After finishing my first silent reading of the story “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England”, I have noted a few remarks on my notebook. When I further proceed to the different styles of storytelling, which are reading out loud and listening this story from a friend of mine, I realized that the remarks that I had previously made could now be explained in shaping the meaning of the story.
The first remark that I noted was the redundant explanation through out the story. I found that the storyteller tried to describe every part of the story as detailed as possible, which somehow caused confusion during my first reading of the story. However, as I proceed, I find that these little explanations make the story verbally more interesting and attracting. It creates a sense of repetition, which we usually tend to do when performing a story as a storyteller. Furthermore, with the change of intonation associated with these repetitions, meanings illustrated by words could be conveyed to the listeners more explicitly in different varieties. In this way, it makes the story itself into a performance for its listeners, for I felt that verbally interpreting this story would be draw the listeners deep into the story, more attentions would also be drawn to the important details of the story, rather than reading it as a reader. I would consider this as a mindful trick of the storyteller to “[defeat] reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves (King)”.
My next remark is that the story does not seem to be written in a very grammatical way. Though it was highlighted on the question itself that the story was conveyed through an “oral syntax”, my observation would be that it rather looks alike to the form of poetry. Through the ungrammatical conversations between the King of England and the Coyote, as well as the irregular division on sentences within the story, these examples have proven what we have been taught: poetry does not necessarily have to be grammatical.
However, only until I read the story aloud, this oral syntax form of story enables the storyteller a wider flexibility in conveying the story, especially when it comes to the different pauses made by me and my friend. Therefore, I agreed to the view of Shamina Kallu, a former student of this course, that oral syntax has deconstructed the conventional style of academic writing on First Nation stories, and make this story sounded more alike to a personal story. With a personal story, listeners would tend to focus less on the grammatical mistakes of the story, but shift their attention to the meaning of the story. To bring it further, this greater flexibility would allow the storyteller recreating their own interpretations on the story and audiences’ understandings towards the meaning of the story would be altered according to different performers. I believe with different interpretations of the story, meaning of the stories could be conveyed via different perspectives, and would ultimately develop into a thorough understanding towards the story of “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England”.
Works Cited
Kallu, Shamina. 2.3: Oral Syntax: Maintaining the Meaning of Stories. Canada: Muffled Voices and National Narratives. 13 Feb 2015. Web. 1 Jul 2016.
King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Mississauga, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190. Web. 1 Jul 2016.
Shaw, Martin. On Repetition in Storytelling. The Stanford Storytelling Project. 2013. Web. 1 Jul 2016.
Hi Christy,
I am in 100 percent agreement with you about the repetitive nature of the story. I focused on this question as well, but I neglected the repetition. I feel like the repetition is there, not only to keep the audience interested, but to make it easier for someone listening to retell the story with all the important details. Now that I think about it, there is a concept similar in the Buddhist chants we practice in our temple. That too is an oral practice and because the listeners didn’t have things to write with, or were illiterate at the time, the practice was to repeat the important points over and over so the listeners could take something away from the experience.
I wonder if you would agree with me that that is something at play when it comes to the repetitiveness of the story?
Cheers,
Hi Christy,
I really like the observation you made about how the story of Coyote and the King of England is not written in a way that we are grammatically used to. The irregularity of the sentences and lack of punctuation is something that we are not used to seeing as university students, but as we have been learning from this course, these stories are so important! Reading stories in this format was an adjustment for me because I’ve never read anything like it before! It almost made me think that in university we should be exposed to more stories like these in our english classes, and perhaps that would help a new generation of learners to not fall in to the trap of labelling cultures as “oral” and “written,” perpetuating the “us” vs “them” dichotomy. What do you think?
– Natasha
Hi Christy,
Thanks for sharing your insights. I also noticed and dwelled on the pattern of repetition and its forming of a performance. The repetitions are strokes of the paintbrush that complete the pictures in the audiences’ minds, in my opinion.
What I have not figured out is the grammar. Harry Robinson does not follow the grammatical rules of the English language, and it does make the story more personal. But why, and is it on purpose?
Do you think it is done by the storyteller to give the performances a better flow without the shackles of grammar? Or is it to preserve, to the extent possible, the stories as they would be told in the original language? There is an Italian saying: traduttore, traditore – to translate is to betray. While Harry Robinson is generous to privilege us with the stories of his tradition, is he trying to tell them in the most truthful manner possible, partly by ignoring the grammatical rules of the English language?
– John
Hi John,
I would say Harry Robinson tries to preserve the originality of the story by neglecting the English grammar rules that cannot be applied in the storytelling.
We have been taught that Oral English need not to be grammatical, as its main purpose is to communicate as direct as possible. I believe Harry Robinson is doing the same here as well.
Christy
I agree your point on “to translate is to betray”. There may not be a word in other languages that can entirely mean the same in the original language. I think this also happens on Harry Robinson.