1] In his article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” King discusses Robinson’s collection of stories. King explains that while the stories are written in English, “the patterns, metaphors, structures as well as the themes and characters come primarily from oral literature.” More than this, Robinson, he says “develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read aloud” and in so doing, “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance” (186). Read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”, in Living by Stories. Read it silently, read it out loud, read it to a friend, and have a friend read it to you. See if you can discover how this oral syntax works to shape meaning for the story by shaping your reading and listening of the story. Write a blog about this reading/listening experience that provides references to both King;s article and Robinson’s story.
For this blog post, I attempted to read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” in as many ways as I could to get a better appreciation on the oral syntax of the story that this question is concerning. I read it in my head, I read it out loud, I read it to my sister, I read it to my cat (who did not seem overly impressed by the narrative) and I alternated between reading certain passages in my head to outloud. My initial impressions of “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” were that it does need to be read out loud to gain better understanding of it. Many of the passages just sounded better when they were read out loud, particularly some of the stanzas (I’m going off of an impression that this can be seen as poetry due to the story’s structure) which fluctuated in line length.
So they drive the boat closer but they can never get close.
Just about the same distance at all time.
They follow them around and around.
And they couldn’t get close. (Robinson 64-5)
As I read it in my head, I found myself reading the narrative faster, and not absorbing the content as well as I had when I read it out loud. I also found myself either skipping over, or even correcting, the grammatical layout that Harry Robinson employs in “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England.” However, when reading it out loud, I felt a certain level of frustration towards the text as I kept stumbling over the words as though it was a word puzzle.
Focusing back on the Thomas King article we read for this week, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” I would like to agree with his opinions on “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England.” King speaks of the assumption that key factors of oral storytelling, such as interactions between the listener and the storyteller, are lost when oral stories are translated into written stories. To me, this seems quite obvious, to the point where I had taken this loss for granted. However, King also writes that Robinson is able to work past this “by forcing the reader to read aloud . . . [and] re-creating at once the storyteller and the performance.” (King 186) While I, by no means, felt forced to read the story out loud, I do agree that Robinson is pushing the reader to become the storyteller. I did find that as I read it out loud, particularly for my audience, I did adopt a storyteller’s persona by altering tone and employing gestures.
Blanca Chester also looks at the concept of form in Robinson’s stories in her article, “Storied Dialogues: Exchanges of Meaning Between Storyteller and Anthropologist.” Her article is her own translation of a recording and dialogue between Harry Robinson and his editor, Wendy Wickwire. Before getting to her translation, Chester questions the way these tapes can shift in form when being transplanted from a recording to a written work.
The translation of these recordings into written texts enables one to play with form. Indeed, form manifests itself as an integral component of the dialogue. Meanings change depending on the form and style that is used in framing an oral narrative. Should these stories be presented as prose narratives, or as poetry? Is the prose form more objective than the poetic? What is objectivity? Is the poetic form an imposition on Harry’s text, implying that his speech is, somehow, more natural than Wendy’s? (Chester 14)
I believe that Chester questions what King celebrates in his article. While it is interesting and innovative that Robinson is able to bridge that gap between oral and written stories, Chester questions these choices, as well as if by altering the form, the story loses part of its form.
I would like to direct my attention now to an interesting article I found for this week concerning language and orality in Icelandic sagas. In “In the Refracted Light of the Mirror Phrases sem fyrr var sagt and sem fyrr var ritat: Sagas of Icelanders and the Orality–Literacy Interfaces,” Slavica Ranković discusses the two phrases, “sem fyrr var ritat/ skrifat (as was written before/ as already written), which directly invokes writing, and the appropriated oral-mode mirror phrases sem fyrr var sagt/ getit/ nefnd/ talat/ mælt/ rœtt (as was said/ mentioned/ named /told /spoken of /talked of before)” (299) in Icelandic sagas. While I do not believe that the connection between these referential phrases and our material this week is immediately apparent, it has been making me think about all our material up to this point. Ranković writes that “growing accustomed to the medium had slowly obviated the need of the authors to draw special attention to the fact of writing as such and freed them for a more metaphorical use of language and stylistic exploitation of the immediacy of the spoken word,” (807) which I believe Robinson utilizes in his story by stylistically mimicking oral storytelling.
It also makes me think of our blog posts. Early in the article, Ranković notes that “new communication technologies . . . processes of cultural transition from one dominant mode of interaction to another tend to be evolutionary, as the new media not only never fully supplant the old but also often adopt, adapt, and semantically appropriate some of the existing facets and etiquettes of communication.” (299) Are our blog posts not new technology looking to adopt and evolve the practice of oral tradition? Though our words are written, I do often read our posts as though we are all speaking our words and stories to read other. This translation of the written to the spoken word, again, is what Thomas King believes Harry Robinson is able to accomplish in “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England.”
Works Cited
Chester, Blanca. “Storied Dialogues: Exchanges Of Meaning Between Storyteller And Anthropologist.” Studies In American Indian Literatures: The Journal Of The Association For The Study Of American Indian Literatures 8.3 (1996): 13-35. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.
King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Peterbough, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.
Ranković, Slavica. “In The Refracted Light Of The Mirror Phrases Sem Fyrr Var Sagt And Sem Fyrr Var Ritat: Sagas Of Icelanders And The Orality-Literacy Interfaces.” Journal Of English And Germanic Philology 115.3 (2016): 299-332. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.
Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.
Hi Hope, great post!
I liked that you included that first quote, where you then proceeded to explain how you read it in the different ways you did as I found myself just like you stated reading the quote faster in my head than I did out loud, and too skipping over words. I believe as English students we are forced to read ridiculous amounts of novels and readings in such a short amount of time that unfortunately we learn to read faster than our brain can fully process each word and meaning. Not to say that this is the case for everyone but for myself I feel pressured when I have three different novels to read in one week and of course I do not have the time to sit there and read each one at a slow pace. Robinson’s development of oral syntax is so powerful in forcing the reader to slow down the fast pace reading we are so personally accustomed to and to appreciate each word as it is written on the paper, or in the case the screen. Part of me misses reading for enjoyment as this can not happen whilst I am in university but having read Robinson’ stories it has reminded me that we sometimes need to stop and read out loud, to hear the words but to also hear how we interpret them; we are just as important as the words written down because we are the ones that create the meaning for ourselves.
I hope that was not too much of a ramble but I honestly feel that we sometimes miss the words in front of us because of the overpowering deadlines we focus on instead.
Hello Bryony-Rose,
I do not feel as though that was a ramble at all! I was having this conversation with my friend the other day as we are both in several English classes that demand us to read these massive novels in less than a week. I feel as though being forced to read that quickly diminishes my enjoyment of the novel. Not only that, being able to critically analyze a novel means that while we are reading at such a fast pace, we need to absorb the novel and its meaning, while also committing the progression of the novel to memory so it can be talked about in class.
Reading Robinson reminds me of when I finally gained appreciation for Shakespeare. I hated Shakespeare when I was in elementary because I never understood it and it all just sounded so boring to me. While I went to university, I took a class on Shakespeare to fulfill some requirements. My professor suggested that while we read the plays, we find a recording of the play being acted out to listen to alongside the play. It was transformative for me, in that listening to it a normal speed with character speaking their lines in full (as opposed to the dreaded classroom reading where we all alternated reading a line, or so, each) actually made it a fun experience.
Robinson reminded me of this experience and also that I need to try to slow down and enjoy these novels as I was meant to.
Hi Hope!
I really enjoyed reading your post. I chose to answer the same question as you, but I found your blog post very intriguing as we had some similar and different perspectives and reading experiences. I also found that the story sounds better read out loud, but you mentioned that you found yourself stumbling over the words when reading out loud whereas I felt this way reading silently. I like how at the end of your post you relate everything back to our blog posts themselves. I found this very interesting because I haven’t really thought about it until I read this part of your post. I also find myself reading blog posts, or even other stories, as if the writer of each one is speaking the words of their story.
Thank you for the great post!
-Chloë
Hey Chloë,
I love the assignments where we all had to do the exact same thing. It is so interesting to look at all our unique readings and experiences concerning the course material. I think that is actually one of my favorite parts of English courses. We are often reading material that has been around for much longer than we have been students and, therefore, has gone through years of literary criticism. So, it is interesting to me when our unique experiences and viewpoints manage to come up with an analysis that has not been thought of before. I think that is why I am also enjoying the blog format of this class and I wish that all my classes had blogs!
Hope
Hi Hope,
Thanks for the post! I really enjoyed hearing your perspective and reflection on reading this story aloud. In particular, it was interesting relating your experience with this story to my experience reading it as I found that, while I didn’t read it outloud in the ways you did, I needed to get into a rhythm of “hearing” the story within my head while reading for me to more fully understand it, and it became more enjoyable for me once I got into this rhythm.
Beyond this, your final paragraph, when you discuss our own class’ blogging efforts, and how this is similar to speaking to each other, struck me. It does seem like our blogs are perhaps closer to oral than written in some ways. In particular, the way the blogs are often interactive through the dialogue/comments and hypertext seem this way. However, there have also been certain discussions and ideas raised within this class that I would love to talk about with someone in person (this one, for example 😉 ) and it makes me wonder what it lacking, or even just different, in this format. It seems like more voices are actually “heard” within a setting such as this and it provides more time for one to respond and reflect on one’s response before “releasing” that idea (or story ;)) into the world, yet there seems to be certain elements that are missing, even while others are enhanced. What are your thoughts on this?
I look forward to talking to you soon! Thanks,
— Kaylie
Hey Kaylie!
As you said, being able to write this all through blogs gives us some time for contemplation when it comes to responding to each other. So, I took a minute or two to think over my response to your question. I simply could not get away with that in conversation, unless we were very familiar with each other or I was intentionally trying to drive someone away! (Never!) Even so, I think it would be accompanied with a vast amount of awkward silence. I think that’s what missing from these blogs and why we do not all just talk via text. I heard somewhere that the majority of our communication is non-verbal, so writing online loses out on those non-verbal cues that conversations would not be complete without. Furthermore, we lose tone and other parts of verbal speech. In a way, this relates back again to Robinson’s work because it is somehow able to build tone into his stories.
Thinking of tone, I could not help but think of all those times where I have read sarcasm into an email or a text where it was clearly nothing but good intentions! I have not come across any of that with all our blogs yet. Probably because I read us all as curious, intellectual students! 🙂
Though, I do not want to leave an impression that I think that written communication is not up to par with verbal communication. I think that written communication is able to make up for its shortcomings in several ways. For instance, having a longer time to think over a reply like we discussed. It is so interesting to watch the way we communicate change! Living through an era that has seen so much significant technological change is kind of amazing, but I feel like we sometimes take it for granted. However, writing in this blogs has made me think of it all more often than I used to.
Hope
Hi Hope,
I enjoyed your post as well. I found it rather amusing you read it to your cat. I likely would have done the same had I attempted to answer this question. I did find your description of reading out loud being so different from reading silently to be very interesting. I decided not to do this question due to the need of reading out loud and discovered that I don’t much like to do that. I disliked it even as a child and would become terrified when asked to do so in class. I don’t have that same phobia today but I still don’t like it. I think I would have had similar challenges as you with struggling over the syntax and correcting the grammatical layout.
I do certainly see the blog posts as new technology but I have never thought of it as a new way of practicing oral traditions. In the future, I am going to attempt to see if I can read the words as being spoken rather than written as then perhaps, I might end up picking up aspects of the blog I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Thanks for your post!
Colleen
Thank you for the reply Colleen!
I think that I probably read it to my cat because of my anxieties in regards to reading out loud to people. Even to my friends and sister, I still get embarrassed. I did not have as large of a pool of people to read to this time, as opposed to our previous assignment where we had to read out loud to an audience, and reading to my cat seemed like a better alternative than trying to randomly find someone. I was tempted to call someone and read to them, but I kept worrying about bugging them. I am starting to think that I purposely chose this question to try and conquer my embarrassment, but I do not think it worked all that well.
Now that I brought up that these blogs seem to take on aspects of verbal communication, I can not seem to NOT read all these comments with some sort of voice attached to them, which I think is amazing. It really is amazing to see how far we have come in terms of technology and storytelling.