Abstract

Miao ancient songs include both text and libretto. The former refers to the written texts collected, translated, and arranged by scholars. And the latter, libretto, as a kind of dynamic texts, is still spreading in folk today. For a long time, most studies on Miao ancient songs only focused on its lyrics from a top-down perspective and inclines to deconstruct them with literature theories from the west or Han due to language barriers and insufficient field work.

Based on the field work advocated by literary anthropology and aimed at transcending the discipline of three central multicultural interactions, the author of this book takes Miao ancient songs as a case study of oral poetics of non-Han ethnics. Through analyzing its lyrics and folk customs, singer and audience, functions and inheritance, the author attempts to explore oral poetic expressions of Miao, which does not have its own written form of language.

To study Miao ancient songs form the perspective of literary anthropology is not only a practice but also an application of the ideas and methods of literary anthropology. The logic starting point of the study is based on the literariness and folk customs conveyed in ancientMiao song, and so it can be viewed as a joint of literature and anthropology. The purposes of emphasizing on oral poetics study from literary anthropology is intended to describe and interpret the oral tradition and poetic wisdom of Miao, and tries to make it participate in the national overall narrative and contribute to the common development of Chinese ethnic cultures. This book includes nine parts, that is, foreword, abstract, contents，body, appendix, bibliography, index, afterword, recommendation letters.

The body part of this book contains six chapters. Chapter one is the studies survey and theory construction of ancient Miao ancient songs. Starting with combing and reflecting what have been done in the past one hundred years, the investigation, collecting, and sorting on Miao ancient songs, the author of this book puts forward the necessity to study Miao ancient songs from the literary anthropology.

Chapter two mainly deals with the distribution and assortments of Miao ancient songs. Due to the wide distribution of Miao ethnic, the author manages to extract the characteristics respectively from the three dialect areas, that is, ancient songs in middle Miao area characterized with vivid god meaning, ancient songs in the east embodied with magic elements, and the western featured with war tales. This book focuses on exploring the motif of genesis, war and migration from the common characteristics of the three types of songs.

Chapter three focuses on the lyrics and customs reflected in Miao ancient songs. The research of lyrics and customs of literary anthropology is a kind of stereo research on its music, lyrics and custom. Singing itself is very important because it is the center of singing, lyric and custom, so researches on Miao ancient songs shouldn't just focus on the lyrics, so the author intends to introduce musicality and custom into its study based on three keywords of myth, history and nation which are necessary for analyzing Miao ancient songs.

Chapter four concentrates on the singers and the audiences of Miao ancient songs. Singers of Miao ancient songs are a group, including Badui, Donglang, Lishi and Gugeshi, which a single singer can not simply cover. The role of audiences shouldn't be neglected because they participate in the creation and inheritance in the performance of ancient songs. From the point of audience, comparing to the visual word reading of written literature, the audience of Miao ancient songs are quite multivariant due to the auditory of literary, that is, besides human kind, everything, even ghosts and gods can be viewed as the recipient. For example, the audience of the Thunder's Tale in Sacrificing for Thunder that popular in the eastern dialect zone of Miao ethnic includes the Thunder God and other gods and spirits, while the singing of Yalu king in the western dialect not only singing for the spirits of dead but also for the sacrifice horse, especially when the Sacrifice of Horse Killing was performed. Yalu King, that is often performed on funeral in Mashan district would be a case study which is discussed in detail in this book to explore the life ideas of Miao ethnic reflected in Miao ancient songs.

Chapter five analyzes the function and inheritance of Miao ancient song. Comparing the writing and reading of fix texts, Miao ancient songs have always been in a flowing inheritance, even though they have been textualized（collecting, sorting, publishing and study）in the past one hundred years, they have been inherited as texts form among Miao people during thousands of years. So function and inheritance study on Miao ancient songs should not only focus on literature survey but also need the supplement of field ethnography. Ethnography in Marriage Ceremony Words of Miao in the eastern dialect area is used as the demonstration material for its function research. On the inheritance part, by combing the materials and field data, the author traces the transforming process of“Guzang festival”existing in all the three dialects, and takes it as a case study to reflect the inheriting development of ancient Miao songs.

Chapter six discusses Miao traditions from the perspective of literary anthropology. The reason that this book intends to introduce literary anthropology into the research of Miao ancient songs lies in that the traditional texts poetics couldn't interpret the taboos and contexts of Miao ancient songs. The commonness of ballad with taboo are reflected in the four characteristics of multi-dimensional function, ritual accompanying, diverse audience and mother tongue transmission. literary anthropology is a kind of practice of literary anthropology theory and reference of literary anthropology methods. Advocating literary anthropology aims to promote a kind of reflection and regression and to achieve multiple interactions beyond the three centers.

In the conclusion part, the author of this book holds the idea that the literary anthropology research on oral poetics is not only a reflection on the weaknesses of intellectual writing but also a promotion of interaction and diversity of oral poetics. On one hand, it enables us to understand literature is both a kind of transmission way and a kind of live style, and on the other hand, it reminds us that cultural evolution theory shouldn't be the only way to interpret local knowledge, history identification can be evolution and recycle, but also degradation and perishing. Only in this way, can we have a full understanding the essence thatliterary anthropology emphasis is“the anthropology of literature”and“the literariness of human kind”.

Keywords: Miao Ancient Song; Ballad; Oral Poetics; Literature Anthropology; Badui