Abstract
Long ago, storytelling was, and universally had to be, exclusively that, a telling. While that may seem less the case today, this paper remedies the humanities’ recent elision of orality as a potential key factor still in determining the what, how, and wherefore of storytelling. It seeks to demonstrate the presence, and, indeed, in some cases, the need, for narratives whose structure, content, and form are still paradigmatically embedded in an oral way of knowing. Due not only to socio-economic circumstance but also the technological fortune of visual narrative, modern stories continue to exist and be produced that are neither shaped nor deeply inflected by alphabetic literacy. By delineating the characteristics of such “orally inflected” narratives, and through explaining their etiology, this paper hopes to revivify the inclusion of orality into the discussion of literature as a field and, hence, to the humanities more broadly. In short, its greater, philosophical aim is to demonstrate that we cannot readily understand literature as a field, nor ourselves as creatures who universally produce narrative, without understanding storytelling’s foundation in what came before littera, the letter.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
"Orality", " Literacy", " Alphabetic Literacy", " Literature", " Evolution of", " Narrativity", " Oral-to-Literate", " Epistemology", " Cultural Studies"
Digital Media
This presenter hasn’t added media.
Request media and follow this presentation.
