Acceso usuarios
Alexander J. McNair
This study examines the Sephardic ballad “Tamar y Amnón” through the lens of performance. Anthropologically oriented folklorists of the last several decades have shifted their focus from the collection of texts to the reconstruction of events, i.e., to understanding how the lore functions among the folk. Using the transcripts, field tapes, and notes from Samuel Armistead and Joseph Silverman’s multimedia archive, Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews, along with ethnographic materials from other scholars, the article analyzes the way a relatively stable text can be subject to multiple interpretations within a community, depending on who is singing and for whom. As might be expected in a ballad that deals with incest, gender dynamics within Sephardic groups inflect performances a great deal. The process by which communities construct and negotiate meaning in the preservation of oral tradition is particularly relevant to the study of medieval literature, whose texts often inscribe performances even when they were not written specifically to be performed.
