Catharine Mason | Université de Caen Normandie (original) (raw)

Books by Catharine Mason

Research paper thumbnail of Clackamas Chinook Performance Art, Verse Form Interpretations (Victoria Howard)

University of Nebraska Press, 2021

Victoria Howard was born around 1865, a little more than ten years after the founding of the Conf... more Victoria Howard was born around 1865, a little more than ten years after the founding of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in western Oregon. Howardʼs maternal grandmother, Wagayuhlen Quiaquaty, was a successful and valued Clackamas shaman at Grand Ronde, and her maternal grandfather, Quiaquaty, was an elite Molalla chief. In the summer of 1929 the linguist Melville Jacobs, student of Franz Boas, requested to record Clackamas Chinook oral traditions with Howard, which she enthusiastically agreed to do. The result is an intricate and lively corpus of linguistic and ethnographic material, as well as rich performances of Clackamas literary heritage, as dictated by Howard and meticulously transcribed by Jacobs in his field notebooks. Ethnographical descriptions attest to the traditional lifestyle and environment in which Howard grew up, while fine details of cultural and historical events reveal the great consideration and devotion with which she recalled her past and that of her people.

Catharine Mason has edited twenty-five of Howard’s spoken-word performances into verse form entextualizations, along with the annotations provided by Jacobs in his publications of Howard’s corpus in the late 1950s. Mason pairs performances with biographical, family, and historical content that reflects Howardʼs ancestry, personal and social life, education, and worldview. Mason’s study reveals strong evidence of how the artist contemplated and internalized the complex meanings and everyday lessons of her literary heritage.

Papers by Catharine Mason

Research paper thumbnail of Voice and Voicing: Genre, Poetics, and Metapragmatics in Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue”

Bob Dylan, le pluriel des voix, 2023

This article interprets the plurality of voices at play in the performance design of “Tangled Up ... more This article interprets the plurality of voices at play in the performance design of “Tangled Up in Blue” as the meta-pragmatic structures of the singer-songwriter’s relation to the listener. The author divides her task into a study of sonic, generic and stylistic, and pragmatic and metapragmatic planes upon which the singer establishes connection with the listener by implanting culturally expected patterns in his artistic configuration. These patterns are perceived as voices of co-speakers in the sense of Émile Benveniste’s theory of enunciation and put into effect for purposes of arousal and satisfaction of expectations, a rhetorical operation of all works of art according to Kenneth Burke. Though divided in terms of task, the three planes are revealed as interdependent in the act of performance as illustrated by the metapoetic instantiation of performer and audience, “From me to you.” The author concludes her study by proposing a textual approach in which the lyric (or text) manifests foremost as a linguistic system that, itself, interpellates both the singer and his audience through a counter-interpellation that constructs the voice of the artist, a function at the heart of all natural language events in socio-historical context as demonstrated in the works of Jean-Jacques Lecercle.

Research paper thumbnail of Code VOVA d’entextualisation de chansons/ VOVA Song Entextualization Code

Bob Dylan, le pluriel des voix, 2023

We present here a system for coding vocal, verbal, and performative phenomena, complemented by ed... more We present here a system for coding vocal, verbal, and performative phenomena, complemented by editorial standardization norms to be adhered to for entextualization. By “entextualization”, we mean an encoded transcription taking into account the very act of enunciation (see below) of song performances. In its current version, this code lists sixty-one phenomena that may fall under the categories of vocal techniques, verbal utterance, contextual performance dynamics, and aspects of textual formatting. This work aims to create a two-dimensional visualization, or model, of a singular performance event that proves to be dynamic, multimodal, and complex. The document presented includes 20 entextualizations of song excerpts in 12 different languages, including 7 indigenous languages, 1 pidgin language, and 5 standard languages.

Nous présentons ici un système de codification de phénomènes vocaux, verbaux et performatifs, complété par des normes de standardisation éditoriale à respecter pour l’entextualisation. Nous entendons par ce dernier terme une transcription encodée prenant en compte l’acte même d’énonciation (voir ci-dessous) des performances de chansons. Dans sa version actuelle, ce code répertorie soixante-et-un phénomènes qui peuvent relever des catégories de techniques vocales, d’énoncés verbaux, de dynamiques contextuelles de performance et d’aspects de formatage textuel. Ce travail vise à créer une visualisation bi-dimensionnelle, voire une modélisation, d’un événement singulier de performance qui s’avère dynamique, multimodal et complexe. Le document présenté comporte 20 entextualisations d’extraits de chansons dans 12 langues différentes, dont 7 langues autochtones, 1 langue pidgin et 5 langues standards.

Research paper thumbnail of Clackamas Chinook Performance Art: Verse Form Interpretations. VictoriaHoward. Transcription by Melville Jacobs. Edited by Catharine Mason. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. xxxvii + 224pp

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2021

Research paper thumbnail of Méthodologies de l'ethnopoétique appliquées à l'art verbal de Victoria Howard

La presente these explore les diverses methodologies de l'ethnopoetique developpees par les t... more La presente these explore les diverses methodologies de l'ethnopoetique developpees par les travaux de dell hymes et par ceux d'autres linguistes, anthropologues et critiques litteraires americains. Une tentative d'elargissement de cette approche de l'art verbal est proposee en combinant les techniques narratologiques de gerard genette et de boris uspenski a celles de l'analyse de la versification et aux etudes du folklore et de la performance. Une application de ces techniques a une etude de l'art verbal de victoria howard, poetesse clackamas interviewee par le linguiste, melville jacobs, revele le potentiel analytique de ce genre de recherche mais aussi la complexite et la subtilite de la voix narrative de howard. Une selection de textes ethnographiques, de contes des > et de recits mythologiques demontre des traits culturels tels que les genres, les formes poetiques et les croyances metaphysiques des clackamas, mais encore et surtout l'art de la voi...

Research paper thumbnail of Poetic Inspiration and the Contextualization of Misunderstanding

Cahiers de littérature orale, 2017

This paper focuses on performance ethnography in which an academically trained ethnographer produ... more This paper focuses on performance ethnography in which an academically trained ethnographer produces a corpus of culturally configured verbal art in professional association with a competent performer of the culture of study. More specifically, we will consider the role of inspiration in bridging the gap(s) between cultural references and expressions that are grounded in distinctly different semiotic systems. A stylistic study of Victoria Howard’s “I and my sister‑cousin” (Clackamas Chinook) as told to Melville Jacobs during their ethnographical recording sessions in 1929 will highlight dialogical and contextual indices to artistic motivation inspired by the linguist’s misunderstanding of spiritual beliefs and practices.

Research paper thumbnail of Digital Documentation of Oral Discourse Genres

Literary and Linguistic Computing, 2010

This article presents the design of an interoperable database for digital documentation of oral d... more This article presents the design of an interoperable database for digital documentation of oral discourse genres in multiple languages. Focussing on stylistic form and cultural specificity of artistic expression, the categories of study that serve as data fields build on contextual and functional approaches to verbal art performance. The database is part of a larger project known as VOVA (VOcal and Verbal Arts archives) that seeks to create digital tools for editing and annotating stylized oral discourse for purposes of comparative study of oral traditions and the preservation of endangered languages. Detailed descriptions of fields and numerous examples of the type of data solicited by VOVA, taken from leading scholarship in the field, help to clarify the scientific aims of the project. Search modes for consulting the database are also provided. Relations between the symbol-making and symbol-using activities of language use, text editing, and the digital humanities are discussed in light of the anthropological and linguistic research that will serve as a basis for a systematic study of stylistics in speech.

Research paper thumbnail of Ethnographie de la Poétique de la Performance

Cahiers de littérature orale, 2008

This article seeks to advance a framework for performance ethnography as innovated by leading sch... more This article seeks to advance a framework for performance ethnography as innovated by leading scholars in this field. Drawing mainly from the theoretical and methodological works of American ethnopoeticians, Dell Hymes, Charles Briggs and Joel Sherzer, and folklorist, Richard Bauman, the author strives for a system of compiling and processing performance data within four general interdependent categories: poetic elements and operations (devices), general and specific functions of poetic devices, genre-related use of poetic devices, and social contextualization within which specific texts and genres are performed. Incorporating a wide variety of linguistic, anthropological and literary data drawn from American and French scholarship, various linguistic and anthropological methods of interpreting the role of poetic expression in society are demonstrated. Placing emphasis on Hymsian verse analysis as a starting point in interpretation of the spoken word, and on equivalence as a primary operation of poetic expression, this paper calls for collaborative investigations between all scholars interested in performance.

Research paper thumbnail of "The Low Hum in Syllables and Meters”: Blues Poetics in Bob Dylan’s Verbal Art

Research paper thumbnail of Bob Dylan's Performance Artistry: Introduction

Research paper thumbnail of L'ethnopoétique et l'anthropologie structurale à partir d'un récit de Victoria Howard, Chinook Clackamas

Journal de la société des américanistes, 2004

Ethnopoetics and structural anthropology as seen through a narrative by Victoria Howard, Clackama... more Ethnopoetics and structural anthropology as seen through a narrative by Victoria Howard, Clackamas Chinook. The study of a Clackamas Chinookan myth told by Victoria Howard to the linguist, Melville Jacobs, in 1930 provides the basis for a comparison of two methodologies of myth analysis. The approach of structural anthropology, innovated by Claude Lévi-Strauss and applied in his interpretation of Howard’s text with relation to other narrations of this samemyth, is placed side by side with an ethnopoetic analysiswhich is based on the internal logic of an individual narrative. This article seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of these two scientific approaches using concrete elements of the text. It also points to common objectives of these two approaches, both practical and theoretical, in the study of oral tradition.

Research paper thumbnail of Oral Poetry in the Foreign Language Classroom

Research paper thumbnail of Methodologies de l'ethnopoetique appliquees a l'art verbal de Victoria Howard

Http Www Theses Fr, 1999

La présente these explore les diverses methodologies de l'ethnopoétique developpées par les trava... more La présente these explore les diverses methodologies de l'ethnopoétique developpées par les travaux de Dell Hymes et par ceux d'autres linguistes, anthropologues et critiques littéraires américains. Une tentative d'élargissement de cette approche de l'art verbal est proposée en combinant les techniques narratologiques de Gérard genette et de Boris Uspenski a celles de l'analyse de la versification et aux etudes du folklore et de la performance. Une application de ces techniques a une étude de l'art verbal de Victoria Howard, poétesse clackamas interviewée par le linguiste, Melville Jacobs, révèle le potentiel analytique de ce genre de recherche mais aussi la complexité et la subtilité de la voix narrative de Howard. Une selection de textes ethnographiques, de contes des << temps transitionnels >> et de récits mythologiques démontre des traits culturels tels que les genres, les formes poétiques et les croyances métaphysiques des clackamas, mais encore et surtout l'art de la voix personnelle de la poétesse.

Book Reviews by Catharine Mason

Research paper thumbnail of PALMER Gus Jr (ed.), 2018, When Dream Bear Sings, Native Literatures of the Southern Plains, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 358 p

Cahiers de la littérature orale, 2019

Cahiers de littérature orale est mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Common... more Cahiers de littérature orale est mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale 4.0 International.

Research paper thumbnail of Revel Nicole (ed.), Songs of Memory in Islands of Southeast Asia

Cahiers de la littérature orale, 2015

Cahiers de littérature orale est mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Common... more Cahiers de littérature orale est mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale 4.0 International.

Research paper thumbnail of Clackamas Chinook Performance Art, Verse Form Interpretations (Victoria Howard)

University of Nebraska Press, 2021

Victoria Howard was born around 1865, a little more than ten years after the founding of the Conf... more Victoria Howard was born around 1865, a little more than ten years after the founding of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in western Oregon. Howardʼs maternal grandmother, Wagayuhlen Quiaquaty, was a successful and valued Clackamas shaman at Grand Ronde, and her maternal grandfather, Quiaquaty, was an elite Molalla chief. In the summer of 1929 the linguist Melville Jacobs, student of Franz Boas, requested to record Clackamas Chinook oral traditions with Howard, which she enthusiastically agreed to do. The result is an intricate and lively corpus of linguistic and ethnographic material, as well as rich performances of Clackamas literary heritage, as dictated by Howard and meticulously transcribed by Jacobs in his field notebooks. Ethnographical descriptions attest to the traditional lifestyle and environment in which Howard grew up, while fine details of cultural and historical events reveal the great consideration and devotion with which she recalled her past and that of her people.

Catharine Mason has edited twenty-five of Howard’s spoken-word performances into verse form entextualizations, along with the annotations provided by Jacobs in his publications of Howard’s corpus in the late 1950s. Mason pairs performances with biographical, family, and historical content that reflects Howardʼs ancestry, personal and social life, education, and worldview. Mason’s study reveals strong evidence of how the artist contemplated and internalized the complex meanings and everyday lessons of her literary heritage.

Research paper thumbnail of Voice and Voicing: Genre, Poetics, and Metapragmatics in Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue”

Bob Dylan, le pluriel des voix, 2023

This article interprets the plurality of voices at play in the performance design of “Tangled Up ... more This article interprets the plurality of voices at play in the performance design of “Tangled Up in Blue” as the meta-pragmatic structures of the singer-songwriter’s relation to the listener. The author divides her task into a study of sonic, generic and stylistic, and pragmatic and metapragmatic planes upon which the singer establishes connection with the listener by implanting culturally expected patterns in his artistic configuration. These patterns are perceived as voices of co-speakers in the sense of Émile Benveniste’s theory of enunciation and put into effect for purposes of arousal and satisfaction of expectations, a rhetorical operation of all works of art according to Kenneth Burke. Though divided in terms of task, the three planes are revealed as interdependent in the act of performance as illustrated by the metapoetic instantiation of performer and audience, “From me to you.” The author concludes her study by proposing a textual approach in which the lyric (or text) manifests foremost as a linguistic system that, itself, interpellates both the singer and his audience through a counter-interpellation that constructs the voice of the artist, a function at the heart of all natural language events in socio-historical context as demonstrated in the works of Jean-Jacques Lecercle.

Research paper thumbnail of Code VOVA d’entextualisation de chansons/ VOVA Song Entextualization Code

Bob Dylan, le pluriel des voix, 2023

We present here a system for coding vocal, verbal, and performative phenomena, complemented by ed... more We present here a system for coding vocal, verbal, and performative phenomena, complemented by editorial standardization norms to be adhered to for entextualization. By “entextualization”, we mean an encoded transcription taking into account the very act of enunciation (see below) of song performances. In its current version, this code lists sixty-one phenomena that may fall under the categories of vocal techniques, verbal utterance, contextual performance dynamics, and aspects of textual formatting. This work aims to create a two-dimensional visualization, or model, of a singular performance event that proves to be dynamic, multimodal, and complex. The document presented includes 20 entextualizations of song excerpts in 12 different languages, including 7 indigenous languages, 1 pidgin language, and 5 standard languages.

Nous présentons ici un système de codification de phénomènes vocaux, verbaux et performatifs, complété par des normes de standardisation éditoriale à respecter pour l’entextualisation. Nous entendons par ce dernier terme une transcription encodée prenant en compte l’acte même d’énonciation (voir ci-dessous) des performances de chansons. Dans sa version actuelle, ce code répertorie soixante-et-un phénomènes qui peuvent relever des catégories de techniques vocales, d’énoncés verbaux, de dynamiques contextuelles de performance et d’aspects de formatage textuel. Ce travail vise à créer une visualisation bi-dimensionnelle, voire une modélisation, d’un événement singulier de performance qui s’avère dynamique, multimodal et complexe. Le document présenté comporte 20 entextualisations d’extraits de chansons dans 12 langues différentes, dont 7 langues autochtones, 1 langue pidgin et 5 langues standards.

Research paper thumbnail of Clackamas Chinook Performance Art: Verse Form Interpretations. VictoriaHoward. Transcription by Melville Jacobs. Edited by Catharine Mason. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. xxxvii + 224pp

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2021

Research paper thumbnail of Méthodologies de l'ethnopoétique appliquées à l'art verbal de Victoria Howard

La presente these explore les diverses methodologies de l'ethnopoetique developpees par les t... more La presente these explore les diverses methodologies de l'ethnopoetique developpees par les travaux de dell hymes et par ceux d'autres linguistes, anthropologues et critiques litteraires americains. Une tentative d'elargissement de cette approche de l'art verbal est proposee en combinant les techniques narratologiques de gerard genette et de boris uspenski a celles de l'analyse de la versification et aux etudes du folklore et de la performance. Une application de ces techniques a une etude de l'art verbal de victoria howard, poetesse clackamas interviewee par le linguiste, melville jacobs, revele le potentiel analytique de ce genre de recherche mais aussi la complexite et la subtilite de la voix narrative de howard. Une selection de textes ethnographiques, de contes des > et de recits mythologiques demontre des traits culturels tels que les genres, les formes poetiques et les croyances metaphysiques des clackamas, mais encore et surtout l'art de la voi...

Research paper thumbnail of Poetic Inspiration and the Contextualization of Misunderstanding

Cahiers de littérature orale, 2017

This paper focuses on performance ethnography in which an academically trained ethnographer produ... more This paper focuses on performance ethnography in which an academically trained ethnographer produces a corpus of culturally configured verbal art in professional association with a competent performer of the culture of study. More specifically, we will consider the role of inspiration in bridging the gap(s) between cultural references and expressions that are grounded in distinctly different semiotic systems. A stylistic study of Victoria Howard’s “I and my sister‑cousin” (Clackamas Chinook) as told to Melville Jacobs during their ethnographical recording sessions in 1929 will highlight dialogical and contextual indices to artistic motivation inspired by the linguist’s misunderstanding of spiritual beliefs and practices.

Research paper thumbnail of Digital Documentation of Oral Discourse Genres

Literary and Linguistic Computing, 2010

This article presents the design of an interoperable database for digital documentation of oral d... more This article presents the design of an interoperable database for digital documentation of oral discourse genres in multiple languages. Focussing on stylistic form and cultural specificity of artistic expression, the categories of study that serve as data fields build on contextual and functional approaches to verbal art performance. The database is part of a larger project known as VOVA (VOcal and Verbal Arts archives) that seeks to create digital tools for editing and annotating stylized oral discourse for purposes of comparative study of oral traditions and the preservation of endangered languages. Detailed descriptions of fields and numerous examples of the type of data solicited by VOVA, taken from leading scholarship in the field, help to clarify the scientific aims of the project. Search modes for consulting the database are also provided. Relations between the symbol-making and symbol-using activities of language use, text editing, and the digital humanities are discussed in light of the anthropological and linguistic research that will serve as a basis for a systematic study of stylistics in speech.

Research paper thumbnail of Ethnographie de la Poétique de la Performance

Cahiers de littérature orale, 2008

This article seeks to advance a framework for performance ethnography as innovated by leading sch... more This article seeks to advance a framework for performance ethnography as innovated by leading scholars in this field. Drawing mainly from the theoretical and methodological works of American ethnopoeticians, Dell Hymes, Charles Briggs and Joel Sherzer, and folklorist, Richard Bauman, the author strives for a system of compiling and processing performance data within four general interdependent categories: poetic elements and operations (devices), general and specific functions of poetic devices, genre-related use of poetic devices, and social contextualization within which specific texts and genres are performed. Incorporating a wide variety of linguistic, anthropological and literary data drawn from American and French scholarship, various linguistic and anthropological methods of interpreting the role of poetic expression in society are demonstrated. Placing emphasis on Hymsian verse analysis as a starting point in interpretation of the spoken word, and on equivalence as a primary operation of poetic expression, this paper calls for collaborative investigations between all scholars interested in performance.

Research paper thumbnail of "The Low Hum in Syllables and Meters”: Blues Poetics in Bob Dylan’s Verbal Art

Research paper thumbnail of Bob Dylan's Performance Artistry: Introduction

Research paper thumbnail of L'ethnopoétique et l'anthropologie structurale à partir d'un récit de Victoria Howard, Chinook Clackamas

Journal de la société des américanistes, 2004

Ethnopoetics and structural anthropology as seen through a narrative by Victoria Howard, Clackama... more Ethnopoetics and structural anthropology as seen through a narrative by Victoria Howard, Clackamas Chinook. The study of a Clackamas Chinookan myth told by Victoria Howard to the linguist, Melville Jacobs, in 1930 provides the basis for a comparison of two methodologies of myth analysis. The approach of structural anthropology, innovated by Claude Lévi-Strauss and applied in his interpretation of Howard’s text with relation to other narrations of this samemyth, is placed side by side with an ethnopoetic analysiswhich is based on the internal logic of an individual narrative. This article seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of these two scientific approaches using concrete elements of the text. It also points to common objectives of these two approaches, both practical and theoretical, in the study of oral tradition.

Research paper thumbnail of Oral Poetry in the Foreign Language Classroom

Research paper thumbnail of Methodologies de l'ethnopoetique appliquees a l'art verbal de Victoria Howard

Http Www Theses Fr, 1999

La présente these explore les diverses methodologies de l'ethnopoétique developpées par les trava... more La présente these explore les diverses methodologies de l'ethnopoétique developpées par les travaux de Dell Hymes et par ceux d'autres linguistes, anthropologues et critiques littéraires américains. Une tentative d'élargissement de cette approche de l'art verbal est proposée en combinant les techniques narratologiques de Gérard genette et de Boris Uspenski a celles de l'analyse de la versification et aux etudes du folklore et de la performance. Une application de ces techniques a une étude de l'art verbal de Victoria Howard, poétesse clackamas interviewée par le linguiste, Melville Jacobs, révèle le potentiel analytique de ce genre de recherche mais aussi la complexité et la subtilité de la voix narrative de Howard. Une selection de textes ethnographiques, de contes des << temps transitionnels >> et de récits mythologiques démontre des traits culturels tels que les genres, les formes poétiques et les croyances métaphysiques des clackamas, mais encore et surtout l'art de la voix personnelle de la poétesse.

Research paper thumbnail of PALMER Gus Jr (ed.), 2018, When Dream Bear Sings, Native Literatures of the Southern Plains, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 358 p

Cahiers de la littérature orale, 2019

Cahiers de littérature orale est mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Common... more Cahiers de littérature orale est mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale 4.0 International.

Research paper thumbnail of Revel Nicole (ed.), Songs of Memory in Islands of Southeast Asia

Cahiers de la littérature orale, 2015

Cahiers de littérature orale est mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Common... more Cahiers de littérature orale est mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale 4.0 International.