Solo performance of an oral narrative. The ancient art of storytelling endures as a
recreational and educational activity in both rural and urban settings. Parents continue to
tell bedtime tales. Other tellers share jokes, personal stories, legends and urban legends in
social and educational contexts. Religious teachers tell stories to transmit spiritual history
and values. Naturalists tell stories to teach about the environment. Frightening stories, a
specialty at Halloween, are commonplace at slumber parties and summer camps. In fact,
most people can identify someone in their family or community as “a natural born”
storyteller.
A new development since the 1970s has been the mushrooming of “nontraditional,”
“contemporary,” “revivalist,” or “professional” storytellers. Unlike a traditional
storyteller, who typically learns stories from, and tell stories to, populations who share a
cultural heritage, a nontraditional teller may appropriate stories found in published texts,
from cultures with which neither the teller nor the audience have firsthand experience.
Performance oriented, story interpretation is shaped by the individual teller’s personal
taste. A story heard at a festival, even from a traditional teller, may go through
idiosyncratic transformations.
Nontraditional storytelling was stimulated in the late 19th century when library
schools began training librarians to tell stories. “Story hours” were offered in U.S.
libraries as early as 1896, and in 1909 the American LibraryAssociation sponsored a
story-hour symposium.
The popularity of nontraditional storytelling in the 1990s is documented by the
hundreds of storytelling festivals, classes, conferences, and publications. National and
regional storytelling directories list more than 1,000 storytellers in the United States
performing in schools, libraries, museums, coffeehouses, theaters, and festivals.
Magazine and newspaper articles have further demonstrated public awareness and
appreciation of the art of storytelling. It is not uncommon for thousands of people to
attend regional storytelling festivals.
The National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling
(NAPPS), founded by Jimmy Neil Smith in 1973, has played a major role in promoting
both traditional and nontraditional storytelling through its festivals, conferences, and
publications. NAPPS publishes a quarterly magazine, Storytelling, and sponsors an
annual festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, which more than 9,000 people attended in
1992.
The Black Storytelling Festival, an annual event since 1983, takes place in various
urban settings around the country. The majority of the organizers, audience, and tellers at
diis festival are African American.
As modern technology becomes progressively imper-sonal, the face-to-face intimacy
and simplicity of storytelling appears to be gaining personal and social appeal. Ironically,
sales of storytelling audiocassettes and videotapes are also growing.
A newer trend is the telling of traditional oral narratives, especially by
psychotherapists, to help people obtain insight and heal psychological wounds.
Therapeutic storytelling has been popularized by storyteller-authors like Joseph
Campbell, Robert Bly, and Jack Zipes. Conversely, telling traditional tales obtained from
published texts by other nontraditional tellers is decreasing, supplanted by an increasing
preference for telling original, personal, and family tales.
Despite theoretical and cultural differences between traditional and nontraditional
storytellers, the storytelling event emerges as remarkably similar, and in some contexts,
such as a Sunday-school classroom teacher telling stories, the line between traditional
and nontraditional storytelling is, at best, fuzzy.
Ruth Stotter
References
Greene, Ellin, and George Shannon. 1986. Storytelling: A SelectedAnnotated Bibliography. New
York: Garland.
National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling (NAPPS), PO. Box 309,
Jonesborough, TN 37659. The NAPPS magazine, originally called the National Storytelling
Journal (1984), changed to Storytelling in 1989.
Pellowski, Anne. 1990. The World of Storytelling: A Practical Guide to the Origins, Development,
and Applications of Storytelling. New York H.W.Wilson.