History of The Oral Literature Concept
Lore is seen in societies with vigorous oral conveyance practices to be a general term inclusive of both oral literature and any written literature, including sophisticated writings, as well, potentially, as visual and performance arts which may interact with these forms, extend their expression, or offer additional expressive media. Thus even where no phrase in local language which exactly translates "oral literature" is used, what constitutes "oral literature" as understood today is already understood to be part or all of the lore media with which a society conducts profound and common cultural affairs among its members, orally. In this sense, oral lore is an ancient practice and concept natural to the earliest storied communications and transmissions of bodies of knowledge and culture in verbal form near the dawn of language-based human societies, and 'oral literature' thus understood was putatively recognized in times prior to recordings of history in non-oral media including painting and writing.
Oral literature as a concept, after CE 19th century antecedents, was more widely circulated by Hector Munro Chadwick and Nora Kershaw Chadwick in their comparative work on the "growth of literature" (1932–40). In 1960, Albert B. Lord published The Singer of Tales (1960), which influentially exmamined fluidity in both ancient and later texts and "oral-formulaic" principles being used during composition-in-performance, particularly by contemporary Eastern European bards relating long traditional narratives.
From the 1970s, the term "Oral literature" appears in the work of both literary scholars and anthropologists: Finnegan (1970, 1977), Görög-Karady (1982), Bauman (1986) and in the articles of the journal Cahiers de Littérature Orale.
Read more about this topic: Oral Literature
Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history, oral, literature and/or concept:
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“My opposition [to interviews] lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“There are people whom even children’s literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The concept is interesting: to see, as though reflected
In streaming windowpanes, the look of others through
Their own eyes.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)