| dc.description | Abstract This paper is a continuation of a series of studies in which I have been looking at various aspects of the possible relationships between the poetics of oral epic performance among the Ohafia Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria and traditional aesthetic principles as voiced by local connoisseurs, ordinary listeners, and the bards themselves, either in the course of performances or in interviews recorded outside the various performance contexts. As I have pointed out in the earlier studies (Azuonye 1983, 1990a-d, and 1992), oral literary criticism is by no means peripheral to the Ohafia Igbo oral epic tradition.2 My field investigations of its dynamic interplay with performance confirms Parry's (1928) and similar observations by subsequent scholars that oral literary criticism not only mirrors and defines the ethnoaesthetic standards by which singers, performances, and particular tales are ranked and enjoyed within a society, but that, in addition, it provides valuable parameters for the critical analysis of the features of the oral texts both in relation to their ethnohistorical significance and for the comparative understanding of some cross-cultural features of the genre to which they belong. | eng |
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