The literature of every culture from every corner of
the world shares one thing in common: It originates
in the spoken word. Long before and after a
culture develops written systems of communication,
the oral exchange of stories forms an essential
part of a people’s emotional and spiritual life. In
daily life, stories serve as a means of connection
and a way of establishing a shared humanity. Every
society uses stories to retain and transmit its
shared history, accumulated wisdom, cultural values,
and beliefs.
Oral literature, as scholars define it, can include
any fictive utterance, from folklore and mythology
to jokes and nursery rhymes. Scholarly discussions
of oral tradition often focus on oral poetry in the
form of historical narratives or wisdom tales. As a
culture evolves, it commemorates its history and
ancestors in narratives that are passed on in the
form of a heroic story or EPIC. The Sumerian GILGAMESH,
the long poems of HOMER, and compositions
like the Finnish KALEVALA or the Persian
SHAHNAMEH all originated as oral poems relating
events that a culture considered part of its history.
The Mande EPIC OF SON-JARA or the Incan MYTH OF
MANCO CAPAC, though they belong to different continents,
both retell foundation myths of how a civilization
came to be. In many cultures, the earliest
written literature preserves stories that had already
been told for centuries. In fact most of the sacred
literature of the world, including the Hebrew BIBLE,
is thought to have its roots in oral tradition.
Narratives of mythology develop as humans attempt
to explain their own existence and understand
the world around them. Creation stories like
the Native American CREATION MYTHS or the Hawaiian
Kumulipo describe how a culture accounts for
the order of the world and its creatures. From the
beginning, these and other stories communicated
through oral exchange offered a way to instruct listeners
and celebrate shared beliefs.Cultures develop
an oral tradition as a way to remember and ritually
convey stories for the benefit of succeeding generations.
Oral traditions may be communicated in the
form of prose, but most cultures develop a poetic
tradition to remember and relate their stories.Historians
of oral tradition have learned that rhythm
and rhyme function as mnemonic devices to enhance
the memories of performers as well as audiences.
In oral poetry, meter serves as a way to
structure the poem and to organize information.
Once the meter is established, the poet draws on
certain ready-made compositional devices. This is
seen in oral traditions of all ages and cultures, from
the Vedas or PURANA of India to the BARDIC POETRY
of the Celts. Longer tales require more compositional
devices, such as typical details, formulaic
lines or diction, and recurrent situations. The
WHITE MOUNTAIN APACHE MYTHS AND TALES, for example,
end each line or phrase with “they say” to
emphasize the fact that the tale has been handed
down by others.
Oral literature is meant to be performed. In performance,
poetry differs little from song, and most
oral performances involve musical or visual accompaniment.
Interaction with the audience opens and
sustains the performance, making the story or
poem uniquely different each time it is recited.
Despite the advantages of print culture in preserving
and disseminating knowledge, it would be
false to say that cultures no longer have or depend
on oral traditions. Folklore exists today in the form
of urban legends; elders tell us about their history
and experience, friends share stories about their
day. Human experience is defined by, understood
through, and shared in story, and the oral tradition
of a culture preserves its origins, its foundations,
and its essential character in a way that written literature
can perpetuate but never duplicate.
English Versions of Works of
Oral Literature
Courlander, Harold. A Treasury of Afro-American
Folklore. New York:Marlowe & Company, 2002.
Haa Shuka, Our Ancestor: Tlingit Oral Narratives.
Edited by Nora Dauenhauer. Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1987.
Pham, Loc Dinh. A Glimpse of Vietnamese Oral Literature:
Mythology, Tales, Folklore. Philadelphia:
Xlibris, 2002.
Stories that Make the World: Oral Literature of the Indian
Peoples of the Inland Northwest. Edited by
Lawrence Aripa, Tom Yellowtail, and Rodney Frey.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
Works about Oral Literature/Tradition
Fontes, Manuel de Costa. Folklore and Literature:
Studies in the Portuguese, Brazilian, Sephardic, and
Hispanic Oral Traditions. New York: State University
of New York Press, 2000.
Okpewo, Isidore. African Oral Literature: Backgrounds,
Character, and Continuity. Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1992.
Ramirez, Susan Berry Brill de. Contemporary American
Indian Literatures and the Oral Tradition. Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 1999.
Warner, Keith Q. Kaiso! The Trinidad Calypso: A
Study of Calypso as Oral Literature. Pueblo, Colo.:
Passeggiata Press, 1999.
Yamamoto, Kumiko. The Oral Background of Persian
Epics: Storytelling and Poetry. Boston: Brill Academic
Publishers, 2003.