The Bantu poetic traditions: Interfaces between language and versification

Authors

  • Emiliano Minerba University of Bayreuth

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/11449

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the versification practices of four Bantu languages—Swahili, Tswana, Zulu and Chewa—in a comparative perspective. This comparison is based on the fact that the suprasegmental phonologies of these four languages share a common feature, penultimate lengthening. It will be claimed that penultimate lengthening is the main linguistic feature that organises the line in the poetic traditions taken into account. As a linguistic phenomenon, penultimate lengthening shows some variation in its function among the four languages: it will be shown that this corresponds to analogous variations in the versification practices. The ultimate aim of this paper is to encourage further research in the field of stylistics of Bantu poetic traditions, a domain where joint work between linguists and scholars in literary studies could lead to innovative and fruitful results.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Emiliano Minerba, University of Bayreuth

Emiliano Minerba graduated at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” in 2017. In 2018 he started his PhD research in joint agreement between “L’Orientale” and the University of Bayreuth. He completed his PhD thesis, Comparative historical analysis of Swahili and Wolof metrical systems, in 2022. Currently he is working at the University of Bayreuth as a post-doc in the frame of the PhiGe project (“Philosophy and Genre: Creating a Textual Basis for African Philosophy”). Beyond Swahili and Wolof poetic traditions, other research interests of his are modern Swahili and Wolof literatures, particularly theatre, and oral poetries, especially in the Bantu area.

Emiliano can be contacted at: emi.nerba@proton.me

Downloads

Published

2025-01-20

Issue

Vol. 28 No. 2 (2024): Kervan 28/2

Section

Articles

License

Gli autori che pubblicano su Kervan accettano le seguenti condizioni:

  1. Gli autori mantengono i diritti sulla loro opera e cedono alla rivista il diritto di prima pubblicazione dell'opera, contemporaneamente licenziata sotto una Licenza Creative Commons - Attribuzione che permette ad altri di condividere l'opera indicando la paternità intellettuale e la prima pubblicazione su questa rivista.
  2. Gli autori possono aderire ad altri accordi di licenza non esclusiva per la distribuzione della versione dell'opera pubblicata (es. depositarla in un archivio istituzionale o pubblicarla in una monografia), a patto di indicare che la prima pubblicazione è avvenuta su questa rivista.