John Fage and David Tait have stated, “Oral tradition is often in reality an explanation, in quasi-historical terms, of existing or of currently relevant past social or socio-political relationships” (as cited in Showren, 2014). Thus, as reflections of the socio-political relationships of an era or a community, the oral traditions play a very important role in the study and documentation of history of cultures which otherwise relied on word of mouth transmission. But for a long time, and perhaps even now, researchers of history and historical writing are struggling with the problem of how best to use oral tradition source material for writing history; in addition to this there is another great argument as to whether it is appropriate to consider …show more content…
Thus, using oral traditions for writing history (if it is a possibility) can become very difficult and tricky; this difficulty mainly arises from the basic difference that the process of oral transmission and written transmission have between them. Written transmission has the tradition of keeping records which acts as data for the historians who can go back to those whenever required and write or re-write history accordingly. But the problem of oral transmission is that there is a continuous process of “selection” in practice, that is, only those aspects of the past which has relevance to the society are most likely to the passed down, and as the tradition is preserved because of its current relevance, it may be passed on in a form that upholds and conserves the significance of past events but not necessarily the actual narrative details (Harms, …show more content…
This work is essentially about the documentation and translation of Bodo oral culture; but it is not merely about the documentation and translation procedures. A lot of documented and translated (by different people across culture and time) folksongs and folktales have been collected during the entire period of the research. The idea is not just to give a glossary of the folksongs and tales of the Bodo oral tradition but to conduct a thorough case study of these orally transmitted songs and tales (later on documented and translated) so that the possibilities of carving a history of the Bodos through these oral traditions can be realized. As mentioned in this section, the issues that various historians and folklorists face during the process of history writing through folklores are more or less linear in nature, irrespective of oral societies. This section is a prelude to the issues that this dissertation has addressed through various translation theories, and folklores and folksongs of the
Winona Wheeler’s essay, “Cree Intellectual Traditions in History” analyzes the oral history of First Nations Elders. She specifically questions the identities of the Elders telling their story and how they have attained the stories that they are telling. Wheeler’s thesis is that the Elders are not mere storages of knowledge, they are humans. And as the days go on, few of them remain which makes it even more relevant to take in what they have and pass it on to the newer generations.
What would you do for entertainment in a time before television? The Ancient Greeks solved this dilemma with Bards. Humans have always enjoyed great stories and storytellers; the ancient Greeks were no different. However, oral tradition can encompass and convey much more than stories. It can reveal an identity, motivation or persuade an audience. For the Ancient Greeks, stories take on the additional role as the sharing and spreading of information. So, while it is enjoyable to hear tales of adventure, oral tradition has practical uses too.
Oral History and Oral Tradition was incredibly important for both tribes. They passed legends and historical stories on through speech, each story holding its own important moral or message. For example,
In Thomas King's short story "Borders," a Blackfoot mother struggles with maintaining her cultural heritage under the pressure of two dominating nations. Storytelling is important, both for the mother and for the dominant White society. Stories are used to maintain and pass on cultural information and customs from one generation to another. Furthermore, stories can be used both positively and negatively. They can trap individuals into certain ways of thinking, but they can also act as catalysts that drive social change within society.
Bentley, Jerry H., and Herbert F. Ziegler. Traditions & Encounters: A Global Persepective on the Past. Ed. Jessica Portz. 5th ed., 2011. 290-295. Print.
As Silko says, "Where I come from, the words most highly valued are those spoken from the heart, unpremeditated and unrehearsed. Among Pueblo people, written speech or statement is highly suspect because the true feelings of speaker remain hidden as she read the words that are detached from the occasion and audience. " (pg 1 ) Now days, whenever you turn on TV or Radio, and there is somebody giving speech, it is read off the paper that has been written by a professional and proof read by a lawyer or two. Silko is absolutely and right, and I agree with her that the speaker does not express what she or he had in the heart and wanted others to hear. For pueblo people, storytelling is very important. "Pueblo expression resembles something like a spider web - with many little threads radiating from the center, crisscrossing each other. As with the web, the structure emerges as it is made and you must simply listen and trust, as Pueblo people do, that meaning will be made." (pg 1 ) From reading this essay, I noticed that one of the distinctive ways stories are told at Laguna Pueblo, many individual words have their own stories, and there are few dimensions of story telling, which always includes the listeners, and story identity. No matter what kind of story is being told, it always has the origins. And since everything and everybody have different origins an...
The significance of oral tradition is stories that are told in which people formulate, pick up, and carry along as part of their cultural freight and these stories are told by people through folklore which is a form of oral tradition. Oral tradition helped shape our culture because we continue to do what we have been told orally by our ancestors as they passed it down through the generations. Culture shaped folklore by using
The purpose of this essay is that history is a result of point of view.
To study history, the facts and information must be passed down. To do so, historians record the information in textbooks and other nonfiction works. Whether or not the historians retell facts or construct their own version of history is debatable. History can be percieved as being “constructed” by the historians due to their bias, elimination of controversy, strive for entertainment, and neglect to update the information.
In The Houses of History, many different schools of historical thought are presented and light in shed on what exactly it means to be those different types of historians. Not all historians think the same way or approach history from the same perspective, but some similar groups of thought have converged together and have formed the various types of historians that will be presented, such as empiricists, psychohistorians, oral historians, and gender historians. All of these groups can approach the same event or concept and look at them in an entirely different way simply due to the way the historical approach they are accustomed to views things.
• AW’s work is deeply rooted in oral tradition; in the passing on of stories from generation to generation in the language of the people. To AW the language had a great importance. She uses the “Slave language”, which by others is seen as “not correct language”, but this is because of the effect she wants the reader to understand.
What is history? Many believe that history is what is read in textbooks, or what is seen on the news. If Susan Griffin were asked that question, she would probably argue that history is much more than that. It is about the minds and souls of the people who went through the historical event, not simply what happened. In her essay, Griffin incorporates stories of people from totally different backgrounds, and upbringings, including herself, all to describe their account of one time period. Each person’s history is somehow connected with the next person’s, and each story contr...
In compiling this text, Henderson uses the stories and histories gathered from Mi’kmaq families and elders, blending them with European documentation of the events and peoples discussed which have been critically analyzed us...
Second, the historian must place himself within the existing historical debate on the topic at hand, and state (if not so formulaically as is presented here) what he intends to add to or correct about the existing discussion, how he intends to do that (through examining new sources, asking new questions, or shifting the emphasis of pre-existing explanations), and whether he’s going to leave out some parts of the story. This fulfills the qualities of good history by alerting readers to the author’s bias in comparison with the biases of other schools of scholarship on the topic, and shows that the author is confident enough in his arguments to hold them up to other interpreta...
Through examining these texts, it is evident that the advantages historians have when drawing on evidence such as this is that they can easily reveal certain social and cultural values of the society from which the authors came from, just as easily as it shows social and cultural values of the society of which it was written about. The limitations for historians when collecting written evidence is that some key features of the complex civilizations written about were often left out or could be easily misinterpreted or