The most obvious characteristic of folk literature is its
orality. In spite of certain borderline cases, it normally stands in direct
contrast to written literature. The latter exists in manuscripts and books and
may be preserved exactly as the author or authors left it, even though this may
have happened centuries or even millennia ago. Through these manuscripts and
books the thoughts and emotions and observations and even the fine nuances of
style can be experienced without regard to time or distance. With oral
literature this is not possible. It is concerned only with speaking and singing
and with listening, thus depending upon the existence of a living culture to
carry on a tradition. If any item of folk literature ceases to exist within
human memory it is completely lost.
The speaker or singer is carrying on a tradition learned from
other speakers and delivered to a living audience. It may well be that the
listeners have heard this material many times before and that it has a vigorous
life in the community, and they will see to it that the performer does not
depart too far from the tradition as they know it. If acceptable to the
listeners, the story or song or proverb
or riddle
will be repeated over and over again as long as it appeals to men and women,
even through the ages and over long geographic distances.
In some cultures nearly everyone can carry on these
traditions, but some men and women are much more skillful than others and are
listened to with greater pleasure. Whatever the nature of these tradition
bearers, the continued existence of an item of oral literature depends upon
memory. As it is passed on from one person to another, it suffers changes from
forgetting or from conscious additions or substitutions; in any case, the item
changes continually.
The more skillful tradition bearers take pride in the
exactness with which they transmit a tale or song just as they have heard it
many years before, but they only deceive themselves, for every performance
differs from every other one. The whole material is fluid and refuses to be
stabilized in a definite form. The teller is likely to find room for
improvement and may well begin a new tradition that will live as long as it
appeals to other tellers. It thus happens that in nearly all cultures certain
people specialize in remembering and repeating what they have heard. There are
semiprofessional storytellers around whom large groups of people assemble in
bazaars or before cottage fires or in leisure hours after labour. Some of these
storytellers have prodigious memories and may with only slight variations carry
on to a new generation hundreds of tales and traditions heard long ago.
Certain bards
and minstrels
and song
makers develop special techniques of singing or of telling
epic or heroic
tales to the accompaniment of a harp or other musical instrument. In the course
of time in various places special poetic forms have been perfected and passed
on from bard to bard. Such must have been the way in which the remarkably
skillful heroic meters of the Greek epics were developed.
A different kind of oral tradition is preserved by the ritual
specialists: priests, shamans, and others who perform religious ceremonies and
healing rites.
Frequently these rituals must be remembered word for word and are not believed
to be effective unless they are correctly performed. The ideal of such priestly
transmitters of oral tradition is complete faithfulness to that which has been
passed down to them.
Not least important of the many reasons for the existence and
perpetuation of folk literature is the need for release from the boredom that
comes on long sea voyages or in army camps or on long winter evenings. Some
folk literature is primarily didactic and tries to convey the information
people need to carry on their lives properly. Among some peoples the relation
of man and the higher powers is of special concern and gives rise to myths that
try to clarify this relationship. Cooperative labour or marching is helped by
rhythmic songs, and many aspects of social life give rise to various kinds of dance.
A great many of the special forms of literature now in
manuscripts and books are paralleled in traditional oral literature, where
history, drama, law, sermons, and exhortations of all kinds are found, as well
as analogues of novels, stories, and lyric poems.
Folk literature is but a part of what is generally known as
folklore: customs and beliefs, ritualistic behaviour, dances, folk
music, and other nonliterary manifestations. These are often
considered a part of the larger study of ethnology, but they are also the
business of the folklorist.
Of special importance is the relation of all kinds of folk
literature to mythology. The stories of Maui and his confreres in the Pacific
and of gods and heroes of African or American Indian
groups have behind them a long and perhaps complicated history. This is
especially true of the highly developed mythologies of India, and the Greek,
Irish, and Germanic
pantheons. All are the results of an indefinitely long past, of growth and
outside influences, of religious cults and practices, and of the glorification
of heroes. But whatever the historical, psychological, or religious
motivations, the mythologies are a part of folk literature and, though
traditional, have been subject to continual changes at the hands of the tale-tellers,
singers of stories, or priestly conductors of cults. Eventually singers or
storytellers of philosophical tendencies have systematized their mythologies
and have created with fine imagination the figures of Zeus and his Olympic
family and his semidivine heroic descendants. Though the details of these
changes are beyond the scope of this article, stories of the gods and heroes
and of supernatural origins and changes on the earth have played an important
role in all folk literature.
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