A critical discussion of the concept of 'performance literature' as applied to the cross-cultural and comparative analysis of literature, with special but not exclusive reference to the literatures of Asia and Afric

Finnegan, Ruth

Oral Tradition

English

In a challenging article that starts not from the conventional Western literary canon but from traditional Japanese theatre, Andrew Gerstle (2000:43) has raised the interesting question of whether the concept of "performance literature" might be illuminating as an analytic and comparative tool when approaching the literatures of Africa and Asia. Further light on this has been shed by the impressive crosscultural range of the articles in this volume of Oral Tradition (20) and the comparative and interdisciplinary workshops that gave rise to them. My article also follows up Gerstle's question, seeing it as of potential relevance not just for Africa or Asia but also for any literary forms in which performance has a part and thus for theories of "literature" more generally.1Issue title: Performance Literature II

The how of literature

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