The Powers of Genre

This study is an attempt to "operationalize genre as an interpretive instrument" (p. 224). It offers the results of a journey of discovery for Peter Seitel as a collector and editor of Haya heroic ballads from Tanzania. In an effort to understand the material better, Seitel noticed connections with the Haya folktales he had already collected and edited under the title See So That We May See (Indiana University Press, 1980). One insight led to another—discussions with Haya colleagues and his own scholarly reading sharpened his hypotheses—and this book is the product of those dialogues. It concludes with a six-step "recipe" for those who wish to apply Seitel's methodology for themselves. Well, as they say, the proof of the pudding's in the eating: does Seitel's "top-down perspective" (p. 31) produce a consistent cake

Art · Ballad · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Operationalization · Perspective (graphical) · Poetry · Product (mathematics) · Reading (process) · Recipe · Sociology · Visual arts · Wish · Anthropology · Canadian Identity and History · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Mathematics · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy