Story and Song

creative commons licensed kyllaris 

Story and song have been the vehicles of knowledge and culture long before writing systems, and they have continued to be a main method of continuity with the past, even when writing and printing  displaced their preeminence.

"History" is something that came along with writing; it refers to how we understand the past through written language systems. But "story" doesn't require writing -- just spoken language. Stories that have been spoken and sung have been the foundation of most world civilizations long before "history" (stories preserved in writing) began.

Oral culture differs a lot from cultures that depend on writing or print. Walter Ong, the most famous scholar on this topic, contrasts fundamental differences between orality and literacy. That's a good starting point for research (Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word [second edition; orig. 1982]. Routledge, London and New York, 2002. See also this convenient table summarizing those contrasts).

What follows are five categories that can be used as starting places for considering story and song within our study of oral knowledge. Along the way, I make a few suggestions for how to find some of these topics outside of using Google or Wikipedia.

Folklore

In our folk knowledge unit we emphasized the practical and material knowledge that is passed on even without language, but these typically go together, and that's where we get folklore. "Lore" is a body of knowledge passed on by word of mouth by the people, the "folk," and folks tend to embed such knowledge in narratives. Learning how to fish? Well, you are as likely to hear your father tell you about the big one that got away as you are to hear tips about baiting your hook; they go together.

• What is the role of storytelling within cultures from antiquity?
• What kinds of information are preserved and passed on through stories and song?
• What do stories and songs do? What are their effects?

The sorts of things addressed by folklore study can be found in this Introduction to Folklore syllabus from Mary Magoulick of Georgia College.

Have you tried looking up course syllabi when researching a subject? It can be so much more informative than a Wikipedia search, since instructors typically include subjects and resources that are most fundamental and most current in a given topic. I just Googled "folklore introduction syllabus" and got many great sources.

Myth and Legend

Stories have been a major way people make sense of the world. They are used to explain natural phenomena, or to make claims about the origins of life or of a people. Myths and legends are at once a universal phenomena, and also particular to a given place or people. They are tied to art, religion, and politics. They are central to oral knowledge and culture.

In fact, myths and legends tend to fall into some common categories: creation, culture heroes and fertility gods, mortality and death, parents and children, animal helpers, rebellion and conformity, heroes and heroines, and clever beings. That's a thematic list that I got from Folklore, Myths, and Legends: A World Perspective by Donna Rosenberg (1997).

I found that book not by searching Google but by searching Google Books. Have you tried that as a starting point for academic subjects? When I went to http://books.google.com and entered the search terms "myth legend" it pulled up a great list of books focused on the myths of specific cultures (Celtic, Chinese, Norse, etc.). And if you are signed into your Google account, you can add any books you search this way to a virtual bookshelf to consult later.

The most famous book about mythology (for Greek, Roman, and Norse myths) is Edith Hamilton's Mythology (1940). Another oft-cited book about myths in history is Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth (1988).

You should try searching topics and books through a social book site like Goodreads. I knew about Hamilton's book and looked it up there. This provided me a summary, reviews, etc. It also showed this book as part of a list of books about mythology that people have voted as being the most important in that subject. The list reminded of Campbell's book, as well as the classic Bullfinch's Mythology. 

Epic Poetry
Often stories and myths were sung or chanted in long narrative poems known as epics. The most famous of these are the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer (Greek, around 800 B.C.); the Aeneid by Vergil (Roman, first century) and Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon, around 700 A.D.). But these are not the only ones. The Epic of Gilgamesh is far older (Sumerian, around 3000 B.C.), and from India arose the Mahabharata (around 300 A.D.). In general, most pre-literate societies have had some kind of oral-formulaic or bardic tradition in which stories important to the culture have been preserved and added onto over the years until they become long, complex stories.

Poetry fits more naturally with oral knowledge. The patterns, rhythms, rhymes, imagery -- and the story elements for narrative poetry -- are mnemonic in nature. They help people to remember (and to enjoy) their content.

What kinds of poetry are evident in the culture you are studying? Are there poems that tell stories (narrative and epic poetry)? What do those stories say about the values and lifestyles of their culture?

Ghengis Khan pic powered by Fotopedia

Reference databases can be so much more reliable than websites. BYU's library subscribes to Chadwyck's Literature Online (or LION), which combines many reference and criticism sources on a wide variety of literary topics. I searched the reference portion of LION for "epic poetry" and was soon reading about "üliger's," which are orally transmitted verse epics from Mongolia that reached 20,000 verses and were recited from memory by bards. They have stories about heroes like Genghis Khan fighting monsters like the many-headed "manggus."

Poetry was not read silently and privately from something written -- not for centuries. No, in antiquity poetry was spoken and shared with others. It has been a form of both private and public entertainment, as well as being a carrier of culture. In that respect, it compares to another important manifestation of oral knowledge: drama.

Drama
Another way that stories have been formalized and preserved has been through plays and theater. It takes it up a level when stories are not just told but acted out. Drama and theater have always been communal, often associated with religious rites and sometimes with politics and statecraft. What kinds of dramatic presentations have there been in the culture that you are studying?

Amazon.com may be a commercial site, but it has great tools for finding academic resources. I searched for theater history and found The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre (1995). Without even reading or buying the book, I can use the "Look Inside" feature to browse the table of contents. The book covers not only ancient Greece and Rome, but earliest African and American drama, several chapters on Asian theater. I searched inside the book and found a chronology that really placed drama into the history of civilization for me. Thanks, Amazon!

Song
Like drama and poetry (both of which sometimes coincided with music), song has been a dominant mode of oral knowledge. The bards and scops of ancient cultures would strum a lyre or harp as they chanted or sang epic poems. And of course, there have been many other types of singing that have also preserved and passed on a culture and its stories. What are the types of music in the culture you are studying? Were these tied to poetry and storytelling?