, i.e., with the mythical universe seen as the otherworld where shamans sent only righteous human souls. Since the 1930s, with the spread of written language, the Amur natives have developed a new culture code which was created not by the older generation who still followed the oral tradition, but by the literate persons among them. Their entire folklore heritage was given a different conceptual design and began to be understood within world history. The local archaeological artefacts dating back to the third millennium BC were interpreted through the mythic narrative. Thanks to this discovery, a Russian-language simplified version of the legend was created which was accessible to a wide audience. Nowadays we witness the emergence of a new mythical history originating from this written version. Linking the legend to the archaeological sites makes the Lower Amur peoples’ history significantly older. According to modern understanding, the local history begins not with mythical events, but with a reconstructed picture of ancient social life embedded in the Earth’s topography and chronology.
{"title":"The Amur Fishermen: Their Mythical History in the Oral and Written Dimensions","authors":"Olga V. Maltseva","doi":"10.57225/martor.2022.27.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.57225/martor.2022.27.03","url":null,"abstract":"Before the 1930s, the peoples who inhabited the Amur region located in Eastern Russia transmitted traditional information only orally within their groups. That accumulated knowledge was a fundamental cornerstone for their mental world and mainly reflected the social processes that had been unfolding in the large river valley. The Three Suns Nanai cosmogony legend, which tells the story of the three suns that melted and scorched the Earth, is a good example for understanding the local history. The basic myth is split into several actions, forming independent subplots with separate characters and their behaviors. The branched storyline of the legend confirms the specific migratory processes that used to take place within the Amur territory. The new communities embedded their family stories into the Three Suns common myth. In that way, the migrators harmonized their lives with their world model, i.e., with the mythical universe seen as the otherworld where shamans sent only righteous human souls. Since the 1930s, with the spread of written language, the Amur natives have developed a new culture code which was created not by the older generation who still followed the oral tradition, but by the literate persons among them. Their entire folklore heritage was given a different conceptual design and began to be understood within world history. The local archaeological artefacts dating back to the third millennium BC were interpreted through the mythic narrative. Thanks to this discovery, a Russian-language simplified version of the legend was created which was accessible to a wide audience. Nowadays we witness the emergence of a new mythical history originating from this written version. Linking the legend to the archaeological sites makes the Lower Amur peoples’ history significantly older. According to modern understanding, the local history begins not with mythical events, but with a reconstructed picture of ancient social life embedded in the Earth’s topography and chronology.","PeriodicalId":324681,"journal":{"name":"Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134560795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.57225/martor.2022.27.07
Christina ALEXOPOULOS DE GIRARD
Traumatic experience goes far beyond the realm of speech. The body and the mind keep track of everything. But words struggle to describe what the subject has really experienced. The use of film as a documentary medium sometimes allows us to see how the reminiscences of a past that cannot be forgotten are expressed through the body. It transforms the camera into an object of mediation that makes it possible to approach areas of the unspeakable, to elaborate what has remained unresolved, and to give a primary form of representation to what has been frightening in individual and collective history. To speak with the body or through the body, to show a part of one’s history, and to make the scope of the violence suffered heard engages a certain form of listening where the act of testifying joins that of recognizing, of naming and also feeling what happened. For these Macedonian women victims of ethnocidal practices, the full recognition of their trauma often requires body expression, as the body is the primary site of the violence endured. And the role of the film record is to restore aspects of the violence while providing the means to study its present and past significance.
{"title":"Film-mediated Body Expression and Personal Narrative: Oral Testimonies of Macedonian Women Facing Violence in the Greek Civil War","authors":"Christina ALEXOPOULOS DE GIRARD","doi":"10.57225/martor.2022.27.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.57225/martor.2022.27.07","url":null,"abstract":"Traumatic experience goes far beyond the realm of speech. The body and the mind keep track of everything. But words struggle to describe what the subject has really experienced. The use of film as a documentary medium sometimes allows us to see how the reminiscences of a past that cannot be forgotten are expressed through the body. It transforms the camera into an object of mediation that makes it possible to approach areas of the unspeakable, to elaborate what has remained unresolved, and to give a primary form of representation to what has been frightening in individual and collective history. To speak with the body or through the body, to show a part of one’s history, and to make the scope of the violence suffered heard engages a certain form of listening where the act of testifying joins that of recognizing, of naming and also feeling what happened. For these Macedonian women victims of ethnocidal practices, the full recognition of their trauma often requires body expression, as the body is the primary site of the violence endured. And the role of the film record is to restore aspects of the violence while providing the means to study its present and past significance.","PeriodicalId":324681,"journal":{"name":"Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review","volume":"200 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124486503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.57225/martor.2022.27.10
Stefana Yorova
In this article the author summarizes some conclusions drawn following her field research on narration and identity. Language itself is approached language itself as a guardian of ideas, structuring society, using humor as an integrative barrier. It is introduced the term identification narrative as crucial for understanding the self in the context of the community. The author briefly describes the cases of a popular local story that changed local oral practices and of a less popular local story that preserved local oral practices. She analyzes the natural transformations of local stories compared to their translations into the “language” of virtual communication. The author research the impact of new forms of communication on local cultures and how the narrative of the desired identity comes to replace the traditional social narrative of the self.
{"title":"Identification Narratives, Local Stories, and Virtual Communication","authors":"Stefana Yorova","doi":"10.57225/martor.2022.27.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.57225/martor.2022.27.10","url":null,"abstract":"In this article the author summarizes some conclusions drawn following her field research on narration and identity. Language itself is approached language itself as a guardian of ideas, structuring society, using humor as an integrative barrier. It is introduced the term identification narrative as crucial for understanding the self in the context of the community. The author briefly describes the cases of a popular local story that changed local oral practices and of a less popular local story that preserved local oral practices. She analyzes the natural transformations of local stories compared to their translations into the “language” of virtual communication. The author research the impact of new forms of communication on local cultures and how the narrative of the desired identity comes to replace the traditional social narrative of the self.","PeriodicalId":324681,"journal":{"name":"Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130110804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.57225/martor.2022.27.12
Krassimira Krastanova, Maria Kissikova, E. Stoilova
The article investigates the potential of project activities and project culture in creating novel conditions for introducing and re-thinking the complex nature of heritage, its transmission, practice, and new applications. Today, preindustrial knowledge, skill, and practice are interpreted rather as heritage that carries the potential of “creative traditions.” In modern societies, they can be incorporated in different fields—from educational programs for kids and adolescents to the tendency to integrate them into creative projects and cultural and creative industries. A key role in this process is played by ethnologists and anthropologists as researchers and interpreters of cultural heritage, but also as “cultural workers.” The paper is based on the case study of a project in the textile field, where elements of intangible cultural heritage were used and re-thought in the context of new forms of culture (ArtLabs for experimenting and innovation in textile art, a storytelling event, a festival, creative interpretations, and sensory and emotional experiences). Here we present and analyze a project that used an integrated approach to cultural heritage, carried out in 2019 in the city of Plovdiv, with the participation of ethnologists, anthropologists, artists, and students.
{"title":"Creative Traditions and Cultural Projects: Re-thinking Heritage through Experience","authors":"Krassimira Krastanova, Maria Kissikova, E. Stoilova","doi":"10.57225/martor.2022.27.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.57225/martor.2022.27.12","url":null,"abstract":"The article investigates the potential of project activities and project culture in creating novel conditions for introducing and re-thinking the complex nature of heritage, its transmission, practice, and new applications. Today, preindustrial knowledge, skill, and practice are interpreted rather as heritage that carries the potential of “creative traditions.” In modern societies, they can be incorporated in different fields—from educational programs for kids and adolescents to the tendency to integrate them into creative projects and cultural and creative industries. A key role in this process is played by ethnologists and anthropologists as researchers and interpreters of cultural heritage, but also as “cultural workers.” The paper is based on the case study of a project in the textile field, where elements of intangible cultural heritage were used and re-thought in the context of new forms of culture (ArtLabs for experimenting and innovation in textile art, a storytelling event, a festival, creative interpretations, and sensory and emotional experiences). Here we present and analyze a project that used an integrated approach to cultural heritage, carried out in 2019 in the city of Plovdiv, with the participation of ethnologists, anthropologists, artists, and students.","PeriodicalId":324681,"journal":{"name":"Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126313806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.57225/martor.2022.27.11
Marin Constantin
My text is an attempt at developing the heuristic potentialities in the escapology of video recording of anthropological fieldwork and, based on this, in the museum practice of posting videos via social media platforms. Ethnographic information is provided for various crafts from Prahova County (wind-instrument making, weaving, and painting) to illustrate both the artisans’ views of their own craftwork and artefacts and the online responses elicited by such arguments, evidence, ideas, etc. Distinctive and interrelated cultural scenes and dramatis personae are identified and discussed in regards with: (1) doing ethnography and artisan profiles; (2) the museum policy of posting video fieldwork records and interviews; and (3) feedback in the form of predefined emotions and comments from friends, followers, or simply visitors of video posts. The article will provide a theoretical approach to the interpretive continuum and interactive reflexivity between artisans (as bearers of folk culture), museum specialists (as promoters of curatorial and research projects), and the online audience of folk art traditions and museum programs.
{"title":"“I Like It!” Experiencing Mediascapes in the Artisanship of Prahova County","authors":"Marin Constantin","doi":"10.57225/martor.2022.27.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.57225/martor.2022.27.11","url":null,"abstract":"My text is an attempt at developing the heuristic potentialities in the escapology of video recording of anthropological fieldwork and, based on this, in the museum practice of posting videos via social media platforms. Ethnographic information is provided for various crafts from Prahova County (wind-instrument making, weaving, and painting) to illustrate both the artisans’ views of their own craftwork and artefacts and the online responses elicited by such arguments, evidence, ideas, etc. Distinctive and interrelated cultural scenes and dramatis personae are identified and discussed in regards with: (1) doing ethnography and artisan profiles; (2) the museum policy of posting video fieldwork records and interviews; and (3) feedback in the form of predefined emotions and comments from friends, followers, or simply visitors of video posts. The article will provide a theoretical approach to the interpretive continuum and interactive reflexivity between artisans (as bearers of folk culture), museum specialists (as promoters of curatorial and research projects), and the online audience of folk art traditions and museum programs.","PeriodicalId":324681,"journal":{"name":"Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115106879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.57225/martor.2022.27.08
Laura JIGA ILIESCU
A handwritten recipe notebook is not a mere domestic collection of recipes, but a material support for an immaterial tradition that combines culinary knowledge with commensality practices. These are formalized texts (a title, a list of ingredients, and directions) activated through the oral performance of a formalized setting (the food preparation process), which combines sequences of gestures instead of (or together with) words, or/and through a writing activity (copying a model or transcribing the recipe after dictation). The final material artefact (namely the dish and the written recipe) incorporates the syncretic and immaterial memories of all previous performances. A recipe notebook is not a simple anthology of texts either, it is instead a subjective “critical edition” which grows page by page, according to imperceptible selection criteria; with the passing of time, the pages become impregnated with smells, traces of pots of oil or sugar, children’s fingerprints, figurative drawings, etc.
{"title":"The Handwritten Recipe Notebook as a Place of Memory","authors":"Laura JIGA ILIESCU","doi":"10.57225/martor.2022.27.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.57225/martor.2022.27.08","url":null,"abstract":"A handwritten recipe notebook is not a mere domestic collection of recipes, but a material support for an immaterial tradition that combines culinary knowledge with commensality practices. These are formalized texts (a title, a list of ingredients, and directions) activated through the oral performance of a formalized setting (the food preparation process), which combines sequences of gestures instead of (or together with) words, or/and through a writing activity (copying a model or transcribing the recipe after dictation). The final material artefact (namely the dish and the written recipe) incorporates the syncretic and immaterial memories of all previous performances. A recipe notebook is not a simple anthology of texts either, it is instead a subjective “critical edition” which grows page by page, according to imperceptible selection criteria; with the passing of time, the pages become impregnated with smells, traces of pots of oil or sugar, children’s fingerprints, figurative drawings, etc.","PeriodicalId":324681,"journal":{"name":"Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116308022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.57225/martor.2022.27.09
Melanie Nittis
The cultural life of Olympos, a village on the island of Karpathos in Greece, is organized around sung poetic improvisation. From the time when a majority of the villagers were illiterate to the present, this ritual performance has shifted without changing its nature from “primary orality” to “mixed orality,” which coexists today with “mediated orality,” and is characterized by three main types of transmission. First, this performance is still being transmitted via oral memory since men are able to remember improvised couplets, in particular so as to avoid singing and hearing the same couplet twice. However, it is mainly the women attending the performances who memorize verses, which they can later play back, thus acting like an oral archive. Next, a written memory has developed in addition to this oral memory because some of the women have recorded the memorized verses in notebooks. Further, the emergence of local newspapers has led women to publish couplets in the community life sections. Under their influence, men also began to publish verses in these newspapers, but especially via the new media. Finally, recording technologies have made it possible to broadcast performances without losing their oral dimension. As a result, many recordings made by the villagers are exchanged via social media or broadcast on local digital radios to make them available to Greek emigrants, and in the process become archived. Despite the discrete presence of writing, Olympos oral poetry therefore remains rooted in Olympos’s social life as the community continues to perceive it as a functional form.
{"title":"A Case of Functional Orality in the Digital Age: Olympos (Karpathos, Greece)","authors":"Melanie Nittis","doi":"10.57225/martor.2022.27.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.57225/martor.2022.27.09","url":null,"abstract":"The cultural life of Olympos, a village on the island of Karpathos in Greece, is organized around sung poetic improvisation. From the time when a majority of the villagers were illiterate to the present, this ritual performance has shifted without changing its nature from “primary orality” to “mixed orality,” which coexists today with “mediated orality,” and is characterized by three main types of transmission. First, this performance is still being transmitted via oral memory since men are able to remember improvised couplets, in particular so as to avoid singing and hearing the same couplet twice. However, it is mainly the women attending the performances who memorize verses, which they can later play back, thus acting like an oral archive. Next, a written memory has developed in addition to this oral memory because some of the women have recorded the memorized verses in notebooks. Further, the emergence of local newspapers has led women to publish couplets in the community life sections. Under their influence, men also began to publish verses in these newspapers, but especially via the new media. Finally, recording technologies have made it possible to broadcast performances without losing their oral dimension. As a result, many recordings made by the villagers are exchanged via social media or broadcast on local digital radios to make them available to Greek emigrants, and in the process become archived. Despite the discrete presence of writing, Olympos oral poetry therefore remains rooted in Olympos’s social life as the community continues to perceive it as a functional form.","PeriodicalId":324681,"journal":{"name":"Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132452319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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