Early Tahitian Poetics

Download or read book Early Tahitian Poetics written by David Meyer and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-11-27 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tahiti has a rich history of oral tradition. Early visitors to the island transcribed recitations of myth, battle address, and land description. Until now their poetic organization has remained unexplored. From a computationally assisted analysis, this book describes early use of meter and parallelism and speculates on manner of composition. It sheds light on a poetic style unanticipated for Polynesia and remarkable among world poetries.