Neck-Riddle as a Dialogue off Genres Applying Bakhtin's Genre Theory.pdf

(2337 KB) Pobierz
Neck-Riddle as a Dialogue off Genres: Applying Bakhtin's Genre Theory
Author(s): John D. Dorst
Source:
The Journal of American Folklore,
Vol. 96, No. 382 (Oct. - Dec., 1983), pp. 413-433
Published by:
American Folklore Society
Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/540982
.
Accessed: 28/10/2014 16:53
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
.
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
.
American Folklore Society
is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
The Journal
of American Folklore.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:53:19 PM
All use subject to
JSTOR Terms and Conditions
JOHN
D.
DORST
Neck-riddleas a Dialogue of Genres
GenreTheory
ApplyingBakhtin's
Suppose for a moment that it were impossible not to mix genres. What if there were within
the heart of the law [of genre] itself, a law of impurity or a principle of contamination?
Jacques Derrida (1981:53)
POST-ROMANTIC
GENRETHEORY
departs from the venerable heritage of Aris-
totle and Horace. "Instead of emphasizingthe distinction between kind and
kind, it is interested . . . in finding the common denominator of a kind, its
sharedliterarydevices and literarypurposes" (Wellek and Warren 1977:235).
Still, genre in both pre-Romanticand modern theory is primarilyan issue of
in
delimitation, a focusing upon the major stabilities literaryexpression. "As
soon as the word 'genre' is sounded, as soon as it is heard, as soon as one at-
tempts to conceive it, a limit is drawn" (Derrida 1981:52).
An important task of modern folklore studies is to extend the investigation
of such stabilitiesto genres and genre systems outside the canon of "official"
literary types. For folklorists, genre research has become largely an
ethnographic enterprisein which identifying recurring patterns of behavior
and repeated situations of performanceis as important as recognizing the
stabilities of form and content (Ben-Amos 1976). We should be aware,
however, that the consistencies and stabilities central to both analytic and
ethnographic genre studies automaticallyimply the existence of their com-
plements. Genericinstabilitiesand ambiguitiesconstitute a legitimate, though
largely neglected, areaof genre research.Perhapsthis neglect is a function of
inadequatetheory.
When we acknowledgethe social natureof genres, which we do in making
them the object of ethnography,our theory must keep step by accommodating
emergence, transformation,obsolescence, and so on as positive realities of
genre, that is, as active processes to be treated in their own terms and not
merely as forms of defect or breakdownin generic order. Even the centralfact
of generic stability, viewed from a social perspective, shows itself to be the
result of active maintenance.Our theory must also provide a frameworkfor
considering the interactions among genres. A culture's genres are not just
Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 96, No. 382, 1983
Copyright © 1983 by the American Folklore Society 0021-8715/83/3820413-21$2.60/1
This content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:53:19 PM
All use subject to
JSTOR Terms and Conditions
414
JOHN DORST
structurallyrelatedas contrastiveelementsin a static "grammar" of verbalart
(Ben-Amos 1976:237). As effectivesocialforces, genresarerhetoricaland ideo-
logical; they engage one anotheractively. Any given genre is overcastto some
degree by the shadows of other genres in its cultural environment, and the
nature of these intergenericinfluencesis open to investigation.
I suggest that we can find a genre theory adequateto such issues as in-
tragenericand intergenericinstability in the work of M. M. Bakhtin and his
colleagues V. N. Volosinov and P. N. Medvedev. Developed in the Soviet
Union of the 1920s and 1930s, the ideas of this Bakhtin circle remained
obscureto the West until fairlyrecently;but a growing numberof translations
is
and criticalappreciations revealingBakhtin to be one of the seminalthinkers
of our century (Wehrle 1978; Holquist 1981b:xv-xxxiv), and folkloreresearch
has begun to feel his influence (Proschan 1981; Bauman 1982; Dargan and
Zeitlin 1983; Kodish 1983; Schrager1983). My purpose here is to consider
Bakhtin's conception of genre and then pursue some of its implicationsin an
analysisof one genericallyambiguous phenomenon in folklore.
The issue of genre is cruciallyimportant to Bakhtiniantheoriesof language
and literatureand their relationto society. Generalstatementsabout genre and
historicalanalysesof particular
genres lie scatteredthroughout the work of the
Bakhtin circle, but an explicit theoreticalconception first comes into focus as
part of a polemical confrontationwith the Russian Formalists.In particular,
Bakhtinianideas about genre are quite consciously antagonistic to the genre
of
theory underlying, for example, Vladimir Propp's Morphology the Folktale
A Critical
Introduc-
In The FormalMethodin Literary
Scholarship:
(1968[1928]).
tion to Sociological
Poetics,published the same year as Propp's folklore classic,
Bakhtin1spins out his "sociological poetics" from a relentlesscritique of the
Formalistprinciplesthat dominated Russian literarytheory in the late 1920s.
For the Formalists,he says, genre is merely a matterof compositionalarrange-
ment, the stabilizedgrouping of a ready stock of devices (Medvedev/Bakhtin
1978:135-137). (One example of this Formalist approachwould be Propp's
definition of the folktale as a limited number of particular"functions" ar-
and
rangedin a certainsequence.)To Bakhtin, such a view is superficial entire-
ly incapableof appreciatinga genre's "vital totality."
An adequategenre theory requiresthat we recognize, as Bakhtin puts it,
"the two-fold orientation of genre in reality." "The first orientation," he
says, "is in the direction of real space and real time." Through this
"external" orientation a genre "enters life and comes into contact with
variousaspectsof its environment.It does so in the processof its actualrealiza-
tion as something performed,heard, readat a definite time, in a definiteplace,
under definite conditions. ...
some way" (Medvedev/Bakhtin 1978:131). How familiar that sounds to
folklorists today; and how easy it is to miss the novelty such a view of genre
would have had when Bakhtin first expressedit.
His second "orientation of genre in reality," on the other hand, the "inter-
nal" orientation, remainslargelyunacknowledgedin folklore theory,2yet it is
It takes a position between people organized in
This content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:53:19 PM
All use subject to
JSTOR Terms and Conditions
NECK-RIDDLE
415
of
consideration genericchange and interaction.
essentialfor an adequate
genre," Bakhtinsays, "is a complexsystemof meansand
"Everysignificant
methods for the conscious control and finalization of reality"
of
definiteprinciples selec-
1978:133).Each "possesses
(Medvedev/Bakhtin
tion, definiteformsof seeingandconceptualizing
reality,anda definitescope
anddepthof penetration"
(1978:131).In otherwords, genresareparticular
points of view towardthe world. They are "ways of seeing" that possess
the
and
of
somemeasure formedness closure,thoughthat does not preclude
of
possibility genericflexibility.As pointsof view throughwhich we "fix"
our
in
time andspace certain
waysandin termsof whichwe experience social
and
of
are
andmaterial
consciousness;
environment,
genres constitutive human
of
in
consciousness arises the processes socialexchange
itself
for Bakhtin
(i.e.,
communication)under particularhistoricalconditions.3
Bakhtin's twofold orientation of genre, external and internal, really "turns
out to be a single, two-sided orientation" (Medvedev/Bakhtin 1978:133), two
ways to view the crucial fact of genre's essentially social character. On the one
hand, genres are social because they exist only through concrete enactment
among "people organized in some way"; on the other hand, social forces and
relations are themselves "enacted" through the points of view genres embody.
From either perspective, genre only "develops and generates in the process of
ideological social intercourse. Therefore, a genuine poetics of genre can only be
a sociology of genre" (1978:135).
Such a conception throws open the issue of generic interaction. A
sociological poetics recognizes that there are no pure genres; no genre exists
outside the dense thickets of citation, commentary, resistance, approval,
mimicry, parody, and so on, that constitute the responses of other points of
view (i.e., other genres). Generic interactions are ongoing accomplishments,
often with variable or uncertain outcome; for the most part they involve the
unconscious genres of everyday discourse (Hymes 1975b:351-352). No doubt
the great majority of these exchanges are so evanescent that they will fail to
register on the retina of ethnographic observation, or in native perception for
that matter. On the other hand, canonical forms of artistic expression
sometimes display such a degree of "finalization" that their capacity for ex-
change with other genres is extremely limited. Presumably, the more fixed a
genre is in its internal orientation, the less able it will be to respond to other
points of view.
Between these extremes of fluidity and rigidity are instances where complex
generic interactions take on a discernable, if flexible, shape and some degree of
standardization. One task of genre research, then, might be to identify and
analyze these more or less stable sites of generic exchange. In an essay entitled
"Speech Genres,"4 Bakhtin (1979) suggests this area of investigation by
distinguishing between "primary (simple)" and "secondary (complex)"
speech genres.5 Secondary genres are those forms that arise in relatively highly
developed and organized cultural communication: artistic, scientific,
sociopolitical, and the like. In the process of their formation they "absorb and
This content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:53:19 PM
All use subject to
JSTOR Terms and Conditions
416
JOHN DORST
digest" the simple genres of "unmediated speech communication"
by
(1979:239). These primarygenres are inevitablytransformed being brought
together in the context of complex utterances.The relationbetween primary
and secondarygenres in the historicalformation of the latter is important to
our understanding of the "complex problem of the interrelations among
language, ideology and Weltanschauung" (1979:240).
While a distinction between primaryand secondaryspeech genres is prob-
lematic (the line between simplicity and complexity being relative at best),
Bakhtin's conceptualizationprompts us to consider how genres engage one
anotherin varying degreesof integrationand exchange. One question implicit
in Bakhtiniantheory asks what the observableforms of interactionare when
the point of view that is one genre encountersthe point of view of another.
Perhapsthe first will be so limited in its own scope as to be almost blind to the
and in-
second genre. Perhapsit will only comprehendthe other mechanically
speaksa proverb.
strumentally,as in the case of a folktale in which a character
More interestingly, perhapsthe first genre will have the capacityto infiltrate,
even victimize, the second, inhabiting its body and turning it to alien pur-
poses. Something like this occurs in many parodygenres: so-calledparodyrid-
dles for example, in which ajoke or "catch" createsits effect by pretendingto
establishthe riddlepoint of view, only to explode it when the riddle solution
turns out to be a punchline.
The limiting case of generic relationships,the most complex and slippery,is
that in which genres come together on an equal footing, each forced by the
other to entertainthe possibility of an alien conception of reality. When two
(or more) genres activelyencounterone anotherbut neitherclearlydominates,
I
possibilitiesfor generic ambiguity proliferate.6 want to suggest that folklore
offers a particularlyclear example of such "arenas of generic dialogue"7 (or
secondarygenres) in the odd phenomenon folklorists call "neck-riddle."8
issues
Although Bakhtin's social theory suggests the whole rangeof research
integration, interaction, and ambiguity of genres, in
concerning hierarchical
his own analyseshe devoted most of his attention to genre stabilities. In the
following discussion I take neck-riddleas the basis on which to pursue an
aspect of Bakhtiniangenre theory that remainsundevelopedin terms of con-
crete cases. Archer Taylor described neck-riddle as a "well-established and
enigmaticgenre," lumping it with the other forms that are not "true" riddles
(1951:1). In contrast, I want to see what we gain in analyticalpower by tak-
ing neck-riddleas the name for an arenaof generic conflict within which a
can
range of intergenericaccommodations occur. Given the natureof my data,
drawn mostly from "old-fashioned" folklore collections, my analysisfocuses
on the textual manifestationsof neck-riddle'sdialogue of genres.
Before turning to this analysis,I want to detour back through Bakhtin and
follow an importanttheme in his work that will lead us to neck-riddlefrom a
different, less theoreticaldirection. Bakhtin was deeply interestedin folklore,
and his study of the folk culture of medievalcarnival(1968) is of obvious in-
This content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:53:19 PM
All use subject to
JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin