Theme: A Field Study of Epic Tradition: Nuosu Epic Hnewo as a Case
Author: Bamo Qubumo, female, born in April 24, 1964, became student of Professor Zhong Jingwen and Professor Liu Kuili in 1998, graduated from Beijing Normal University July 2003, obtaining a doctoral in Law.
Abstract
The present dissertation is based on a long-term field study concerning the indigenous oral traditions of the Nuosu, a subgroup of the Yi ethnic group who live in the Great Cold Mountains of southwest China. The study provides an in-depth look at the epic tradition known in Nuosu as “hnewo.”
In Introduction, the author begins with a survey of academic achievements in Yi epic studies in China and abroad. In particular, the author interrogates the processes of the epic textualization over the past half century in China, and generalizes on the limitations of the “formatted” approach that places texts of oral narratives in improperly subjectified formats. This problematic approach namely “formatted texts beyond traditional rules of oral narratives”, widely adopted by Chinese folklorists in collecting, collating, translating, and printing folk texts, has led to seriously misreadings and misunderstandings of Nuosu epic texts and gone far away from its living performance traditions. This is the very start point of undertaking a field study of living epic tradition with a reflection on the history of epic scholarship in China. That's why the author claims for another approach: going into the Cold Mountains to discover epic fields, to discover epic tradition in native land.
Chapter one “Discover the Field of Epic Tradition in Meigu” deals with the notion of the ‘epic,' and with the abundance and diversity of epic narratives from data procured came from long-term observation in Yynuo lands, a sub-dialect region of Nuosu Yi. By taking the well-known epic Hnewo as a specific case, the author raises the following questions--questions that she encountered when attempting to mediate interpretive tensions that exist between the Nuosu's own ethnopoetic conception of their verbal art and scholars' conception of 'epic': How do the local people, who are deeply rooted in native traditions, articulate and name the central genres, poetic tenets, and modes of transmission within their local epic traditions of oral performance? How does this terminology inform a phenomenon that we might call epic law in ‘local knowledge'? How do scholars from different academic perspectives think about their own institutional canon in light of the indigenous traditions? What is the place of a native scholar's ground within his/her own tradition and beyond? The case of epic Hnewo is considered in terms of a) the basic story-patterns of epic narrative and emergent flexibility; b) the difference and connection between the rhapsody and the whole epic performance that inform this particular realization of narrative continuity primarily determined by ritualized situation; and c) the situated performance not only demands of a closing responsive and perceptive attention to bearers of epic tradition, but also a prudent field study of folklore in context with new tracking on epic register and traditional referentiality.
Chapter two entitled “Discover the epic performer Qumo Yynuo”, with the process of field study, the author takes steps by interviews with an outstanding epic performer Qumo Yynuo who is also a ritualist bimo with a background of 14 generations' priest genealogy and follows up his footprints in ritualized performance on the spot. Having probed into the mechanisms of epic transmission and acquisition by examining the performer's learning experiences and skill analysis training as a developed epic performer, we conclude that both the traditions of orality and literacy contribute to the cultivation of a Nuosu epic performer. Moreover, the author delves into questions concerning folk memory and the individual repertoire of oral narrative performance, the role of natural talent and cognitive competence in the development of an epic performer, the cultural space of epic transmission, and so forth. What was the most stimulated this field study is the performers' performing personalities and the traditional ways scrupulously abide by these bearers of epic tradition.
In Chapter three, the author provides a comprehensive examination of hnewo epics in regards to textual morphology and indigenous conception of epic traditional rules. Five major points are explored: 1) Hnewo is not a single epic work; rather it is a multi-faceted tradition; 2) nineteen branches of the hnewo tradition form the trunk of the epic narrative “tree”; 3) textual hnewo exist in two aspects, namely female and male, that define the different categories and characteristics of various branches of the textual tradition, epic traditional texts mostly in hand-copied formats circulated both in religious ritualists bimo and in common folk; 4) hnewo in oral narratives also have “black” and “white” aspects, indicating the narrative boundaries, determined by the ritualized context and traditional registers; 5) epic transmission, distribution, and copies for the record or for reproduction with systematic manuscripts derived from historically local rules are core elements in defining epic variants. Above all, this is first time in the field of Yi epic studies that make clear from local epic law: there have been two sets of epic terminologies in Nuosu tradition, the female/male refers to epic written texts (hand-copied books, transcriptions, or bimo's scriptures; the black/white refers to oral epic narratives.
In chapter four, a kind of the ritualistic flyting or verbal-dueling known in Nuosu as kenre is recognized for the first time as a key device for carrying out hnewo epic performance. The author shows that Nuosu epic performance always takes place in conversational, dialogic discourse between host-guest relationship with perfervid competition. The “flyting scenes” and “contest paradigm” displayed in different ways of singing or dueling (in poetic framework, never prosaic). Kenre dueling stimulates the oral transmission of the epics and involves the active acceptance on the part of the audience. The dueling enables performers to step out the shadow of the written, memorized texts and perform face-to-face in the community. The dueling it also provides performers with “battlefields” to compete with and learn from each other. Through the emergent nature of kenre dueling, aspects of the epic tradition grow and develop.
In chapter five, the author combines analysis of the ritualized narrative context of epic performance with various global academic theoretical traditions of orality and performance folkloristics to derive an approach involving the recognition of “Situated Fields of Epic Performance” for gaining a more complete understanding of the hnewo tradition. The approach demands “five basic factors in co-presence” related to fieldwork, textualization, and interpretation: 1) performing tradition, 2) performing event, 3) audience (in face-to-face textual community of oral epic), 4) performer (in Nuosu epic tradition there must be at least two opponent performers in verbal dueling), and 5)researcher. These “five factors in co-presence” and their synchronous dimension in interrelation play a crucial role on how a researcher would grasp traditional epic performance determined by different events-- in Nuosu society there have been three ritualized contexts: 1) wedding ceremony, 2) creamation rites, and 3) the ritual of sending the dead to ancestral holy land whereas differing from related six sub-contexts --keep changing in emergent shift. And then, the author provides two conditions for a “correlative principle”: firstly, all of the five factors must be present, or operative, or functional, and secondly, none of the five factors may be ‘in opposition' to the local epic tradition. “Situated Fields of Epic Performance” aims at constructing not only a positively practical model for observing and textualizing epic traditions, but also an epistemological approach that will be useful in understanding other traditions of oral performance in China. On the folkloristic ground of “thick” descriptions of text, context, and situated processes of performance, this renew approach, which builds on performance-observing model with folkloristic interest, it is subjective, determined by researcher, which will be especially useful for analyzing longer narrative of living verbal art, for producing a performance-centered text in rich details, including oral epic traditions among other ethnic groups, which differ significantly from the Nuosu hnewo tradition.
Hnewo is proved a vital, dynamic treasure of Nuosu verbal arts. Accordingly, what the author found in the field study is presented in the dissertation writing. It is a study based on records and reports in style of ethnographic writing of cultural thematic discovery. Having examined certain concepts derived from theoretical orientations in the field of western folkloristic theories, cultural studies and sociological thoughts, especially oral tradition, ethnopoetics, orality and literacy, performance approach etc., the author, as a result, inspired by some important ideas, further refines a set of theoretical terms based on redefine the definitions of key terms that came from local knowledge and native discourse in Nuosu epic tradition, and then applies those renewed terms with folkloristic interpretation to account for narrative rules and epic law that pre-existing in Nuosu's conceptions involved.
The present dissertation consists of a preface, an introduction, and five main chapters with 80 illustrations, in addition to an epilogue and appendices. The appendices include transcriptions of certain parts of the epic hnewo, selected field interviews, relevant field notes and a Yi glossary of terms used in the present dissertation.
