Reciter

It is not primarily lack of plot, or lack of action and suspense, or imperfect realization of character, or lack of anything of what is called 'theatre', that makes these plays so lifeless: it is primarily that their rhythm of speech is something that we cannot associate with any human being except a poetry reciter.

Indeed it is very doubtful that Seneca's plays were ever intended for full performance; it is more likely that they were presented by a cast of reciters, like an oratorio.

1972, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics, London: Heinemann, Part Two, p. 75, The African song gets its effect from an accumulation of details, statements and imagery, and in the variation of the tone and attitude of the poet-reciter to the object of praise.

Alemah in Arabic means a learned woman. It was the name given to women in conservative eighteenth-century Egyptian society who were accomplished reciters of poetry.

These were emotional occasions for Ibn Battuta, who describes the beauty of the Quran reciters’ voices that worked upon the soul, humbled the heart, made the skin tingle and brought tears to the eyes.