Year: 1979
Type: article
Abstract: English-reading scholars everywhere are indebted to Wilbert and his colleagues for the translation of Gusinde's collections of Selknam (Ona) and Yamana (Yahgan) folktales from Tierra del Fuego.These two volumes, together with Wilbert's previous publication on Warao "folk literature" (Orinoco Delta), contribute significantly to the documentation of aboriginal lore from lowland South America.Along with Metraux's account of Chaco myths and tales, they provide a unique resource in English for comparative interpretation of oral traditions among what have come to be known as the "marginal" populations.Wilbert's objective in the two publications under consideration here is clearly stated in the Preface to the Selknam volume: "My project makes no further claims beyond the initial purpose of documentation and baseline work of presenting the narrative material of each society in a single language and furnishing for each corpus a motif index.By doing so, I hope to pave the way for scholars pursuing comparative research in the oral traditions of South American Indians."Accordingly, fifty-nine Selknam and sixty-six Yamana narratives were translated from their original German, except for explicit sexual references that Gusinde had recorded in Latin, and a summary was provided for all but the shortest tales, followed by a listing of motif content.This is followed by a major section entitled "The Motif Indices."The latter follow Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk Literature, with adaptations indicated for those topics that do not fit precisely the Thompson model.The indices are divided into four groups: a motif distribution by narrative, a topical motif index, an alphabetical motif index, and a motif distribution by motif groups.Given the considerable amount of time and energy devoted to the construction of the motif inventory, .itseems cruel to criticize the approach, particularly since the motifs appear to have been selected with no apparent awareness of the critical problems involved.Yet it must be obvious to contemporary scholars of folklore that formalist and structuralist approaches have rendered virtually obsolete the notion of motif analysis.This observation is of particular significance given that Claude Levi-Strauss is quoted in a blurb on the cover extolling the "paramount importance" of the UCLA publications project.The point is, of course, that the categories that permitted Wilbert and his colleagues to identify motifs reflect their own understandings, but they certainly do not provide unambiguous insights into Tierra del Fuegian understandings, as the indices are 247
Source: Latin American Research Review
Author: Elmer S. Miller
Institution: Temple University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4312311835