The Nowau oral texts collected in this volume were recorded by Scoditti during the several years of fieldwork on Kitawa Island (Papua New Guinea) devoted mainly to understanding the mental mechanisms followed by the
image creators
, that are the makers of the
kula ceremonial canoes
, the poets, the magicians, the female and male singers who perform a poetic text
orally written
by a poet to an
oral score
composed by a musician. With these early works, Scoditti identifies within Kitawa culture a clear distinction between the
author
and the
performer
-
interpreter
of a given oral text, be it a
verbal
and a
non-verbal
one, a distinction that has called into question the hypothesis that in a culture that does not know, or use, any form of
phonetic writing
, a
text
is composed at the time of its performance, so that
composition
and
performance
would coincide.
A first result of his interpretation is
Kitawa. A linguistic and aesthetic analysis of visual
art in Melanesia (1990, De Gruyter Mouton), then by
Kitawa oral poetry. An example
from Melanesia (1996, ANU Press),
Notes on the cognitive texture of an oral mind. Kitawa, a Melanesian culture
(2012, Sean Kingston Publishing) and, now
Kitawa Literary Fragments: How Storytelling Shapes Spacetime in a Melanesian Matrilineal Culture
.
