Oral Traditions

In The Context Of Literary History, “orality” refers to traditions of oral performance of works which may also be literary works, or which may resemble literature. The widely used tag “oral literature” is a contradiction in terms, and is in several respects too problematic to be helpful. It is better to speak of oral verse, oral narrative traditions, oral epic and so forth. However, in a literary history which looks back to the beginnings one must take into consideration the production of literature before it took on written form. Long before the advent of writing, the careful assembly of words into sophisticated verbal productions was an art form that shaped and reflected the cultures in which it emerged, and in these oral poetic and narrative traditions we seek the origins of our literatures. And even in a highly literate society such as that in which we live today, many forms we might bracket as literature are written for oral performance, or indeed need not be written at all: obvious examples are public speaking, drama, storytelling, and various forms of poetry and song. Thanks to its permanence, the written word lends itself readily to analysis, and in literary studies we tend therefore to think of it as the norm, oral forms being a sub-category, variant or even a poor imitation. In reality the opposite is true. Human language evolved solely to meet the needs of oral communication, and writing, even formal and highly stylized writing, imitates speech. The poetic muse arose in the earliest cultures as a result of the fascination with the possibilities of the spoken word, and the modern reader processes literature using cerebral faculties developed for the reception of speech. Oral performance and literature are the two sides of linguistic art, but orality has both a historical and a logical priority.

It follows that an appreciation of oral dynamics is necessary for an understanding of both the origins and the functionality of literature. In the medieval context we are interested here in three main areas of investigation. First, in the nature of pre-literature, of ancient oral verse, narrative and performance, and the way in which it shaped the character also of the earliest vernacular writings. Second, in the polarization between written and spoken art in a partially literate medieval society, with the concomitant implications for social groupings and power structures.