APELA (“Association for the study of African literatures“) launches a series of workshops on the relation between African literatures and orality.

Researchers from the CNRS-based LLACAN (“Speech, Language and Cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa”), organizing the event with their partners from the INALCO (“National Institute for Eastern Languages and Cultures”), will attempt to assess how orality and script relate to eachother in literary studies.

Six lines of work will be submitted to raise interaction between the two modes of expression and creation.

Alongside conferences on the processes of putting orality genres into literature (tales and epics were once oral before becoming works of literature), the influences of literature on orality will also be examined (including a look upon the current neo-storytelling trend on radio or TV networks, which finds inspiration in verbal art stemming from literature).

The workshop will also tackle the notion of neo-orality, with pieces of work one can now find in CD or DVD, and which bring oral and literary production closer together.

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