Tuesday, October 11, 2011

RECITATIONATION

so the midterm recital of king benjamin's speech was REALLY interesting today. for whatever reason, when i listened to the audio recording of the chapters we recited on lds.org, i was bored out of my mind. the realism that an in-your-face oral performance lends to a text, however, is absolutely captivating!! not only did verses i've read dozens of times come to life in a new and cohesive way, but to be a part of the recitation of the speech gave me a sense of responsibility, as was said in class. In addition, i felt a heightened understanding of the motivation, emotion and desires of the original speaker when memorized my verses knowing the speaker would be ME! the "part of a whole" quality of the verses i was assigned to read translated into a "part of a whole" feeling towards my responsibility - i knew that my success or failure meant more than my grade, it would reflect on the class as a whole and possibly inhibit other performers from being able to perform their part. i feel that this unity or team feeling was the real miracle today - i found myself internally cheering for a whole bunch of people I've never talked to and who i had nothing really in common with, except the shared experience of frantically memorizing a bunch of scriptures over the weekend. just because i had been through that, too, i understood their struggles and rejoiced in their success. though we haven't really talked about the unity that oral traditions create between performers, i think this is one of the strongest of ways that the oral unifies people.

good job everyone!!

2 comments:

  1. It's quite true. It bonded the class.

    I really like the bit you mention about the sermon coming to life and the speech cohering, as I've always read it (Mosiah, chapters 2-4, for those that might be reading from outside the class) in bits and pieces, often emphasizing some pedagogical point without hearing it come together and flow.

    In addition, I liked how the 'choreographer' (if you will) had the entire class reciting parts, groups reciting others, and individuals reciting the majority. It seemed a lot more like a community event, as indeed it was when it was recorded.

    I think it was Hugh Nibley that took this sermon apart and analyzed it according to several ancient speaker-chorus-audience ceremonies. It's actually a fairly common pattern as I recall, and it was neat to hear some of that familiarity and humanity restored to the words.

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  2. hmm... bro nibley's analysis of this would be really interesting!!

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