AUTHORS

 

INTRODUCTION

I. SOCIOCULTURAL REALITY AND PRESENT-DAY BERTSOLARITZA


II. ACHIEVING A BALANCE AMONGST THE CHALLENGES FACING BERTSOLARITZA: KEYS TO THE CREATIVITY OF THE TRADITION


III. THE PROCESS OF CREATING IMPROVISED BERTSOS


IV. PROPOSALS FOR A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

1.The dead-end analysis of oral art in terms of written poetics

2. Enchantment by .but lack of charm of the oralist theory

3. A new theoretical framework for improvised bertsolaritza


V. GLOSSARY

After the critical appraisal of the principal socio-cultural characteristics of improvised bertsolaritza (chapters I and II) and the description with examples of the procedures for the creation of this oral art form, of its techniques, its cognitive mechanisms and the limits that improvisation places on the bertsolari (chapter III), this chapter is an outline of the main features of a new theoretical framework which we have been developing over the last two decades as participating observers in the world of improvised bertsolaristic activity.

As we mentioned in the introduction, the need to draw up a suitable theoretical framework has arisen from the observation that the methodologies in use are inadequate to explain so specific a phenomenon as the improvised oral art of the bertsolaris. It is this inability of current theories to describe, in a thorough manner, the reality of improvised bertsolaritza which has pushed us to draw up the theoretical framework which we present here and not our predilection for a specific theoretical school.

It would therefore be wise to start the presentation of our proposed theoretical framework with a review of the main methods of analysis which have continually and systematically clashed with the reality of modern-day improvised bertsolaritza and which we have been obliged to discard, at least in part.