Why Unity in Diversity?
A Brief History of Culture and SelfEsteem
Presenters
Rita Higgins
Paulette Longmore
Oral narrative, or storytelling has
been around since humans
invented language as
MYTHS, LEDGENS AND
HISTORIC HISTORIES
Human Experience
How far the oral narrative goes back into
prehistory is uncertain.
The symbolic representation of animals on
cave walls is the earliest record or written
narrative, but oral narrative probably got its
start around that time.
What is Oral Narrative?
Oral narrative, in its most simple sense,
denotes a people’s use of the elements of
speech in order to evoke action in a
temporal sequence.
Oral narrative, then, usually contains a plot
where specific events occur.
Myths
Recited by Pueblo Indian healers in the kiva
Epic songs performed by itinerant singers in
tents in Central Asia
Ballads sung in the Norwegian family market
squares
Legends and folktales told by the fireside in
Italy
Oral Narrative Also Includes
Jokes told at the inner table in New Jersey
Casual anecdotes based on personal
experience such as childhood memories
Any oral autobiography or biography
These are common to all people in all places.
Oral Narrative
Contains performance of the storyteller in one
way or another:
Physical expression
Voice intonation
Dance
Dress
Ritual
Culture
Oral narrative has been the chief basis for the
creation and continuation of culture itself.
Culture is often dependent upon the stories
that people tell.
It is chiefly through storytelling that people
possess a past.
It re-creates another world that does not
entirely exist as what we know to be reality.
Other Worlds…
Oral narrative encompasses an alternate
understanding of human beings as makers
of the mental world that they inhabit.
Only human beings possess this cosmoplastic
power, or world-making or worldassessment ability.
Storytelling
Storytelling defines the human species as far
as our knowledge of human experience
extends into the historical past.
It negotiates the world of nature in origin and
nature stories.
It negotiates places that are not present and
the stuff of dreams.
Time
Human time is created through narrative.
Identity of self or historical community is
acquired through the mediation of narrative
and thus is a function of fiction.
The human concept of time depends on
narrative.
Cooperative Belief Structure
Narrative is a collective unforced agreement
among numbers of people concerning the
stories by which reality is described.
Therefore, narrative is an unforced agreement
among numbers of people concerning
stories by how they perceive.
As with archeology…
We tell ourselves about ourselves through
meditation upon the archeological record.
History is often formulated by such data as
relic and ancient records collections.
History is a re-fabrication story of what is
now the past to us.
Prefictionalization
It is not possible to give an historical account
of a non-prefictionalized concept of our
past.
However, storytelling is crucial to our human
understanding of history in a social context.
Paleolithic Period
This period in human kinds history is often
perceived as the point in time when humans
began the process of storytelling.
This led to the invention of culture.
Perceptual models of what is a people were
developed.
Thus, storytelling and culture go hand-inhand.
What is Storytelling?
For one, it defines what things are by calling
to min what they are not.
If we state everything as it is, there is no story.
A story must break with the accepted
perception in order to offer something new.
Links
Storytelling links the past and all pasts to a
point in the present where humans can
conceptualize about events that took place.
Literary, anthropological and folkloric studies
attest to this.
Self-Esteem
Ritualized discourse through which powerful
people enhanced their prestige and selfesteem articulated a system of values that
was meant to be of benefit to society as a
whole.
What Forms?
What forms does oral narrative take?
What functions does it perform?
How does it perform these functions?
The Storyteller
The role of creative individuals who tell
stories are representatives of their
communities in making of an oral culture.
How such narratives express communal
values and articulate an individual’s and a
group’s sense of identity, includes the
consciousness of a past.
Why Oral Narrative?
Oral narrative is a type of social action.
It relates to people’s understanding of the
world.
It helps create that understanding through its
cosmoplastic power.
Usefulness
The usefulness of oral narrative is that it is a
way of promoting social cohesion.
It also articulates changes in mentality that
affect society at large, especially during
times of stress.
Everyone is a Storyteller
People are natural narrators, retelling stories
that they have heard from others.
We create new ones through the use of the
imagination and poetic license.
We do not tell all possible stories, but we are
selective in our choice among countless
possible choices.
Sensual and Magical
Images, music and the actions of the five
senses can have powerful stories attached
to them. (ex: Like Water for Chocolate)
Storytelling has connected with it powerful
intimacies which the present-day culture
industry seeks to hide.
Intimacy and Bonding
When people gather together to hear stories or
songs performed, they share a single space.
This provides human interchange and
exchange of ideas.
Human interchange is sometimes more
important than the story itself.
Ritual is Always Variable
Ritualistic verbal formulas and physical
gestures are realized differently on different
occasions.
However predictable ritual may seem to be,
now two performances of it are alike.
Eternal Newness
If a singing, dancing or storytelling tradition exists,
the it is re-creative at every stage. Every time a
person learns a song or story, she or he remakes it
to a greater or lesser extent.
This process of re-creation will continue so long as
the world presented in the narratives and the
worldview of singers and storytellers coincide.
The Tradition Bearer
New traditions come into being all around us
every year, and old traditions die and no one
may miss them.
What it boils down to is a series of creative
acts that are only partially predictable.
It is a volative process.
The Tradition Bearer
It depends on the volitional acts of individual
people who are inseparably linked to a
larger community yet who retain their
personal identity.
How important do you think it is for you to be
linked to a larger community and yet retain
your personal identity? Explain.
Warning!
The habits of linguistic usage can and usually
do preclude understanding of a foreign
culture.
How does ethnocentricity foster prejudice?
Give an example in story form.
Social Cohesion
Storytelling has the power of expression—not
to fill a void space but to give voice to
“unison songs and stories” that rely on a
shared experience that promotes social
cohesion.
Knowledge
Knowledge that finds expression in traditional songs
and stories helps literally to bring the members of
a society together through the ritual occasions of
performance.
At the same time, it reinforces a people’s sense of
identity and self-worth by preserving social
memory through engagement with the ancestral
past. (Note Silko’s “Yellow Woman…” story.
Work Sited
Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology
of Oral Literature
Author: John D. Niles
University of Pennsylvania Press,
Philadelphia, PA
Copyright: 1999
The Oral Narrative
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Presenter: Rita Higgins
Paulette Longmore
Essex County College
Newark, New Jersey