séminaire du 13 novembre 2008
Je m'interroge sur ce que j'appellerai l'idéologie de l'oraliture, idéologie linguistique qui anime les créolistes (en bref, la thèse selon laquelle l'oralité du conte précède la littérature) et qui anime aussi les historiens de la littérature quand ils posent a priori que les Contes de Perrault sont issus de l'art populaire du contage: Charles Perrault ne serait qu'un marqueur de paroles qui aurait «recueilli» ses histoires auprès des conteurs paysans en conservant leur style. En réalité on peut soutenir, à l'inverse, que l'oralité est alors fabriquée et mise en scène par la littérature, car l'écriture et l'art littéraire (la rhétorique) précèdent cet art du conte et l'oralité dont il se réclame.
La question est clairement posée dans l'article de Green.
green_orality_reading.pdf — D. H. Green, Orality and Reading: The State of Research in Medieval Studies, Speculum, Vol. 65, No.2. (Apr., 1990), pp. 267-280.
La théorie de l'oralité comme art formulaire (the oral-formulaic theory of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord) a détournés les chercheurs de l'étude de l'oralité dans sa diversité. Or il existe à la fois une diversité des formats de production de la voix, une diversité des vernaculaires, par contraste avec l'unicité figée de la langue formulaire, et une diversité des registres et des dialectes au sein d'un vernaculaire donné. Pour prendre en compte cette diversité, il faut réintroduire le Variationnisme dans l'étude de l'oralité.
(269) The emphasis has been throughout on the two dimensions of orality and writing and on their interplay. By contrast, work in various vernacular literatures in the Middle Ages has been relatively slow in reaching this position, mainly because the undoubted stimulus given and the spell exercised by the oral-formulaic theory of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord (The Singer of Tales, 1965) have led to a concentration on oral composition at the cost of other aspects.
Mais on peut se demander si l'accent exclusivement mis sur l'art formulaire de la composition orale permet de rendre justice à la symbiose écrit-oral dans la société médiévale.
(270) One may question whether the oral-formulaic practice described by Parry and Lord (the poet composes his work orally, by means of formulas, in the act of performing) may be equated with oral practice at large. I leave on one side the logical error, sufficiently stressed by others, of suggesting that because all oral poetry is formulaic, therefore all formulaic poetry is oral, and turn instead to Ruth Finnegan's critique. She reminds us that composition-in-performance is not the only kind of oral composition, that there are recorded cases where the process of composition, while still oral, can precede and be separate from the act of performance, so that by the criterion of composition these poems are oral, but by the criterion of performance they are not oral-formulaic in the sense of Parry and Lord. On the other hand, there is the situation, common in the Middle Ages, where a work may be composed in writing but delivered orally, so that by the criterion of performance such an example must be termed oral. In other words, the two features, composition and performance, seen by the theory as simultaneous, as different aspects of the same process, may occur in some oral traditions in contradiction to one another.
La récitation à haute voix d'un texte appris par cœur est une pratique fort répandue ainsi que la lecture à haute voix d'un texte écrit.
(271) The exponents of the [oral-formulaic] theory frequently say "oral poetry" when what they mean is the more restricted phenomenon of "oral-formulaic poetry" and thereby exclude the alternative of prior oral composition and memorization. They say "oral poetry" when what they mean is "poetry composed in oral performance," a definition given by Lord which likewise ties all oral poetry down to formulaic extemporization. They say "oral poetry" when what is meant is the composition of such poetry, so that they largely ignore its reception and therewith the intermediate possibility that much was composed in writing in the Middle Ages which was meant to be received by the ear. Finally, by concentrating on oral poetry in our period they ignore the symbiosis of oral with written, a medieval characteristic which, on its simplest level, means that there is no clear-cut line between oral and written literature and, on a higher level, that there was a long period of interaction between the two, so that the introduction of written literature in the vernacular did not immediately deal a deathblow to oral forms.
Mais plus encore, cette nouvelle approche de l'oralité conduit à repenser les pratiques de lecture et à faire une différence entre la lecture à haute voix pour l'oreille d'un auditoire et la lecture silencieuse pour les yeux, ainsi qu'à faire une différence entre lire du latin et lire un vernaculaire.
(276-278) [Phrases like "to write for someone" or "to seek and find" only demonstrate] that the work existed in written form, while leaving it quite open whether a private reader or a public recital of the text was expected. In ignoring the possibility of a written text's being recited publicly and in focusing exclusively on the private reader, Scholz has moved to the opposite extreme to that of the oral-formulaic school, for whom both composition and reception took place in public; if there were grounds for thinking that this school ignored the complex medieval symbiosis between oral and written, the same criticism can be leveled against Scholz at the other pole.
Un même texte peut être écrit à la fois pour être entendu (lecture à haute voix) et pour être lu (lecture silencieuse).
In regarding medieval reading for itself, rather than in its interplay with orality, Scholz is guilty of ignoring what I should term the intermediate mode of reception, widespread in the Middle Ages, in which a work was composed with an eye to public recital from a written text, but also for the occasional private reader. One of the pointers to this intermediate mode is the formula "to hear or to read," originally at home in classical Latin literature, but also to be found in medieval Latin literature, in legal practice, and in the various vernaculars. It is ironic that Scholz, who uses the same formula in the title of his book (Horen und Lesen), nowhere discusses it systematically or pays attention to the two modes of reception which it combines. This neglect is not without its effects on his interpretation of criteria which he thinks suggest a reader. At one point he discusses certain stylistic features which he regards as better suited either to an auditory or to a visual reception, but he fails to see that such a distinction is irrelevant in the case of works in the intermediate mode, whose audience therefore includes listeners as well as potential readers. These listeners receive such a work under the same physical conditions as do the listeners of an orally composed work, yet they are now exposed to a work which is composed at leisure, in writing, and also with an eye to readers, so that it is potentially much more demanding.
Une autre définition de literacy.
(280) We need also a definition of literacy not derived from another period, but in accord with the peculiarities of the Middle Ages and open to the possibility that literacy may be dislodged from the realm of Latin and find a place in the vernacular. Given the importance of reading in this rise of a lay literacy we must give due emphasis to reception of texts, but… we must consider this in terms of hearing as well as reading and grant a place to the intermediate mode in which a work may be destined for both modes of reception.
Cette perspective présente, pour nous, un double intérêt.
Nous sommes d'abord ramenés à la scène langagière telle que l'ethnologue l'observe sur le terrain, où les textes littéraires ou religieux qui sont lus à haute voix sont composés en langue vernaculaire, et non pas en latin ni en sanskrit (je ferai allusion à la lecture quotidienne de l'Adhyatma-Ramayanam dans les maisons Nayar du Kerala au début du XXe siècle).
Les dispositifs d'écriture utilisés au Moyen-Age pour préparer la réception de l'œuvre par l'oreille autant que par les yeux sont déjà des scénographies de la voix.
Lectures complémentaires
Les lectures proposées (PDFs à télécharger dans la bibliothèque numérique) sont un choix imparfait, circonstanciel et très personnel. En l'occurrence, pour ce séminaire et sur ce sujet, je dois réparer un oubli et recommander parmi les livres les plus classiques et fascinants sur la lettre et la voix:
Paul Zumthor, Introduction à la poésie orale, Paris, Seuil, 1983.
et surtout:
Paul Zumthor, La Lettre et la voix. De la «littérature»médiévale, Paris, Seuil, 1987.
