Books by Dennis Tedlock

"A much needed book. It not only provides the proper orientation to its material, but its humanistic approach is more perceptive and illuminating than technical scholarship." -Theodore H. Gaster, Columbia University

Dennis Tedlock presents startling new methods for transcribing, translating, and interpreting oral performance that carry wide implications for all areas of the spoken arts. Moreover, he reveals how the categories and concepts of poetics and hermeneutics based in Western literary traditions cannot be carried over in their entirety to the spoken arts of other cultures but require extensive reevaluation.