CNWS Seminar
16-17 May, 1994
Leiden, The Netherlands

OF TOOLS AND TEXTS

This year's seminar organized by the research cluster "Intercultural Study
of Literature and Society" was devoted to the theme: Of Tools and Texts. 
One major preoccupation was the question of boundaries and interactions
between oral and literary texts. 

By Sabine Luning

Prof. M. Schipper-de Leeuw (Leiden) warned against Eurocentrism by taking
writing and Homer as modes of measurement. Prof. K. Schipper (Leiden)
demonstrated how oral and written rites in Chinese village festivals engage
in complementary relations which should be analysed using a structural
approach. The complexity of this relationship was also explicit in the
contributions on poetry-reading by W. Derks (Leiden) and on praise poetry
performance by Dr L. Gunner (SOAS, London). These both provided some
interesting and dynamic cases of the relationships between text and oral
performance, as well as between authors, audience, and interpretive
communities. Dr P. Nkashama (Limoges) underlined this complexity by
performing - as it were - his paper on the poetics of African orality.
The other contributors dealt with oral texts.  Drs B. van der Goes (Leiden)
illustrated the delicate problems of questions and answers in fieldwork. Dr
M. Therrien (INALCO, Paris) and Dr J.G. Oosten (Leiden) talked about the
Inuit. Dr Therrien analysed the relations between words and actions, while
Dr Oosten concentrated on relations between myths and scientific
explanation. Both of them assume that the essence of a phenomenon can be
captured the reference to its origin. 
The author dealt with origin myths of specific kin groups among the Moose
of Maane. These oral traditions emphasize that social identities evolve by
relating to others, which is all the more reason to study these texts in
structural relation to one another.
The seminar was a rewarding and fruitful experience. The diversity of
disciplines, regional interests, choices of subjects, and perspectives of
the participants proved an asset rather than an obstacle to communication:
the magic of words.