People have told stories for a long time. As long as there has been language and words,
people have told stories. Before language and words, people have told stories. They have
told stories through images, signs, and sounds. They have drawn images on cave walls, on
stone, and wood. They have carved out meanings. They have created songs and rhythms.
Stories are one way that people make sense of the world in which they live. Most stories
have a beginning, a middle, and an ending, but some stories do not. A story can tell you
about something that you feel but that you can't explain in the usual way.
Stories can tell us about something that is true even if the story is made up. We can tell
when a story is true by the way it makes us feel inside. When we hear something that
makes us feel happy or sad, or makes us dream of wonderful things, or takes us on a trip in
our imagination, or makes us feel real, then that story is true. True stories take us on
journeys in our imagination and feelings. They help us know what is possible. After we hear,
or read, a true story, we carry that story around inside of us. It becomes part of who we are.
And, in a way, we become a part of the story.
All people have told stories about the world around them. Some of those stories have come
to us because one person told them to someone else, who told them to someone else, who
told them to someone else... Some stories come to us through music as sound and
rhythms. Sometimes these sounds and rhythms have been handed down as a teaching
from generation to generation. Sometimes the whole history of a people can be expressed
through songs, and rhythms, dance, and performance. For all people, before there was the
written word, there was the sound.
Histories and stories of a people that come to us in a spoken and sung form are part of what
is called an oral tradition. Oral tradition means that the information, the stories, are told
rather than written down. Sometimes, a people have both a written and an oral tradition.
Oral traditions have a different way of being alive than written histories. Because people
hold the oral tradition in their memory, and sometimes the story changes with the telling,
oral histories can be more fluid, more dynamic, more alive, than written histories. This
doesn't make them less true, just different than written histories.
Traditionally, oral stories were committed to memory and then passed from generation to
generation. However, in the most recent past, written and televised media has largely
surpassed this method communicating local, family and cultural histories.
Storytelling includes 3 main components:
1.
2.
3.
Stories have been shared in every culture and every land for 4 purposes:
1.
2.
3.
4.
The earliest forms of storytelling are thought to have been primarily __________ with
1.
2.
Many ancient cultures have also been known for their __________
The evolution of __________ has changed the way that stories are told.
New forms of storytelling include:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.