Oral tradition
An oral tradition or oral culture is a way of transmitting history, literature or law from one generation to the next, without a writing system, by voice. People tell stories. Often the stories are made into poems and songs to make remembering easy. For example, the Homeric poetry of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined oral literature and oral history. Eventually they were written down.
Oral Tradition Media
A traditional Kyrgyz manaschi performing part of the Epic of Manas at a yurt camp in Karakol
The legendary Finnish storyteller Väinämöinen with his kantele
Filip Višnjić (1767–1834), Serbian blind guslar
Related pages
Other websites
- The Center for Studies in Oral Tradition
- The Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature Online Archived 2007-10-24 at the Wayback Machine
- Oral Tradition Journal
