On Friday, Óscar Abenójar Sanjuán will be giving a public talk in English entitled ‘Oral Literature in the Contemporary Mediterranean. Old Genres into New Wineskins’ at the Faculty of Arts Library of the University of Malta, Msida campus.

Several old narratives, songs, rituals, riddles, and superstitions have survived in the Mediterranean region from antiquity until today.

Nevertheless, the ways of transmission are no longer the same. This talk will give some examples of the transformations occurring nowadays in the field of oral literature.

Abenójar has a PhD in comparative literature and has specialised in oral narrative and ethnography. At present he teaches Hispanic literature at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, Republic of Korea. He is the author or co-author, among others, of several studies about oral traditions in North Africa: Cuentos populares de la Cabilia (2014); La hermosa Ilona: antología de baladas populares húngaras (2014); La princesa cautiva y el pájaro del viento: mitos y cuentos del norte de Argelia (2015), and La grandas de oro y otros cuentos tradicionales del oasis del Mzab (Argelia) (2016). 

In June 2019, Abenójar gave a video talk on techniques and methods for collecting oral tradition to researchers as part of the Oral Traditions Project. This is his first visit to Malta.

The talk is being held at the Faculty of Arts Library of the University of Malta on Friday at 6pm.