Oral tradition

A Kyrgyz manaschi

See also: Oral tradition and the historical Jesus

Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another.^[1][2] The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants. In this way, it is possible for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other knowledges across generations without a writing system.

A narrower definition of oral tradition is sometimes appropriate.^[1] Sociologists might also emphasize a requirement that the material is held in common by a group of people, over several generations, and might distinguish oral tradition from testimony or oral history.^[3] In a general sense, "oral tradition" refers to the transmission of cultural material through vocal utterance, and was long held to be a key descriptor of folklore (a criterion no longer rigidly held by all folklorists).^[4] As an academic discipline, it refers both to a set of objects of study and a method by which they are studied^[5] -- the method may be called variously "oral traditional theory", "the theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition" and the "Parry-Lord theory" (after two of its founders; see below) The study of oral tradition is distinct from the academic discipline of oral history,^[6] which is the recording of personal memories and histories of those who experienced historical eras or events.^[7] It is also distinct from the study of orality, which can be defined as thought and its verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy (especially writing and print) are unfamiliar to most of the population.^[8]

Study of oral tradition

History

Filip Višnjić (1767–1834) Serbian blind guslar

Oral tradition as a field of study had its origins^[9] in the work of the Serb scholar Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864), a contemporary and friend of the Brothers Grimm. Vuk pursued similar projects of "salvage folklore" (similar to rescue archaeology) in the cognate traditions of the Southern Slavic regions which would later be gathered into Yugoslavia, and with the same admixture of romantic and nationalistic interests (he considered all those speaking Serbo-Croat as Serbs). Somewhat later, but as part of the same scholarly enterprise of nationalist studies in folklore,^[10] the turcologist Vasily Radlov (1837–1918) would study the songs of the Kara-Kirghiz in what would later become the Soviet Union; Karadzic and Radloff would provide models for the work of Parry.

Milman Parry and Albert Lord

Shortly thereafter, Milman Parry (1902–1935), pursuing a degree in Classics at the University of California, Berkeley, began to grapple with what was then called the "Homeric Question". This was usually framed as "who was Homer?" and "what are the Homeric poems?" ^[11] The Homeric question actually consists of a series of related inquiries. Parry's contribution, which drew upon and synthesized the insights of previous scholars including Marcel Jousse, Matija Murko and Arnold van Gennep, was to reconsider the foundational assumptions which framed the inquiries. This re-ordering would have consequences for a great many literatures and disciplines.^[12]

Parry's work under Antoine Meillet at the Sorbonne led to his crucial insight into the "formula", which he originally defined as "a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea."^[13] In Homeric verse, for example, phrases like eos rhododaktylos ("rosy fingered dawn") or oinops pontos ("winedark sea") occupy a certain metrical pattern that fits, in modular fashion, into the six-colon Greek hexameter, and aids the aioidos or bard in extempore composition. Moreover, phrases of this type would be subject to internal substitutions and adaptations, permitting flexibility in response to narrative and grammatical needs: podas okus Achilleus ("swift footed Achilles") is metrically equivalent to koruthaiolos Hektor ("glancing-helmed Hektor"). Parry and Lord observed that the same phenomenon was apparent in the Old English alliterative line:

Hrothgar mathelode helm Scildinga ("Hrothgar spoke, protector of the Scildings")

Beowulf mathelode bearn Ecgtheowes ("Beowulf spoke, son of Ecgtheow")

and in the junacki deseterac (heroic decasyllable) of the demonstrably oral poetry of the Serbs:

a besjedi od Orasca Tale ("But spoke of Orashatz Tale")

a besjedi Mujagin Halile ("But spoke Mujo's Halil")

In Parry's view, formulas were not individual and idiosyncratic devices of particular artists, but the shared inheritance of a tradition of singers. They were easily remembered, making it possible for the singer to execute an improvisational composition-in-performance. A later scholar commented on the potential for Parry's concept to be seen as disparaging of Homeric genius: "The meaning of the Greek term 'rhapsodize', rhapsoidein, 'to stitch song together' could then be taken in a negative sense: Homer stitched together pre-fabricated parts."^[14]

The idea indeed met with immediate resistance,^[15] because it seemed to make the fount of Western literary eloquence the slave of a system of clichés, but it accounted for such otherwise inexplicable features of the Homeric poems as gross anachronisms (revealed by advances in historical and archaeological knowledge), the presence of incompatible dialects, and the deployment of locally unsuitable epithets ("blameless Aegisthos" for the murderer of Agamemnon, or the almost comic use of "swift-footed Achilles" for the hero in conspicuously sedentary moments).^[11][16]

Mandinka Griot Al-Haji Papa Susso performing songs from the oral tradition of the Gambia on the kora

Parry was appointed to a junior professorship at Harvard, and during this time became aware of living oral traditions in the Balkan region. In two field expeditions with his young assistant Albert Lord (1912–1991) he would record thousands of songs on aluminum disks.^[17] The collection would provide the basis for an empirical documentation of the dynamics of composition of metrical narrative in traditional oral performance.^[18] This analysis included the patterns and types of variation at lexical and other levels which would yield a structural account of a work's multiformity. This phenomenon could only be accounted for in standard literary methodology by concepts of "corruption" and "distortion" of a pristine, original "ur-text" or hypothetical "lost Q" ("Quelle", German for "source"), hypothesized via stemmatology. Thus the work of Parry and Lord reduced the prominence of the historic-geographic method in folkloristics.^[19]

Parry died in 1935. His work was posthumously published by his son Adam Parry as The Making of Homeric Verse (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971). Lord, however, had meanwhile published The Singer of Tales (1960),^[20] a work which summarized both Parry's response to the Homeric Question, and the joint work he had done with Parry in the Balkans. The Parry-Lord work exercised great influence on other scholars, notably Francis P. Magoun, whose application of their model to Anglo-Saxon traditions demonstrated the explicative and problem-solving power of the theory^[21] – a process that would be repeated by other scholars in numerous independent traditions (see below).

Walter Ong

In a separate development, the media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) would begin to focus attention on the ways that communicative media shape the nature of the content conveyed.^[22] He would serve as mentor to the Jesuit, Walter Ong (1912–2003), whose interests in cultural history, psychology and rhetoric would result in Orality and Literacy (Methuen, 1980) and the important but less-known Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality and Consciousness (Cornell, 1981)^[23] These two works articulated the contrasts between cultures defined by primary orality, writing, print, and the secondary orality of the electronic age.^[15]

I style the orality of a culture totally untouched by any knowledge of writing or print, 'primary orality'. It is 'primary' by contrast with the 'secondary orality' of present-day high technology culture, in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print. Today primary culture in the strict sense hardly exists, since every culture knows of writing and has some experience of its effects. Still, to varying degrees many cultures and sub-cultures, even in a high-technology ambiance, preserve much of the mind-set of primary orality.[24]

Ong's works also made possible an integrated theory of oral tradition which accounted for both production of content (the chief concern of Parry-Lord theory) and its reception.^[15] This approach, like McLuhan's, kept the field open not just to the study of aesthetic culture but to the way physical and behavioral artifacts of oral societies are used to store, manage and transmit knowledge, so that oral tradition provides methods for investigation of cultural differences, other than the purely verbal, between oral and literate societies.

The most-often studied section of Orality and Literacy concerns the "psychodynamics of orality" This chapter seeks to define the fundamental characteristics of 'primary' orality and summarizes a series of descriptors (including but not limited to verbal aspects of culture) which might be used to index the relative orality or literacy of a given text or society.^[25]

John Miles Foley

In advance of Ong's synthesis, John Miles Foley, who studied with Robert Creed (who had in turn studied with Magoun), began a series of papers based on his own fieldwork on South Slavic oral genres, emphasizing the dynamics of performers and audiences.^[26] Foley effectively consolidated oral tradition as an academic field [2] when he compiled Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research in 1985. The bibliography gives a summary of the progress scholars made in evaluating the oral tradition up to that point, and includes a list of all relevant scholarly articles relating to the theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition. He also both established both the journal Oral Tradition and founded the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition (1986) at the University of Missouri. Foley developed Oral Theory beyond the somewhat mechanistic notions presented in earlier versions of Oral-Formulaic Theory, by extending Ong's interest in cultural features of oral societies beyond the verbal, by drawing attention to the agency of the bard and by describing how oral traditions bear meaning.

The bibliography would establish a clear underlying methodology which accounted for the findings of scholars working in the separate Linguistics fields (primarily Ancient Greek, Anglo-Saxon and Serbo-Croatian). Perhaps more importantly, it would stimulate conversation among these specialties, so that a network of independent but allied investigations and investigators could be established.^[27]

Foley's key works include The Theory of Oral Composition (1988);^[28] Immanent Art (1991); Traditional Oral Epic: The Odyssey, Beowulf and the Serbo-Croatian Return-Song (1993); The Singer of Tales in Performance (1995); Teaching Oral Traditions (1998); How to Read an Oral Poem (2002). His Pathways Project (2006-) draws parallels between the media dynamics of oral traditions and the Internet.

Acceptance and further elaboration

The theory of oral tradition would undergo elaboration and development as it grew in acceptance.^[29] While the number of formulas documented for various traditions proliferated,^[30] the concept of the formula remained lexically-bound. However, numerous innovations appeared, such as the "formulaic system"^[31] with structural "substitution slots" for syntactic, morphological and narrative necessity (as well as for artistic invention).^[32] Sophisticated models such as Foley's "word-type placement rules" followed.^[33] Higher levels of formulaic composition were defined over the years, such as "ring composition",^[34] "responsion"^[35] and the "type-scene" (also called a "theme" or "typical scene"^[36]). Examples include the "Beasts of Battle"^[37] and the "Cliffs of Death".^[38] Some of these characteristic patterns of narrative details, (like "the arming sequence;"^[39] "the hero on the beach";^[40] "the traveler recognizes his goal")^[41] would show evidence of global distribution.^[42]

At the same time, the fairly rigid division between oral and literate was replaced by recognition of transitional and compartmentalized texts and societies, including models of diglossia (Brian Stock^[43] Franz Bäuml,^[44] and Eric Havelock).^[45] Perhaps most importantly, the terms and concepts of "orality" and "literacy" came to be replaced with the more useful and apt "traditionality" and "textuality".^[46] Very large units would be defined (The Indo-European Return Song)^[47] and areas outside of military epic would come under investigation: women's song,^[48] riddles^[46] and other genres.

The methodology of oral tradition now conditions a large variety of studies, not only in folklore, literature and literacy, but in philosophy,^[49] communication theory,^[50] Semiotics,^[51] and including a very broad and continually expanding variety of languages and ethnic groups,[3][4][5][6][7][8][9], and perhaps most conspicuously in biblical studies[10], in which Werner Kelber has been especially prominent.[11]; the annual bibliography is indexed by 100 areas, most of which are ethnolinguistic divisions.[12]

Present developments explore the implications of the theory for rhetoric^[52] and composition,^[53] interpersonal communication,^[54] cross-cultural communication,[13] postcolonial studies,^[55] rural community development,[14] popular culture^[56] and film studies,[15] and many other areas. The most significant areas of theoretical development at present may be the construction of systematic hermeneutics^[57][58][59] and aesthetics^[60][61] specific to oral traditions.

Criticism and debates

The legendary Finnish storyteller Väinämöinen with his kantele

The theory of oral tradition encountered early resistance from scholars who perceived it as potentially supporting either one side or another in the controversy between what were known as "unitarians" and "analysts" – that is, scholars who believed Homer to have been a single, historical figure, and those who saw him as a conceptual "author function," a convenient name to assign to what was essentially a repertoire of traditional narrative.^[62] A much more general dismissal of the theory and its implications simply described it as "unprovable"^[63] Some scholars, mainly outside the field of oral tradition,^{[64][65][66][67]} represent (either dismissively or with approval) this body of theoretical work as reducing the great epics to children's party games like "telephone" or "Chinese whispers". While games provide amusement by showing how messages distort content via uncontextualized transmission, Parry's supporters argue that the theory of oral tradition reveals how oral methods optimized the signal-to-noise ratio and thus improved the quality, stability and integrity of content transmission.^[68]

There were disputes concerning particular findings of the theory. For example, those trying to support or refute Crowne's hypothesis found the "Hero on the Beach" formula in numerous Old English poems. It was also discovered in other works of Germanic origin, Middle English poetry, and even an Icelandic prose saga. J.A. Dane, in an article^[69] characterized as "polemics without rigor"^[70] claimed that the appearance of the theme in Ancient Greek poetry, a tradition without known connection to the Germanic, invalidated the notion of "an autonomous theme in the baggage of an oral poet."

Within Homeric studies specifically, Lord's The Singer of Tales, which focused on problems and questions that arise in conjunction with applying oral-formulaic theory to problematic texts such as the Iliad, Odyssey, and even Beowulf, influenced nearly all of the articles written on Homer and oral-formulaic composition thereafter. However, in response to Lord, Geoffrey Kirk published The Songs of Homer, questioning Lord's extension of the oral-formulaic nature of Serbian and Croatian literature (the area from which the theory was first developed) to Homeric epic. Kirk argues that Homeric poems differ from those traditions in their "metrical strictness", "formular system[s]", and creativity. In other words, Kirk argued that Homeric poems were recited under a system that gave the reciter much more freedom to choose words and passages to get to the same end than the Serbo-Croatian poet, who was merely "reproductive".^[71][72] Shortly thereafter, Eric Havelock's Preface to Plato revolutionized how scholars looked at Homeric epic by arguing not only that it was the product of an oral tradition, but also that the oral-formulas contained therein served as a way for ancient Greeks to preserve cultural knowledge across many different generations.^[73] Adam Parry, in his 1966 work "Have we Homer's Iliad?", theorized the existence of the most fully developed oral poet to his time, a person who could (at his discretion) creatively and intellectually create nuanced characters in the context of the accepted, traditional story. In fact, he discounted the Serbo-Croatian tradition to an "unfortunate" extent, choosing to elevate the Greek model of oral-tradition above all others.^[74][75] Lord reacted to Kirk's and Parry's essays with "Homer as Oral Poet", published in 1968, which reaffirmed Lord's belief in the relevance of Yugoslav poetry and its similarities to Homer and downplayed the intellectual and literary role of the reciters of Homeric epic.^[76]

Many of the criticisms of the theory have been absorbed into the evolving field as useful refinements and modifications. For example, in what Foley called a "pivotal" contribution, Larry Benson introduced the concept of "written-formulaic" to describe the status of some Anglo-Saxon poetry which, while demonstrably written, contains evidence of oral influences, including heavy reliance on formulas and themes^[77] A number of individual scholars in many areas continue to have misgivings about the applicability of the theory or the aptness of the South Slavic comparison,^[78] and particularly what they regard as its implications for the creativity which may legitimately be attributed to the individual artist.^[79] However, at present, there seems to be little systematic or theoretically coordinated challenge to the fundamental tenets of the theory; as Foley put it, ""there have been numerous suggestions for revisions or modifications of the theory, but the majority of controversies have generated further understanding.^[80]

See also

• American Indian elder
• Intangible culture
• Oral law
• Oral literature
• Oral-formulaic composition
• Oral history
• Orality
• Secondary orality
• Traditional knowledge
• Oral Torah
• Patha, Śrauta
• Oral Tradition Journal
• Parampara
• Understanding Media
• World Oral Literature Project

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Vansina, Jan: Oral Tradition as History, 1985, James Currey Publishers, ISBN 0-85255-007-3, 9780852550076; at page 27 and 28, where Vasina defines oral tradition as "verbal messages which are reported statements from the past beyond the present generation" which "specifies that the message must be oral statements spoken, sung or called out on musical instruments only"; "There must be transmission by word of mouth over at least a generation". He points out that "Our definition is a working definition for the use of historians. Sociologists, linguists or scholars of the verbal arts propose their own, which in, e.g., sociology, stresses common knowledge. In linguistics, features that distinguish the language from common dialogue (linguists), and in the verbal arts features of form and content that define art (folklorists)."
2. ^ Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: "Methodology and African Prehistory", 1990, UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa; James Currey Publishers, ISBN 0-85255-091-X, 9780852550915; see Ch. 7; "Oral tradition and its methodology" at pages 54-61; at page 54: "Oral tradition may be defined as being a testimony transmitted verbally from one generation to another. Its special characteristics are that it is verbal and the manner in which it is transmitted."
3. ^ Henige, David. "Oral, but Oral What? The Nomenclatures of Orality and Their Implications" Oral Tradition, 3/1-2 (1988): 229-38. p 232; Henige cites Jan Vansina (1985). Oral tradition as history. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press
4. ^ Degh, Linda. American Folklore and the Mass Media. Bloomington: IUP, 1994, p. 31
5. ^ Dundes, Alan, "Editor's Introduction" to The Theory of Oral Composition, John Miles Foley. Bloomington, IUP, 1988, pp. ix-xii
6. ^ Henige, David. "Oral, but Oral What? The Nomenclatures of Orality and Their Implications" Oral Tradition, 3/1-2 (1988): 229-38. p 232; Henige cites Jan Vansina (1985). Oral tradition as history. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press
7. ^ Oral History
8. ^ Ong, Walter, S.J., Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen, 1982 p 12
9. ^ The history of the theory of oral tradition was first reported by John Miles Foley; the following overview draws upon Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography, (NY: Garland Publishing, 1985, 1986, 1989); additional material is summarized from the overlapping prefaces to the following volumes: The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology, (Indiana University Press, 1988, 1992); Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); The Singer of Tales in Performance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995) and Comparative Research on Oral Traditions: A Memorial for Milman Parry (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1987).
10. ^ "Early Scholarship on Oral Traditions": Radloff, Jousse and Murko Oral Tradition 5:1 (1990) 73-90
11. ^ ^{a b} Foley, John Miles. The Theory of Oral Composition. Bloomington: IUP, 1991, Chapters 1 & 2
12. ^ Milman Parry. "Studies in the epic technique of oral verse-making. I: Homer and Homeric style". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 41 (1930), pp. 118ff.
13. ^ Adam Parry (ed.). The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971, p. 272.
14. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. Routledge, London & New York, 1982, 2002; p. 22.
15. ^ ^{a b c} Foley, John Miles. The Theory of Oral Composition. Bloomington: IUP, 1991, pp. 57 ff.
16. ^ Foley, John Miles. Immanent Art. From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic. Bloomington: IUP, 1991. 3, 52
17. ^ Milman Parry On-Line Collection
18. ^ The work is reviewed and analyzed in Lord, Albert, The Singer of Tales. Cambridge: Harvard UP 1960.
19. ^ Foley, John Miles. Immanent Art. From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic. Bloomington: IUP, 1991. 100, 100n11, 102, 119
20. ^ Albert B. Lord. The Singer of Tales. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 24. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1981
21. ^ Francis P. Magoun, Jr. The oral-formulaic character of Anglo-Saxon narrative poetry. Speculum Vol. 28 (1953), pp. 446-67.
22. ^ See for example Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1962.
23. ^ Walter J. Ong. Fighting for Life: Context, Sexuality and Consciousness. Cornell University Press, Ithaca & London, 1981.
24. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, p. 11.
25. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word, pp. 31-76.
26. ^ Foley, John Miles. The Theory of Oral Composition. Bloomington: IUP, 1991, p 76.
27. ^ Foley, John Miles. Oral Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography. NY: Garland, 1985. The Theory of Oral Composition. Bloomington: IUP, 1991, pp. 64-66.
28. ^ John Miles Foley. The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1988.
29. ^ Foley, John Miles. "Oral Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography." NY: Garland, 1985. The Theory of Oral Composition. Bloomington: IUP, 1991, p. 70
30. ^ A. Orchard, 'Oral Tradition', Reading Old English Texts, ed. K O'Brien O'Keeffe (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 101-23
31. ^ Fry, Donald K. "Old English Formulas and Systems" English Studies 48 (1967):193-204. responds to what was known, pejoratively, in Greek studies as the "hard Parryist" position, in which the formula was defined in terms of verbatim lexical repetition (see Rosenmyer, Thomas G. "The Formula in Early Greek Poetry" Arion 4 (1965):295-311). Fry's model proposes underlying generative templates which provide for variation and even artistic creativity within the constraints of strict metrical requirements and extempore composition-in-performance
32. ^ Davis, Adam Brooke "Verba volent, scripta manent: Oral Tradition and the Non-Narrative Genres of Old English Poetry." Diss. Univ. of Missouri at Columbia. DAI 52A (1991), 2137 pp. 202, 205
33. ^ Foley, John Miles. Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic. Bloomington: IUP, 1991. 30, 31, 202n22, 207 n36, 211n43
34. ^ Foley, John Miles. "The Singer of Tales in Performance. Bloomington: IUP, 1995. 55, 60, 89 108, 122n40
35. ^ Olsen, Alexandra Hennessey. "Oral -Formulaic Research in Old English Studies:II" Oral Tradition 3:1-2 (1988) 138-90, p. 165) Olsen cites Foley's "Hybrid Prosody and Old English Half-Lines" in Neophilologus 64:284-89 (1980).
36. ^ Foley, John Miles. The Singer of Tales in Performance. Bloomington: IUP, 1995. 2, 7, 8n15, 17 et passim.
37. ^ Magoun, Francis P. "The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry." Speculum 28 (1953): 446-67
38. ^ Fry, Donald K. "The Cliff of Death in Old English Poetry." In Comparative Research in Oral Traditions: A Memorial for Milman Parry, ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica, 1987, 213-34.
39. ^ Zumthor, Paul "The Text and the Voice." Transl. Marilyn C. Englehardt. New Literary History 16 (1984):67-92
40. ^ D. K. Crowne, "The Hero on the Beach: An Example of Composition by Theme in Anglo-Saxon Poetry", Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 61 (1960), 371.
41. ^ Clark, George. "The Traveller Recognizes His Goal." Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 64 (1965):645-59.
42. ^ Armstrong, James I. "The Arming Motif in the Iliad". The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 79, No. 4. (1958), pp. 337-354.
43. ^ Stock, Brian. "The Implications of Literacy. Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983)
44. ^ Bäuml, Franz H. "Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy", in Speculum, Vol. 55, No. 2 (1980), pp.243-244.
45. ^ Havelock, Eric Alfred. Preface to Plato. "Vol. 1 A History of the Greek Mind", Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1963.
46. ^ ^{a b} Davis, Adam Brooke. "Agon and Gnomon: Forms and Functions of the Anglo-Saxon Riddles" in De Gustibus: Essays for Alain Renoir. Ed John Miles Foley. NY: Garland, 1992 110-150
47. ^ Foley, John Miles. Immanent Art Bloomington: IUP, 1991. 15, 18, 20-21, 34, 45, 63-64, 64n6, 64-68,, 74n23, 75, 76, 77n28, 78, 80, 82, 82n38, 83, 87-91, 92, 93, 94, 102, 103, 104n18, 105, 109, 110n32
48. ^ Weigle, Marta. "Women's Expressive Forms" in Foley, John Miles, ed. "Teaching Oral Traditions" NY:MLA 1998. pp. 298-
49. ^ Kevin Robb. "Greek Oral Memory and the Origins of Philosophy." The Personaist: An International Review of Philosophy, 51:5-45.; A study of the AG oral mentality that assumes (1) the existence of composition and thinking that took shape under the aegis of oral patterns, (2) the educational apparatus as an oral system, and (3) the origins of philosophy as we know it in the abstract intellectual reaction against the oral mentality. The opening section on historical background covers developments in archaeology and textual criticism (including Parry's work) since the late nineteenth century, with descriptions of and comments on formulaic and thematic structure. In "The Technique of the Oral Poet" (14-22), he sketches both a synchronic picture of the singer weaving his narrative and a diachronic view of the tradition developing over time. In the third part, on the psychology of performance, he discusses "the prevalence of rhythmic speech over prose; the prevalence of the event' over the abstraction'; and the prevalence of the paratactic arrangement of parts... over alternative schema possible in other styles" (23). In sympathy with Havelock (1963), he interprets Plato's reaction against the poets as one against the oral mentality and its educative process.
50. ^ "Review: Communication Studies as American Studies" Daniel Czitrom American Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Dec., 1990), pp. 678-683
51. ^ Nimis, Stephen A. Narrative Semiotics in the Epic Tradition. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1988
52. ^ Boni, Stefano. Contents and contexts : the rhetoric of oral traditions in the oman of Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana. Africa. 70 (4) 2000, pages 568-594. London
53. ^ Miller, Susan, Rescuing the Subject. A Critical Introduction to Rhetoric and the Writer. Southern Illinois University Press, 2004
54. ^ Minton, John. "The Reverend Lamar Roberts and the Mediation of Oral Tradition". The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 108, No. 427 (Winter, 1995), pp. 3-37
55. ^ "Culture Education" and the Challenge of Globalization in Modern Nigeria by Ademola Omobewaji Dasylva. This paper has to do with the challenges of globalization in modern Nigeria and the process of "culture education," a terminology used to emphasize the peculiar means and methods of instruction by which a society imparts its body of values and mores in the pursuance and attainment of the society's collective vision, aspirations, and goals. Within this framework, this paper examines the legacies of imperialism and colonization within the Nigerian educational system––particularly in reference to the teaching of folklore and oral tradition––including the destruction of indigenous knowledge systems and the continuing lack of adequate resources in African universities. The paper concludes by offering suggestions for a more fully synthesized indigenous and formal Nigerian educational system as a method of addressing postcolonial rupture. [1] Oral Tradition 21/2 (2006):325-41.
56. ^ Skidmore, Thomas E. Black Into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought New York: Oxford University Press, 1974 p. 89
57. ^ J. A. (Bobby) Loubser, "Shembe Preaching: A Study in Oral Hermeneutics," in African Independent Churches. Today, ed. M. C. Kitshoff (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996
58. ^ Kelber, Werner H. "The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Writing and Speaking in the Synoptic Tradition" Philadelphia: Fortress P 1983.
59. ^ Swearingen, C. Jan. "Oral Hermeneutics during the Transition to Literacy: The Contemporary Debate". Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 1, No. 2, The Dialectic of Oral and Literary Hermeneutics (May, 1986), pp. 138-156
60. ^ Foley, John Miles. The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology. Bloomington: IUP, 1988. 55, 64, 66, 72, 74, 77, 80, 97, 105, 110-111, 129n20,; artistic cp to mechanistic, 21, 25, 38, 58, 63-64, 65, 104, 118-119n20, 120-121n16, 124n31, 125n53, oral aesthetic cp to literate aestetics, 35, 58, 110-11, 121n26.
61. ^ Foley, John Miles. Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic. Bloomington: IUP, 1991. 245
62. ^ Frederick M. Combellack, "Milman Parry and Homeric Artistry" Comparative Literature, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Summer, 1959), pp. 193-208 . p. 194
63. ^ Rutherford, R.B. Homer: Odyssey Books XIX & XX,, Cambridge UP 1992 remarks on oral-formulaic diction, pp. 47-49
64. ^ Botstein, Leon. "Hearing Is Seeing: Thoughts on the History of Music and the Imagination." The Musical Quarterly 1995 79(4):581-89
65. ^ Elliot Oring cites Bruchac, Joe Storytelling: Oral History or Game of 'Telephone'?" American Folklore Society Newsletter 19/2:3–4.
66. ^ Christopher Butler cites Bart Ehrman, ‘Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why’
67. ^ chapter4.DOC
68. ^ Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Great Britain: Bantam, 2006 p. 118 -- Dawkins contradicts this view, however, on p. 227)
69. ^ Dane, J.A. "Finnsburh and Iliad IX: A Greek Survival of the Medieval Germanic Oral-Formulaic Theme The Hero on the Beach." Neophilologus 66:443-449
70. ^ Foley, John Miles. Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography, (NY: Garland Publishing, 1985), p. 200
71. ^ Kirk, Geoffrey S. The Songs of Homer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962. pp88 - 91.
72. ^ Foley, John M. Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1985. p. 35.
73. ^ Foley, John M. Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1985. p. 36.
74. ^ Foley, John M. Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1985. pp. 36, 505.
75. ^ Parry, Adam. "Have we Homer's Iliad?"Yale Classical Studies.20 (1966), pp.. 177-216.
76. ^ Foley, John M. Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1985. pp. 40, 406.
77. ^ Foley, John M. Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1985. p. 42.; Foley cites "The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry" Publications of the Modern Language Association 81 (1966):, 334-41
78. ^ George E. Dimock. "From Homer to Novi Pazar and B ack." Arion, 2, iv:40-57. Reacts against the Parry-Lord hypothesis of an oral Homer, claiming that, although Lord demonstrated that the oral poet thinks in verse and offered many explanations of the various facets of the Homeric Question by recour se to the Yugoslav analogy, the difference between Homer and other, literate poets is one of degree rather than kind. Wants to rescue Homer's art from what he sees as the dangers inherent in the oral theory model.
79. ^ Perhaps the most prominent and steadfast opponent of oral traditional theory on these grounds was Arthur Brodeur, in, e.g., The Art of Beowulf. Berkeley: University of California Press. 3rd printing 1969; "A Study of Diction and Style in Three Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poems." In Nordica et Anglica. Ed. Allan H. Orrick. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 97-114; "Beowulf: One Poem or Three?" In Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies in Honor of Francis Lee Utley. Ed. Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 3-26.
80. ^ Foley, John Miles. The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology. Bloomington:IUP, 1988." p.93

External links

• Back to the Oral Tradition
• The Center for Studies in Oral Tradition
• The Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature Online
• Oral Tradition Journal
• The World Oral Literature Project
• Post-Gutenberg Galaxy
• Dédalo Project. Open Software Platform for Management of Intangible Cultural Heritage and Oral History
• Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University