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

3.1. Improvised bertsolaritza as a rhetorical genre

3.2. Bertsolaritza and the five canons of rhetoric

3.3. Inventio in improvised bertsolaritza

3.4. Dispositio and improvised bertsolaritza

3.5. Elocutio: the poetic function in improvised bertsolaritza

3.6. Memory and improvised bertsolaritza

3.7. Actio and improvised bertsolaritza

3.8. Final point

V. GLOSSARY

3.2 Bertsolaritza and the five canons of rhetoric

Classical rhetoric, more than a purely theoretical construction, is a critical and meticulous description of the mechanisms and procedures of the orators of the time. As we have said above, we are not trying to apply these instruments and procedures in a mechanistic way to improvised bertsolaritza. It is more a case of constructing our own critical description from the direct observation of the tasks undertaken by today’s bertsolaris. It is here that classical rhetoric can offer us a methodology which has admirably proved itself to be fruitful and efficacious. Although:

The study of rhetoric, most seem to agree, is essentially the study of rhetoric´s five canons… They provide a structure that allows rhetors and rhetoricians to analyze and study separately the various parts of a complete rhetorical system.(60)

These five canons (also called parts, faculties, functions, categories or divisions) of rhetoric are generally known by their Latin names:

• Invention. The search for and creation of suitable arguments
• Arrangement. Articulation of the arguments in a suitable order. Structuring of the discourse.
• Style. Suitable formulation of the arguments
• Memory. Retention in the memory of the arguments, suitably ordered and formulated. (The discourses were prepared to be put down into writing, and they had to be memorised as such)
• Delivery. The delivery of the discourse, the performance.

These five canons of classical rhetoric make up a first class analytical model, the validity of which has lasted to our time:

In classical rhetoric, the canons represented the process followed by rhetors as they composed pieces of discourse… In modern rhetoric, they represent the aspect of composing which work together in a recursive, synergistic, mutually dependent relationship.(61)

Regarding its application to bertsolaritza, it is better to interpret the five canons just as they were understood in antiquity, as they allow us to analyse the process that bertsolaris follow when they compose pieces for discourse, i.e., when they improvise their bertsos, and establish differences between this and the creative process of other genres.

From the critical description of the mechanisms for the construction of the improvised bertso, outlined in chapter III, it can be followed that the bertsolari, on improvising the bertso, carries out, more or less consciously, the five tasks corresponding to the five canons of rhetoric. We pointed out in that chapter that, for the improviser, each bertso is a “rhetorical unit” which (s)he has to suitably organise. The bertsolari faces each bertso as if it were an independent discourse, even though it may, at times, form part of a longer discursive unit (a performance or a whole event). In any case, each bertso makes up an independent discursive unit and it is in each bertso that we have to look for and analyse which elements from each of the five canons of rhetoric are adopted in the improvised bertsolaritza.