We are the earth, through the plants and animals that nourish us. We are the rains and the oceans that flow through our veins. We are the breath of the forests of the land, and the plants of the sea. We are human animals, related to all other life as descendants of the firstborn cell.
We share with these kin a common history, written in our genes. We share a common present, filled with uncertainty. And we share a common future, as yet untold. Traditional stories contained both psychological and environmental instructions for living the good life. When pre-Civil War slaves coded their songs with geographical information for finding their way North to freedom, they were practising not only acute political savvy, but honoring the time-honored manner of passing such information on in their original African cultures.
Among the Dogon a people of Africa , their mythology contains detailed astronomical material that predicts the dates of appearance and re-appearance of stars from distant galaxies , which appearances they celebrate in ceremony. As early Euroamerican explorers noted, geological and even archaeological information was found in traditional oral literatures of the Pacific Northwest.
Detailed information on the nature and usages of local plants was also an integral part of folklore. African-American speeches today which are greeted with communal audience response are thus following in an ancient tradition. Indeed, audiences had special parts in a storytelling performance in every traditional culture I am aware of.
The process of folklore transmission strengthened links between generations as well. In this process, the elderly gifted the young with knowledge and entertainment, and the young gifted the elderly with attention and respect.
I have worked with artist-in-residence programs as a storyteller in primary and secondary schools with two local arts councils. Young children, especially, will rush up and hug me after a storytelling session. A classroom of seventh graders once wanted to know my age and then refused to believe it, since they had assumed me younger than their parents, as somehow part of their own generation, in the connection storytelling created between us.
The shared knowledge of the content of folklore strengthens community solidarity in may ways. It was for this reason that a number of traditional peoples throughout the world who were without our concept of material property held that their stories were their real property.
Among certain native peoples of the Northwest, only persons who belonged to particular families could tell the stories owned by those families. Those who are familiar with the terms in this jargon, in turn, recognize one another as belonging to the same special group.
Traditional storytelling sessions were often exceedingly long. And all the while, children were expected to pay full attention to the proceedings. After all, in stories were the very tools of survival. Being engrossed in a story is an experience of attention and focus, which in turn readily transfers to other learning experiences.
A teacher of first graders told me that her students did better at the math lesson that followed a particularly engrossing storytelling session than they had ever done before, as their total engrossment in the storytelling had spilled over into their other work. Folkloristic stories are full of surprises, of spontaneous turns of event; further, their symbolism is both open and exceedingly complex.
By educating our children with such stories, we teach them the value of alternatives. We teach that there are many ways to approach a problem, and that a situation has many dimensions, some of them more apparent than others—and some of them, apparent only after additional experience in living.
Thus a traditional Chehalis storyteller told me there was no one single interpretation for any story. Indeed, stories might appear mysterious to their listeners when they were told. Whereas a child who learns by rigid formulas may feel stranded and helpless as historical and social situations change which, of course, they always do , children who have been educated by folklore feel empowered by the sense of their traditional wisdom as a tool for their own use, to interpret and use as they see fit.
To educate a child in this way rather than with stories is also considered not to be pragmatic. The Navajo educated their children by stories rather than precepts. With the conceptual flexibility of stories comes personal empowerment. Robert Bly quotes a conversation he had with a German therapist who worked in an institution for severely mentally ill individuals.
This therapist took on a small experiment. Once a week he began to tell patients who wanted to hear them, fairy tales. All the therapists working in this institution counted their patients vastly improved on two counts after they had attended a number of storytelling sessions: These patients had new ways of conceiving of and expressing their distress, and they had a new and vital sense of alternatives to their situation—they felt that there was a way out of their illnesses.
Interestingly, this therapist-storyteller also found that simply reading stories to the patients did not affect their treatment in the same way. He had to tell stories in order for the healing process of storytelling to work, in order, as Bly puts it, for the creative process to come through the storyteller and into the story.
A related concept Allen mentions is the idea of oral literature as integrative i n function. Oral literature places nature and culture, action and thought, and ourselves and others including other species and other times in dialogue with one another. Mythology shows us a good deal about our meaning and power in this world by showing us our place. That place, in turn, can only be conceived in terms of its own setting within the web of life, in terms of our relationship to the life around us.
There are some things that distinguish folklore-as-history from the written history that predominates in our society today.
Folklore is characteristically cast in a form that is readily accessible to all the members of the group to which it belongs—and it is classically framed, as well, in an experiential style.
The experiential style of folklore serves its educative function quite well. We have heard the often-quoted adage that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it. I would add, that to remember history as experience serves as the best guarantee against having to repeat it.
We all know of cases where we understand a better choice, but nonetheless seem compelled to make the wrong one, to experience it, in order to learn some lesson for ourselves.
Folklore provides its information as participation in the experience of situations and events. Indeed, members of cultures that rely predominantly on oral tradition understand its experiential presentation as a most important part of storytelling performance. As audience to a story, we have not only the knowledge, but the experience of human living beyond of our single lifetime. With its delight, folklore entrances us into exploring our own creative possibilities and conceptual flexibility, and helps us attend to and retain the information it imparts to us.
As entertainment, it best serves its function of binding together the members of a community; being fun is part and parcel of the sense, in many communities, of folklore as a gift from one generation to another. The humor and the entertainment in folklore also help us deal with personal and social crises in a way that gives us perspective on them without emotional distance: helps us to manage them, even while we also face, confront, and transform them.
But as the list of the functions of folklore below indicates, the stories of oral tradition cannot be denigrated without losing an essential and critical tool with which to understand ourselves and our communities— and learn from our past. Indeed, the attitude that puts down oral as opposed to written history has more to do with privilege in mainstream history-keeping than with the comparative quality of history-keeping in oral tradition.
Those in a position to write history decide what and how that history will be written. But this single story does not reflect the lives and perspectives of persons of all classes and cultures. For a good part of Western European history very few people could write— in order to learn this skill, one had to have economic means not available to a large portion of the population. Thus the statement that the winners write history—and that the history they write is distinctly separate from the lives of many who actually live that history.
See, for instance, Lies my Teacher Told Me for the ways in which such slanting takes place in modern school curriculum. This is a very different manner of history-keeping from that of indigenous oral traditions, which is entirely more democratic. In oral tradition, ALL members of a culture pass on the traditions of that culture in a dynamic fashion.
As Leslie Marmon Silko put it in Storyteller from her ancestral Laguna Pueblo tradition , the story of a people was not complete unless and until it contained the stories of all members of a community. Oral tradition is more fragile than something written down. But its fragility is also linked to its power: to the fact that it is passed on between people. I was struck by the personal vulnerability and critical openness of many who told their stories to me — offering critiques of their personal and social choices —as illustrated in another essay on this site.
That is what oral tradition has always been about in the shaping of human cultures: passing on the wisdom learned by our elders— their mistakes as well as their successes. Interestingly, even those from pioneer families used metaphors to express their oral histories when I spoke with them. Metaphor is an open-ended conceptual tool which allows us to see the world as linked and to enter the world of others.
Metaphor, that is, tells us how something is like or linked to something else. Unlike facts metaphors are not exclusive. When we state a fact, it is supposed to finish the matter, to be the last word. The material above is taken from my lectures in folklore and mythology at Linfield College. Here are some other lectures from that class:.
Lecture Three : Ancestors and Heroes. Lecture Five : Archetypes and the Great Mother. Lecture Six: Men and Women. Lecture Eight : Ritual and Integration. Godfather Death. Fierce Music: Recognizing the Real Enemy. Here are some of the related posts and pages on this site note that there are also stories sprinkled throughout all the essays here. Our plant and animal elders. The story given to me by seals. Thirty-eight speechless years.
Native American jokes. The material on this page is copyright , Madronna Holden, all rights reserved. Feel free to link to this site and to contact me for permission if you wish to re-use anything here in print. People communicate through stories and these stories hand down knowledge, which includes both customs and traditions.
This viewpoint has allowed us to lose valuable information from the indigenous peoples that could help us in creating a sustainable environment. Indeed, Liz. The rest of us just live it. Thanks for your comment. The timing of my response to this essay comes at an incredibly opportune time. I have a son who is at an age where talking about past experiences, his future and life in general is of the utmost importance.
He is still young enough to want to hear what I have to say but at the same time old enough to comprehend and form his own opinions. Each time I have shared a struggle, a triumph or anything about my past he has shown taken it to heart and tried to incorporate it into his life and his individual choices.
I think because he knows who I am as a person; he is a stronger person because it helps him understand who he is. Thanks for sharing your experience with your son in this respect, Anedra.
You are following in an ancient human tradition in educating your son—and strengthening your relationship with him— through the sharing of stories. Passing on such experience through the generations is how we shaped human culture in the first place. And as a side note— given our current challenges, it is no time to neglect the process of sharing between generations and learning from our past now!
I believe oral tradition is an important concept. Some of the most inspirational words spoken to me in my life came from my late grandfather. At 98 years old, he had more wisdom on life than anyone I know. His life stories and experiences always turned out for the making of really good advice on any situation that arose. God Bless the old and wise and thank God for storytelling!
Thanks for sharing this bit of your grandfather with us, Amber. What a gift you obviously had in him-and he had in you as someone who appreciated what he had to share.
I think that oral tradition should be passed to the new generation by our grandparents. That is why I used to sit and talk with my grandmother every day when I was at home. But after moving here, I just call her whenever I have time. She has lots of perfect stories on how to deal with life difficulties. She loves the nature and thinks that the more time you sit in the sun, the more power you would have as you grew up.
I try to memorize the stories and wisdom she tells so I can pass them to my children in the future. Finally, oral tradition is important from my perspective because the past is part of the future.
Teaching new generations the traditions will give them a better idea on how to deal with life. It is great that you are working to keep her stories. They are irreplaceable! This made me think of a few things as I read. I just took a course in which we looked at the passing of knowledge and wisdom through stories.
What I loved, and what written documents can not do, is that the stories told by an elder could be bent and modified to not only fit the circumstance, but also the individual who is being told the story. What an honor! You are no longer a sheep in a pack of those hearing or reading the same thing over and over. My daughter has a very hard time with school, reading, and education in general.
It is heartbreaking to watch her sink more and more into self soubt as she disconects from what she is reading out of frustration. However, this wonderful girl can repeat a song from the moment of hearing it!
The story being told behind a musical song has a deep connection to her somewhere. She can relate to it on a personal level.
To me this is the power of stories in music or otherwise. It brings us pleasure through entertainment, can bend to new traditions and generations, can teach us valuble lessons, and can bring people and communities together in wonderful ways. Obviously, your daughter has a learning style that does not fite with most modern day education.
I am glad you are able to recognize that and support her, though it must be frustrating to see her problems with the mainstream school system. Storytelling is an artform of a sort. I like how it is a teaching tool as well. It teaches indirectly and allows a person to tell another person about their behavior or choices without causing embarassment or defensiveness. The message may get through more easily and sink a bit deeper.
Wisdom can be passed down in a more palatable way. The other idea that intriged me was the idea that children would do chores to earn the telling of a story. I think it is a connection between generations, as the essay states: a link. I remember I loved listening to my grandparents tell stories. My older sister used to tell stories to me also. When my children were younger, we would go see story tellers whenever we had the chance.
Even if the stories were hard for them to follow, there is something magical about hearing a story. I never thought of them that way, but it kind of makes sense when I think about it in terms of personal experience or lessons learned. Reading this has made me want to come up with stories to tell my own children. Traditions for your family can begin with you, Michele. And in the years I worked as a storyteller, I found that children love stories- so you have got everything going for you!
The tradtion of folklore is something that is missing from public education. Although it is getting better, it is interesting, especially with my second grader, to see what the district feels is important to teach the kids. I work for a ballet company that tours the northwest. Children from the audience are brought up on stage to parttake in the action, allowing them to become part of the story. It is a very effective form of teaching.
Locally, none of the school districts want to spend money on this educational performance, but out of town it is met with great success. I grew up in a traditional Italian family and my grandparents used to tell me stories about there journey here to America.
These stories enriched my life and taught me about my culture and the traditions of my family. The point where community life fades is also the point where orality and consequently orature loses its function and seizes to exist. The main difference between folklore and oral literature is the way that the literature is recorded and passed on to the next generation. The former is written or recorded whereas the latter is passed on by word of mouth.
This also leads to the next important difference which is the type of effect the two forms are expected to have on the audience. For orature to be effective, the existence of a well-defined community is necessary whereas that is not the case for folklore which can be as effective even in the absence of it.
Difference Between Folklore and Orature. Difference Between Similar Terms and Objects. MLA 8 Ali, Allana. Name required. Email required. Please note: comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. Written by : allana. User assumes all risk of use, damage, or injury. You agree that we have no liability for any damages.
Summary Folklore, or simply lore is a form of literature that depicts cultures and traditions using music, legends, jokes, proverbs, oral history, stories, fairy tales, tall tales, popular beliefs as well as customs that are part of the traditions of a cultural group, subcultural group or any group; orature is in the sphere of the spoken word unlike other forms of literature that are written, it is the short form of oral literature Difference in the way the two are passed on: folklore is written or recorded whereas orature is passed on by word of mouth For orature to be effective, the existence of a well-defined community is necessary whereas that is not the case for folklore which can be as effective even in the absence of it Author Recent Posts.
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