In Vain I Tried to Tell You

by Hymes, Dell H.

• ISBN13: 9780803273436
• ISBN10: 0803273436
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

A landmark volume that revolutionized our understanding of the power and significance of Native stories and storytellers in North America,"In vain I tried to tell you"showcases the methodology and theory of ethnopoetics. Focusing on the rich Native storytelling traditions of the Pacific Northwest, Hymes investigates what particular stylistic and linguistic devices and patterns in oral tales reveal about rhythm and order in the cultures creating them. A breathtaking series of analyses of particular myths and their relationship to performance forms the centerpiece of this volume. The concluding essays explore Native perspectives and approaches to stories, highlighting the reasons behind the storytellers' choices of characters, genres, and titles.This edition features a new preface by the author, a more comprehensive general index, and an expanded index to analyzed translations and English-language texts.

Author Biography

Dell Hymes is professor emeritus of anthropology and English at the University of Virginia. He is the author of many books, including Now I Know Only So Far: Essays in Ethnopoetics (Nebraska 2003).

Table of Contents

Introduction	5	(10)
Ethnological Note	15	(9)
Orthographic Note	24	(11)
PART ONE UNSUSPECTED DEVICES AND DESIGNS
1. Some North Pacific Coast Poems: A Problem in Anthropological Philology	35	(30)
Postscript	62	(3)
2. How to Talk Like a Bear in Takelma	65	(14)
PART TWO BREAKTHROUGH TO PERFORMANCE
3. Breakthrough into Performance	79	(63)
Appendix ("The story concerning Coyote")	134	(4)
Postscript (Letter to Dmitri Segal)	138	(4)
4. Louis Simpson's "The Deserted Boy"	142	(42)
Postscripts (Comparative perspective, The Tempest; Ruth Estabrook's response)	178	(6)
5. Verse Analysis of a Wasco Text: Hiram Smith's "At'unaga"	184	(16)
6. Breakthrough into Performance Revisited	200	(63)
PART THREE TITLES, NAMES, AND NATURES
7. Myth and Tale Titles of the Lower Chinook	263	(11)
Postscript (Comparative perspective)	269	(5)
8. The "Wife" Who "Goes Out" Like a Man: Reinterpretation of a Clackamas Chinook Myth	274	(35)
Postscripts (Literary uses and related versions; speech and Bernstein's codes; meta-narrative expressions; wider implications)	299	(10)
9. Discovering Oral Performance and Measured Verse in American Indian Narrative	309	(33)
10. Reading Clackamas Texts	342	(40)
Epilog	382	(3)
Index to Analyzed Translations and English-Language Texts	385	(1)
Bibliography	386	(13)
Index	399