A Short History of Oral Tradition

For centuries, people have recounted stories through oral and written traditions to share experiences and knowledge. Myths, fables, legends, ballads, folktales are the first forms of oral tradition where people with limited technical resources conveyed their messages, all while entertaining and informing an audience. Unlike written works, oral traditions require a narrator to tell a story in different places and times, therefore inevitably in different orders each time. The authentic content here is unsteady as most of the works don't refer to its source. If a story spreads by word of mouth, through many versions over time it undoubtedly spreads imperfectly. Derivative myths are an organic process where there is seemingly no such thing as an absolute story.1 The subjective rendering of the narrative alternates variations and experimental storytelling methods too.


Joan Jonas, They Come to Us without a Word, 2015.

From Homer's epic poetry to Icelandic sagas, almost every culture has an oral tradition depending on different motivations. While the Vedic chant in ancient India, which is considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition, derives from transmitting religious content to the next generation; in a more closed culture, Kurds have Dengbêj, where singers tell a story about traditions, history, and recent events. More recently, Dengbejs became a communication tool for Kurds who are restricted to write and publish stories in their mother tongue. Another example that originated from the language barrier is the Albanian epic verse, a longstanding Slavic oral tradition that is still alive today. The special relationship between storyteller and listener, in which the latter becomes an active participant whose presence is necessary to the telling of the story, is also a unique characteristic in the style of contemporary Native American works inherited from oral storytelling tradition.2 This interactive drive of oral traditions reflects itself into written or visualized narrations today, such as computer games or adventure books, where users are introduced with multiple beginnings and endings that are often used in nonlinear narrations.

Word Count: 316
Work Cited:

1 http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~brooks/storybiz/ultimateIntStoryteller.pdf
2 http://e-spacio.uned.es/fez/eserv/tesisuned:Filologia-Abperez/PEREZ_GARCIA_AnaBelen_Tesis.pdf
https://www.supersummary.com/narrative/
https://journals.openedition.org/ejts/4055https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/29571/joan-jonas-s-they-come-to-us-without-a-word/

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