Oral Tradition

Product Details:

• Author: VANSINA
• Edition: First Edition
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of Pages: 248
• Release Date: 28-02-2006
• EAN: 9780367474690
• Languages: English

Details:
Oral traditions are historical sources of a special nature. Their uniqueness stems from the fact that they are "unwritten" sources, designed for oral transmission, with their preservation depending on the memory of successive generations. In many parts of the world where people lack writing, oral tradition serves as the primary means for reconstructing the past.

Do the special characteristics of oral traditions, dependent on the memory of generations, invalidate them as sources of historical data? If not, how can their reliability be tested? Professor Vansina explores these questions in Oral Tradition, showing that with an understanding of the language and society, anthropologists and historians can extract or deduce historical content from oral testimonies. Based on the author's extensive fieldwork in Africa, this definitive work explores how the history of non-literate peoples can be reconstructed from their oral traditions. It surveys existing literature, offers a typology of oral traditions, and evaluates methods for their collection and interpretation.

Upon first publication, Daniel McCall of the American Anthropologist called Oral Tradition "a tour de force" and considered it one of the most significant works on the relationship between oral tradition and history in thirty years. For any fieldworker intending to collect oral traditions, this work is indispensable.