'Oral tradition' or 'oral culture' is a way for a society to transmit
history,
literature,
law or other knowledge across generations without a
writing system. An example that combined aspects of
oral literature and
oral history, before eventually being set down in writing, is the
Homeric
epic poetry of the ''
Iliad'' and the ''
Odyssey''. 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). As an
academic discipline, it refers both to a
method and the objects studied by the method.
The study of oral tradition is distinct from the academic discipline of
oral history, which is the recording of personal memories and histories of those who experienced historical eras or events. 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.
History of the study of oral tradition
Oral tradition as a field of study had its origins
[1] in the work of the Serb scholar
Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic (1787-1864), a contemporary of the
Brothers Grimm. Vuk pursued similar projects of "salvage folklore" 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. Somewhat later, but as part of the same scholarly moment, the
turcologist Vasily Radlov (1837-1918) would study the songs of the
Kara-Kirghiz in what would later become the
Soviet Union.
Milman Parry and Albert Lord
Shortly thereafter,
Milman Parry (1902-1935), pursuing a degree in
Classics at
Harvard, would begin to grapple with what was then called the "
Homeric Question," usually framed as "who was
Homer?" and "what are the Homeric poems?" The Homeric question actually consists of a series of related inquiries, and 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, a re-ordering that would have consequences for a great many literatures and disciplines.
[2]
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."
[3] 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. "The meaning of the Greek term 'rhapsodize', ''rhapsoidein'', 'to stitch song together' became ominous: Homer stitched together pre-fabricated parts."
[4]
The idea met with immediate resistance, 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).
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. The collection would provide the basis for an empirical documentation of the dynamics of composition of metrical narrative in traditional oral performance. 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"). Thus the work of Parry and Lord reduced the prominence of the
historic-geographic method in
folkloristics.
Tragically, Parry was killed in a pistol-accident. 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)
[5], 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
[6] – a process that would be repeated by other scholars in numerous independent traditions.
Walter Ong
In a separate development, the prominent and provocative
media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) would begin to focus attention on the ways in which
communicative media shape the nature of the content conveyed.
[7] He would serve as mentor to the brilliant young 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)
[8] These two works successfully and accessibly articulated the contrasts between cultures defined by
primary orality, writing, print, and the 'secondary' orality of the electronic age.
:
| 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.[9] |
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. This approach, like McLuhan's, kept the field open not just to the study of aesthetic culture but to the way physical artifacts of oral societies are used to store, manage and transmit knowledge.
The most-often studied section of ''Orality and Literacy'' concerns the “
psychodynamics of oralityâ€. This chapter seeks to define the fundamental characteristics of 'primary' orality and summarizes a series of descriptors which might be used to index the relative orality or literacy of a given text or society.
[10]
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.
Foley effectively consolidated oral tradition as an academic field with the first bibliography (1985) and the establishment of both the journal ''Oral Tradition'' and the founding of the ''Center for Studies in Oral Tradition'' (1986) at the
University of Missouri–Columbia. Foley developed Oral Theory beyond the somewhat mechanistic notions presented in Oral-Formulaic Theory by drawing attention to the agency of the bard and by describing the manner in which oral traditions bear meaning.
His massive bibliographical enterprise would establish a clear underlying methodology which accounted for the findings of scholars working in the separate linguistic 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.
Foley’s key works include ''The Theory of Oral Composition'' (1988);
[11] ''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.
An Expanding Discipline
The theory of oral tradition would undergo elaboration and development as it grew in acceptance. The number of formulas documented for various traditions proliferated. The concept of the formula remained lexically-bound. However, numerous innovations appeared, such as the “formulaic system†with structural “substitution slots†for
syntactic,
morphological and
narrative necessity (as well as for artistic invention). Sophisticated models such as Foley’s “word-type placement rules†followed. Higher levels of formulaic composition were defined over the years, such as “
ring composition,†“responsion†and the “type-scene†(also called a "theme" or "typical scene"). Some of these characteristic patterns of narrative details, (like “the arming sequence;†“the hero on the beach;†“the traveler recognizes his goalâ€) would show evidence of global distribution.
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,
Franz Bäuml,
Eric Havelock). Perhaps most importantly, the terms and concepts of “
orality†and “
literacy†came to be replaced with the more useful and apt “
traditionality†and “
textuality.†Very large units would be defined (
The Indo-European Return Song) and areas outside of
military epic would come under investigation: women’s song,
riddles and other genres.
The methodology of oral tradition now conditions an enormous variety of studies in literature, communication and folklore, including virtually every language and ethnic group, and conspicuously in
biblical studies (
Werner Kelber). Present developments explore the implications of the theory for
rhetoric and
composition,
intergroup communication,
postcolonial studies,
rural community development,
popular culture and
film studies, and many other areas. The most significant areas of theoretical development at present may be the construction of systematic
hermeneutics and
aesthetics specific to oral traditions.
Criticisms & Current Debates
Some scholars view this body of work as reducing the great
epics to children’s party games like “
telephone†or “
Chinese whispersâ€. 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 and stability of content transmission.
References
1. The history of the theory of oral tradition was first reported as such by John Miles Foley; the following overview draws upon Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliograph, (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, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1987).
2. 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.
3. Adam Parry (ed.). ''The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry''. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971, p. 272.
4. Walter J. Ong. ''Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word''. Routledge, London & New York, 1982, 2002; p. 22.
5. Albert B. Lord. ''The Singer of Tales''. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 24. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1981
6. Francis P. Magoun, Jr. The oral-formulaic character of Anglo-Saxon narrative poetry. ''Speculum'' Vol. 28 (1953), pp. 446-67.
7. See for example Marshall McLuhan, ''The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man''. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1962.
8. Walter J. Ong. ''Fighting for Life: Context, Sexuality and Consciousness''. Cornell University Press, Ithaca & London, 1981.
9. Walter J. Ong. ''Orality and Literacy'', p. 11.
10. Walter J. Ong. ''Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word'', pp. 31-76.
11. John Miles Foley. ''The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology''. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1988.
See also
★
Folklore
★
Intangible culture
★
Oral law
★
Oral Torah
★
Orality
★
Secondary orality
★
Traditional knowledge
★
Patha,
Åšrauta
★
Oral Tradition Journal
★ ''
Understanding Media''
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
★
Post-Gutenberg Galaxy
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