Abstract

CHICA DELGADO, María-Cruz La. Opening Formulas in Maya Tojolabal Oral Traditional Folktales. Estud. cult. maya [online]. 2019, vol.54, pp.255-284. ISSN 0185-2574.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.ecm.22019.54.980.

This paper analyzes the opening formulas of a set of Maya Tojolabal oral traditional folktales. It argues that oral traditional indigenous folktales constitute a verbal art that the narrators themselves distinguish from daily orality by framing the beginning and end of each story with these devices. The paper aims at both describing these elements and their obligatory character, and analyzing their literary as well as pragmatic function. Also, it shows how opening formulas have common elements with a certain margin of variation. All this confirms the idea that the oral narrative tradition is a conventionalized verbal art, with certain aesthetic rules and variable elements that are common to a cultural community.

Keywords : Oral tradition; Maya literature; opening formula; Tojolabal; verbal art.