suggestions

[David Samuels]

Dear Aileen,

For repetition/parallelism stuff I would look at Repetition in Discourse
(ed. Barbara Johnstone); A Discourse-Centered Approach to Culture (Greg
Urban, esp. his chapter on macroparallelism); Performing Dreams (Laura
Graham); also Laura Graham's article, "A public sphere in Amazonia? The
depersonalized collaborative construction of dicoursse in Xavante"
(American Ethnologist 20(4):717-741, 1993); any of Jakobson's work on
poetic function; Greg Urban's article in Natural Histories of Discourse
(ed. Michael Silverstein & Greg Urban), which looks at how texts determine
replication; and Lee Haring's article, "Imitation and parody in West Indian
Ocean myths" (Journal of Folklore Research 29(3):199-224, 1992), which
looks at how contexts determine replication.

There's also a not-great book but one which may be useful to you, called "I
got the work in me and I can sing it, you know: a study of the performed
African-American Sermon," by Gerald L. Davis.  It would have a bunch of
texts for comparison.

Best,



David W. Samuels
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
212 Machmer Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003

VOX: (413) 545-2702
FAX: (413) 545-9494
email: samuels at anthro.umass.edu