A Analysis On Oral Poetry: Hani People’s Epic Twelve Ancient Songs

Twelve Ancient Songs, which has extensive content, important functions anddeep artistic appeal, is a colection of traditional oral epics of Hani minority andincludes stories of creating the world and kinds of cultures. In the past, TwelveAncient Songs has been always explained from sociological and anthropological point ofview. However, very few scholars researched its internal structure. Operating with the OralFormulaic Theory, and using methods of text analysis and field work, the articleresearches the internal structure of Twelve Ancient Songs from formula, parallel,theme and story pattern spectrums, discusses how Hani traditional culture influencesthe internal structure of the oral songs, and explores the narrative style，aestheticsfeatures and cultural connotations of it from a new angle.The paper divided into three parts:The first part is introducion, which reviews the beginning, development andapplications of the Oral Formulaic Theory, summarizes the achievements of researchon Twelve Ancient Songs, points out the the significance and innovation of the paper,and briefs the the situation of the field work.The second part is the main body of the paper, which is inclusive of chapter one,two, hree and four. In this part, the formulas, parallel, themes and story pattern inTwelve Ancient Songs are analyzed in detail, thus its internal structure, narrative style，aesthetics features and cultural connotations are examined.Chapter one analyzes address formula, character name formula, number formula,time formula and place formula, and points features of the formulas and therelationships between the formula and Hani traditional culture.Chapter two makes a synthesis of parallel sentences and parallel passages inTwelve Ancient Songs and an analysis of interaction among traditional culture context,parallel and its aesthetics features.By the methods of contrastive research, Chapter three analyzes Twelve AncientSongs from theme spectrum. By comparing the Kuzhazha themes in three songs song by one singer, and the original ring-tree theme, the hide-the-sky-tree theme, thecutting-tree theme and tell-time theme in two ring-tree stories song by differentsingers, Chapter three uncovers the variability of theme and then analyzes how thevariability eventuates in the narrative inconsistency of Twelve Ancient Songs.In Chapter four, the author discovers the “gain�'lose�'gain again” story patternfrom six stories in the eleven songs in Twelve Ancient Songs, and points out that thiskind of story pattern is shaped by Hani people’s common cultural psychology.The third part is conclusion:First, the Beima uses the methods of memorizing and composing in performancein the same time in order to performing and transmitting Twelve Ancient Songs. Onone hand, the Beima should learn and recite Twelve Ancient Songs under his teacher’sstrict teaching and supervision; on the other hand, the Beima does not keep rigidly thememorized content. He may adjust the word or phrase formula, verses and theme inperformance——that is performing improvisation.Second, Twelve Ancient Songs should be realized with considering the methodsof composing oral songs and Hani people’s tradintonal culture context, in order toavoid treating it with habit of enjoying written literature. Thus the reader canappreciate the narrative style and aesthetics features of it with new eyes.At last, the outside tradintonal culture context has an effect on the internalstructure of Twelve Ancient Songs in many ways. The formula, parallel, theme andstory pattern are rooted in tradition and influenced deeply by Hani people’stradintonal culture, for instance, Ailao mountain area, terraced field, Rushroom House,calendar, rite and festival, primitive belief, Beima transmission and history of nationalmigration. The Analysis of the influences would help recognize the culturalconnotations that implied in the internal structure of Twelve Ancient Songs fromdifferent angles and in various fields.