The Complexity of Oral Tradition

"In challenging a remark I had once made while presenting a paper at a professional meeting, a member of the audience said that he could demonstrate that there was no oral tradition in sixteenth-century Spain. To me this meant that the speaker had proof that people living on the Iberian Peninsula at that time never spoke to one another. Obviously, to him, "oral tradition" meant something else entirely. The very concept, the comprehension of such a mode of life, is alien to literates; and despite the writing done on the subject in recent decades by Walter Ong, Albert Lord, Ruth Finnegan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Jack Goody (to name only a few), "Oral Tradition" is not a concept widely understood by professional educators, let alone agreed upon. This essay will outline some of the major research and thinking done on this subject to date, to provide a context for uni-disciplinary work now done. It will not announce a truth; it will describe what the author has in mind when speaking of this mode."--Opening paragraph

The Message of the American Folk Sermon

The original intention of the author had been to address oralformulaic theory, indirectly, through a detailed examination of American folk sermons that were spontaneously composed and orally delivered; but during the course of recording and interviewing--1966 until 1971--the compelling power of American folk preachers commanded attention in its own right. In the final measure, the research of this scholar and others has concentrated as much upon the folk preachers for their own sake (and intrinsic merits) as upon principles of composition in Homer and several medieval narrators. Rev. Rubin Lacy, Rev. Elihu Brown, and Rev. C. L. Franklin eventually crowded off the page of this research the names of Homer, Turoldus, and the Beowulf poet. The historical comparisons have been undertaken, and contemporary American folk preachers have proven to be of interest for what they can reveal not only about the compositional process of the making of Beowulf but about themselves and an American oral tradition as well.--Page 695-696.Bruce A. Rosenberg (Brown University) is well known for his studies of medieval literature and folklore, particularly The Art of the American Folk Preacher (1970) and related subsequent articles. He has also written authoritatively on the oral formula, folktale morphology in Beowulf, and the oral performance of Chaucer's poetry

Forrest Spirits: Oral Echoes in Leon Forrest's Prose

Rosenberg explores Chicago-based novelist Leon Forest and his particular blend of mixing traditional and experimental literary approaches

The Oral Performance of Chaucer's Poetry: Situation and Medium

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Olrik's Laws: A Judicial Review

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Piracy and Maritime Crime

As modern nation-states emerged from feudalism, privateering for both profit and war supplemented piracy at the margins of national sovereignty. More recently, an ocean enclosure movement under the aegis of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 has granted states access to maritime resources far beyond their territorial limits.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-newport-papers/1034/thumbnail.jp

Litigating BP\u27s Contribution Claims in Publicly Subsidized Courts: Should Contracting Parties Pay Their Own Way?

In this Article, we focus on an important problem involving mass-accident cases that was highlighted by the Deepwater Horizon litigation: overuse of courts to enforce contribution claims. These claims seek to shift incurred or expected liability and damages between the business and governmental entities that participated in the activity that gave rise to the mass-accident risk. Participants in such ventures generally have the option to determine by contract beforehand whether to subject themselves to contribution claims and, if so, whether such claims will be resolved by a publicly funded court or by a privately funded process, such as arbitration. Because the parties prosecuting and defending against contribution claims can consume judicial resources largely free of charge, it is likely they will choose to litigate in court to a greater extent than is socially desirable. We consider whether courts can effectively realign the parties\u27 incentives by charging them for the cost of using the judicial process. Taking account of the public good of judicial precedent- making, we advance a user-fee design that allows courts to waive the fee in whole or in part for contribution claims that present substantial questions of law. Analysis of the proposal\u27s application is extended generally to commercial contract disputes. Our central conclusion is that an appropriately designed user fee can effectively abate the problem of overuse without adversely affecting the functioning of the civil liability system

Global versus Local Conservation Focus of U.S. State Agency Endangered Bird Species Lists

The development of species priorities for conservation at local or regional scales (for example, within a state or province) poses an interesting paradox. One the one hand, locally or regionally-derived species priorities may lead to greater interest in and resources directed to biodiversity conservation by local or regional institutions. On the other hand, locally or regionally-derived species priorities could overlook national or global priorities. We assessed U.S. state government agency endangered-threatened bird lists to determine the comparative representation of species of global versus local conservation significance on them. State lists tended to be represented primarily by species of low global risk-low global responsibility (range: 15–100%; mean 51%) and high global risk-high global responsibility (range: 0–73%; mean 35%). In 25 states, more than half of the species on the state lists were in the low global risk-low global responsibility category. Most U.S. state agency lists represent a combined strategy of highlighting species of both local and global conservation significance. Even with this combined local-global strategy, most state lists were predominated by species that represent local but not global conservation significance. Such a strategy could have profound negative consequences for many species that are not formally recognized under national endangered species protections but that are also left off of state-level endangered species lists