Table of Contents

Tables
Introduction
Ethnological Note
Orthographic Note

PART ONE. UNSUSPECTED DEVICES AND DESIGNS
1 Some North Pacific Coast Poems: A Problem in Anthropological Philology
2 How to Talk Like a Bear in Takelma

PART TWO. BREAKTHROUGH TO PERFORMANCE
3 Breakthrough into Performance
4 Louis Simpson's "The Deserted Boy"
5 Verse Analysis of a Wasco Text: Hiram Smith's "At'unaqa"
6 Breakthrough into Performance Revisited

PART THREE. TITLES, NAMES, AND NATURES
7 Myth and Tale Titles of the Lower Chinook
8 The "Wife" Who "Goes Out" Like a Man: Reinterpretation of a Clackamas Chinook Myth
9 Discovering Oral Performance and Measured Verse in American Indian Narrative
10 Reading Clackamas Texts
Epilog

Index to Analyzed Translations and English-Language Texts
Bibliography
Index

Promotional Information

"The most important work in recent decades on the poetics of Native American oral traditions. . . . Hymes restores voice to oral texts that have been little more than museum pieces."-World Literature

Reviews

"The single most penetrating analysis of a body of text materials in the Native American literature."—Jarold Ramsey

"The most important work in recent decades on the poetics of Native American oral traditions. . . . Hymes restores voice to oral texts that have been little more than museum pieces."—World Literature

"A gem that should be required reading for every aspiring and practicing folklorist."—Journal of American Folklore

"An important landmark."—Choice